Outsourcing Absence Management – HR Trends

There is an increasing trend among Australian organisations implementing an outsourced absence management program. This trend is due to the high levels of absenteeism in Australia, the effort and time it takes to minimise its impact, and limitations in internal capabilities and systems.

Recent organisational surveys in Canada and the US reveal that close to 15% of organisations have outsourced absence management, and a further 7% intend to do so in the next 12 months. This trend is likely to continue to accelerate in the coming years.

Rather than see it as outsourcing a problem, HR see it as implementing a better approach to managing an important human resource issue. Absence management is complex and hard to deal with, and specialist providers have developed unique and powerful capabilities to simplify management and get control of absence fast.

Business leaders are acutely aware of the cost of absenteeism. You can download a free cost calculator here. It is important to run the ruler over the true underlying cost of absenteeism –both direct sick pay and indirect costs such as excess headcount to cover leave, overtime, labour hire and management distraction.

Absenteeism also has a significant impact on employees, impacting morale, workload, stress and mental health, not to mention lost wages and financial burden. In workplaces that need to replace labour, the risk of health, safety and quality issues increase, and management workload becomes more demanding diverting leaders from their core functions.

Outsourcing can deliver many benefits to different stakeholders. When deciding to outsource absence recording, it is important to clearly articulate the program benefits to senior stakeholders, front line leaders and employees.

For managers, it will free up time, reduce administration, and provide a simplified system to manage employee absence. For employees, it can deliver 24×7 medical advice and referral to other health services you provide such as your Employee Assistance Program (EAP). For HR, developing a centralised reporting process provides a consistent approach across the organisation, including and comprehensive reporting and real-time absence analytics.

Direct Health Solutions introduced Nurse-led absence management to Australia 14 years ago and is the forerunner in this space. We are the only provider to offer the service, and it is powered by our proprietary leading-edge technology. The program can be broken down into the following key areas:

WHAT OUTSOURCING ABSENCE LOOKS LIKE:

Direct Health Solutions handle initial absence calls from employees who are ringing in sick or for Carers Leave. These calls are handled by trained Registered Nurses skilled in providing health advice over the phone for employees and their family members. Managers receive real-time alerts through the system, and trigger alerts if employees are exceeding levels of absence or have an absence pattern. When employees return to work, the program ensures that managers have back to work discussions with every employee and HR have reporting to monitor that this is occurring.  The service also provide HR and executive leader-level dashboards which graph hotspots, trends and causes to take action.

NOT OUTSOURCING THE PROBLEM – IMPLEMENTING A SOLUTION:

One of the common things holding companies back from outsourcing absence management is concern that it is outsourcing a problem which is really a manager’s job. Executives will want to understand what impact outsourcing the initial absence notification may have on the employee-manager relationship, and how the system will actually improve manager-employee communication.

“I hear this concern quite frequently from HR and Operations Managers. By centralising the initial notification of absence, employee calls are handled with care and consistency, and absence information is recorded in a management system in real-time. What our platform ensures is that managers have a conversation with employees when they have returned to work, and addressed absence issues, rather than ignoring them. The program increases management accountability and employee engagement and we help them develop the skills to do so.

Companies who partner with Direct Health Solutions do not outsource their problem…. they leverage our unique capabilities to support their managers to manage absence better and more efficiently.” (Paul Dundon).

IS THIS APPROACH RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?:

Direct Health Solutions is Australia’s leading absence management service provider, with clients of all sizes across all industry sectors. We enable organisations to reduce absence by 25%- 40%.

Contact us for a chat  to discuss your absence challenges now.