Why should I spend money on AbsenceCare subscription fees?

AbsenceCare customers typically realise a ten pound return for every one pound investment. The top areas in which these savings are realised are:
• sick pay including overpayment
• agency costs
• overtime payments
• human resource and line manager administration.


Who takes the AbsenceCare calls?

AbsenceCare is an administrative absence management service which has data administrators that collect data. The AbsenceCare call centre is located in Essex, in the UK.


Why doesn’t AbsenceCare use nurses as call handlers?

AbsenceCare data shows that the majority of absence is not related to any medical problem and that absence which relates to a medical problem should be dealt with face to face and by an occupational health physician.
AbsenceCare believes that separating sensitive (health) and non sensitive (management) data is vital for employee engagement.


Doesn’t calling a third party operator make it easier for employees to “pull sickies”?

AbsenceCare provides a robust data collection system but does not remove the responsibility of absence management from line managers. Rather, managers continue to manage as per policy but with support through automated prompts.

Absence should be managed by the company’s employee attendance policy to ensure consistent treatment of all individuals in each case of absence. Research shows that if absence is managed inconsistently by line managers it leads to tribunals. In this respect AbsenceCare removes the emotion from absence management ensuring all employees are treated equally and according to company policy.


Doesn’t the AbsenceCare approach disempower the managers?

AbsenceCare takes away the administration of absence but NOT decision making. AbsenceCare empowers managers by providing them with accurate data, knowledge and prompts of what to do with it.


How does AbsenceCare communicate cases of absence to line managers?

Line managers are notified immediately via text and/or email of a case of absence (text messages can be set up to send only during working hours). Line managers have access to complete historical records on absence via “myabsencemanager” and those individuals with corresponding access rights can generate on-demand reports too.


How can AbsenceCare help me reduce absence when my employees are genuinely ill?

AbsenceCare is able to identify those individuals who have underlying problems through patterns of absence. Referrals to occupational health can be made immediately, in line with best practice, with industry leading KPI’s. First day occupational health intervention is acknowledged as most efficient for dealing with sickness absence, AbsenceCare provides a practical way of introducing this concept through the seamless data flows it provides.


How is AbsenceCare a positive experience for the employee?

AbsenceCare provides employees with 24/7 sickness reporting. There is always someone available on the phone to take a call from an employee.

It ensures equal, fair and consistent treatment of each individual employee. It ensures the company actions its duty early in the absence process giving employees access to private medical facilities to aid their recovery.

Equally it ensures that ‘absence offenders’ are dealt with effectively and in line with policy so as to minimise the impact on the work of others, increasing employee engagement, retention and morale.


Does deploying AbsenceCare require a substantial time and resource input, over and above day to day operational requirements?

AbsenceCare will brief and train line managers to ensure that roll out is effective. To aid this it will provide all the internal marketing and communications support material including cards, posters and fact sheets.

AbsenceCare does not require a full time project manager. However, during roll out it does require some time commitment from the organisation. For example, for an organisation of 5,000 staff it would require roughly half the time of one individual during the 6 week roll out period.

Importantly, the long term point of using AbsenceCare to remove administration, so after roll out internal resources normally required for absence management can be redirected to more valuable activities.


Is your question still not answered? - Contact us to find out more!