Tracking Absences

April 13, 2006

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You'll have trouble managing absenteeism costs if you can't track what those costs are and exactly where they are being incurred. You may need some kind of system in place to track employee absences, if your payroll records don't already do this.

Absentee records (or time cards) can be used to:

keep track of individual employee absences
render totals for the business
pinpoint absence fluctuations over different time periods or different times of the year
calculate the cost to the business for unscheduled absences

Tracking absenteeism in your business may be as simple as keeping a tally of when an employee is not at work. Regardless of how complex or how simple your system and your policy are, they should:

define "absence" and "partial absence" so that records are consistent
differentiate between types of absences, particularly between unexcused absences, medical or disability-related absences, and uncontrollable personal emergency or other absences, in order to extract some meaningful data from the records
design a notification procedure for employees to report absences
design a method to record absences such as sign-in sheets, time clocks, or time sheets that employees hand in at given periods

The Business Tools area contains a sample absence policy with a tracking spreadsheet that you can use week after week to track the absences of employees in your business.