What is Day One Absence Management Reporting?

At Fusion, we help businesses to reduce staff absence through our absence management service.

As businesses start to recognise the impact and cost of days lost due to illness, managing staff absence is fast becoming a top priority for organisations of all sizes.

The sooner that you can manage an absence, the better. As part of our occupational health services, we can offer day-one absence management and reporting.

In this blog, we’ll explore what day-one absence reporting involves and why it might be time for your business to consider introducing the service for your employees.

Why is absence management so important?

Each year, the average cost of sickness per employee in the UK is £600. That’s £600 for each member of staff every year. When you add it up, that’s a cost that organisations can’t sustain.

When you also consider the fact that approximately 15% of absences (around 27 million days) are not genuine, sickness absence is costing businesses around £2.5bn each year.

Despite these numbers, 60% of businesses don’t monitor or record sickness absence costs.

Rather than spending occupational health budgets on reactive remedies, organisations should consider adopting a more holistic approach to sickness absence management.

One way to do this is by adopting a day-one absence management approach.

The Fusion OH day-one absence management service

We’ve been using a day-one absence management approach with our own staff at Fusion since 2011. Our sickness days reduced by 28% in the first 6 months, and we’ve managed to maintain those numbers.

The service includes an integrated telephone, online and consultative absence management service, allowing businesses to track, manage and reduce sickness absence.

It’s delivered through our unique six-stage approach, which includes:

Developing absence management policies
Creating management-process flows
Configuring and designing the system
Structuring the call centre support
Providing real-time management information and trend analysis
Supporting further strategic implementation

How does day-one absence management work?

Here’s how it works:

An employee calls in sick and speaks to one of our dedicated team of advisors
A trained advisor will triage the call, confirming the reason for and nature of the absence
An estimated return-to-work date will be discussed
Shift patterns and absence details will be recorded
The individual’s line manager will be notified

If an employee calls repeatedly during prolonged sickness absence, the service includes access to a professional occupational health advisor.

This support will result in one of four outcomes:

Providing self-care advice (over-the-counter medication, etc.)
Advising a visit to their GP
Suggesting that they go to A&E
In the event of an emergency, dialling 999

The individual’s line manager will be updated throughout the process.

Immediate sickness absence reporting

One of the key benefits of a day-one absence management service is its immediacy.

The line manager, HR department and payroll manager will be automatically informed when an employee will not be in work that day. This will allow for any necessary adjustments to be made to the employee’s pay straight away.

If the employee expects to be in work the following day but doesn’t return, the system will automatically follow this up and send a notification for them to be contacted.

When they finally return to work, the system prompts the line manager to conduct a return-to-work interview, ensuring that they are fit for work and identifying those who might need further support.

This method of reporting provides easily-accessible data about the sickness levels of individual employees, teams, and departments.

The benefits of day-one absence reporting

Day-one absence management can offer benefits across an entire business.

On an organisational level, it can help:

Reduce sickness absence levels
Increase cost savings
Improve understanding of sickness absence volumes
Provide insight into the drivers behind sickness absence
Benchmark data from the public/private sector
Compare sickness rates between departments
Target occupational health resource and wellbeing programmes more effectively
Improve management’s ability to manage sickness absence

At a line manager level, it can offer:

Real-time data regarding sickness absence
The effective control of return-to-work resources
Support in managing sickness absence
Access to a detailed history for all staff, highlighting any sickness absence patterns
Reminders and prompts when action is required

At an employee level, it can provide them with: