Citing a report by the Harris Interactive consulting firm, Steve Rucinski at Bizinformer tells us that unscheduled absenteeism at U.S companies and organizations has risen to its highest level since 1999.
Here's what he quoted concerning the reasons given: "... personal illness accounts for only 35 percent of unscheduled absences, with the rest because of family issues (24 percent), personal needs (18 percent), stress (12 percent) and entitlement mentality (11 percent)."
When you consider that 65 percent of people that are absent from work are for reasons other than illness, we need to consider again what we talked about last post, and throughout managersrealm, about meeting the needs of our people.
We can learn, adapt and manage the situation or let it run its course. The choice is ours.
The key reasoning behind all of this is conflicting loyalties and responsibilities. We must understand and embrace our workers' lives outside of the workplace. They have multiple pressures that bear in upon them daily. We must do all we can do for them to ensure that they feel like we truly care. This is done through actions; not good feelings.
People are going to be absent for private reasons whether we like it or not. If we develop flexible schedules and have programs in place that can deal with these types of unexpected circumstances, we can keep the employees happy; retain great workers; and have control of the situation so we don't live in a world of constant unannounced, unscheduled absences.
I'm not talking about coddling deadbeats here, I'm talking about realistically looking at the world we live in, and adapting to that reality. To not understand what is important to our people outside of work is to not understand what it will take to retain great employees in the future. And the future is now! We neglect this at our peril.
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