Monitoring the Work of Employees: How to Treat Absenteeism Employees?
The absenteeism of the staff can have serious consequences for the organization, and the losses can be financial or human. Monitoring the work of staff will help in time to determine which of the employees suffers from this “disease”.
All methods of combating absenteeism are related to human psychology. And, of course, they are familiar to HR-managers. Some of them will help to cope with this phenomenon, and will serve as tools in monitoring the work of staff. However, we have to mention that the most popular and widely used method is time tracking with screenshots which gives excellent results.
1. “Monitoring of activities”. The introduction of an automated system for monitoring the work of staff – time tracking with screenshots – will allow you to monitor the activity of the employee at the computer and know what programs and sites he uses during working hours. In this case, the influence of the human factor is excluded, and an objective analysis of the situation can be conducted to identify employees in a state of absenteeism.
2. “The hard method”. A person can be removed from the state of absenteeism by administrative and financial penalties, no one will want to be deprived of the premium or be transferred to a lower position. This method is familiar to most managers in the system of monitoring the work of personnel.
3. “Soft method”. Flexible schedule, reward for results, extra time off or leave can help change the attitude of the employee to work. However, excessive “stimulation” can lead an employee to the idea that he is irreplaceable and super valued, which means that he can relax even more, which will immediately be noticeable in the course of monitoring the work of the staff.
4. “Building a team”. Teaching and entertainment activities in the team, of course, it rally. And “get rid of work” when colleagues work, it becomes simply embarrassing and inconvenient.
5. “Personal conversation”. This method is based on receiving feedback from a subordinate to find out what is demotivating and to develop an action plan for eliminating demotivating reasons. This method, according to many leaders, is very effective.
6. “The formal method.” This approach forces the employee to provide documents to confirm his illness or any other valid excuse for absenteeism at work. Control over the work of the staff will identify “lazy people” and will not allow them to abuse the location of colleagues and management.
All these methods are suitable for combating explicit absenteeism, but latent absenteeism requires increased motivation and interest of employees in the work process and in achieving the set results. Of course, this requires a special approach and resources.
In one of the American companies, effective employees who fulfill their plans and achieve key indicators are provided with a real career growth within the corporation. In the situation of hard work to achieve the goals set for each employee for a year, to shirk from work and lazy will not work. Each employee who has reached the planned indicators is confident that he will take a higher position and will be rewarded financially. This is a great motivation. Control over the work of staff throughout the year, allow you to objectively evaluate each candidate and make the right decision. Absenteeism is a common phenomenon, but it can be influenced and corrected if the case is not hopeless.
