Absence reporting systems provide structure to leave tracking and management, allowing organizations to ensure compliance with local, state, and federal regulatory standards. But there’s more.
A properly implemented absence reporting system can help employees to understand when and how to best use their time off, minimizing confusion and excessive simultaneous absences. In addition, promoting the use of vacation, sick time, and other leaves of absence can help employees to feel appreciate, keeping them more motivated and productive while at work. Further, promoting use of leave time within a calendar year through clear communications and a reminder system can reduce the amount of rollover. With less accrued leave time, your organization can reduce the likelihood that an employee (or several) will take extended and/or unplanned time.
All of this leads to a boost in employee morale and a decrease in workplace instability, enhancing your ability to make accurate and useful projections for productivity, operating expenses, and more. To learn more about the various advantages of absence reporting systems, contact us.
Author: Andrew
Top Absence Reporting Blog Posts
Absence reporting has grown more important and more frequently discussed with each passing year. As leave requirements and labor costs increase, the methods of logging and tracking employee absences are crucial factors in controlling costs and maintaining compliance. Actec Systems writes a wide variety of blog posts on the subject. Here are 5 of the most important:
Do Your Customer Relationships Have Spark?
The First Notice of Loss process is an important part of your relationship with your customers. If you want your relationship with customers to have spark, then you need to have these four key elements.
- The willingness to be flexible: FNOL Strategies and the claims process need to be iterative. If your company always looks for ways to exceed customer expectations, then you will have a strong relationship with your customers.
- The willingness to work together: If you want to know how to improve customer satisfaction you need to work with your customers. They will be able to provide you with insights that are impossible to gain any other way.
- The willingness to increase loyalty: Don’t think that just because a customer doesn’t complain that they are happy. Always work on increasing the loyalty of your customers to make sure they have bought into your organization wholeheartedly.
- The willingness to respond positively: Don’t respond negatively when a customer complains. If they didn’t care about your organization, they would leave. Take their criticism as it is intended and work on improving your processes.
Sometimes changes in FNOL processes don’t start within the organization. There are times when your customers are signifying that your company needs to change certain procedures with complaints on social media, via emails and customer service phone calls. Learn to listen to these criticisms and have a mechanism in place to make improvements based on customer feedback.
And for more valuable information on improving your FNOL processes, contact the experts at Actec.
Get Your Company’s Intermittent Leave Under Control
One of the most difficult leaves to manage from a Human Resource and management standpoint is FMLA Intermittent Leave. With employees on a reduced work schedule, employers often find it difficult to preserve productivity, managers struggle to keep a shift adequately staffed, and HR has difficulty accurately maintaining the employee’s FMLA leave bank. If your company can get intermittent leave under control, your organization will be able to maintain compliance while returning to optimum levels of productivity.
FMLA Intermittent Leave
Most employees will leave for a specific period of time if they are sick or injured. Once they are better, these employees will return to work and resume their duties without complications.
In some instances, however, an injury or illness will require an employee to take multiple leaves of absence. In addition, when the employee is at work, they may not be able to work their standard number of hours in a workweek or be able to complete all of their duties. For example, if the employee was full time before their injury, they may need to become part-time while they recover from their injury. They may also have to leave for several surgeries and spend time away from work to recuperate.
Employers find this type of intermittent absence one of the most difficult FMLA leaves to track for compliance and productivity. In fact, two-thirds of HR managers rank FMLA Intermittent leave as the most difficult to track and maintain.
One Call Solution
By creating a reporting system where employees can call in absences, companies can streamline their absence management process. And by using software that can report an intermittent leave absence and apply it to the employee’s FMLA leave bank, the company is one step closer to getting administration and compliance under control.
FMLA Intermittent leave takes planning, organization and a proactive strategy to maintain efficient employee utilization. To help learn how to get our company’s intermittent leave under control, contact the experts at Actec today.
5 Ways to Personalize First Notice of Loss Reporting
Your FNOL team will be seen as the voice of your company by your customers. It’s essential to personalize the way your organization handles First Notice of Loss reporting by following these five tips.
Communicate with Sincerity
You want to make sure all of your communications with customers are sincere, especially when handling a claim. Have live operators to handle FNOL calls and have them identify themselves to the customers. Hire representatives who have people skills as well as technology skills and who share your company values.
Handle Claims Proactively
Make sure claim representatives don’t just take down information and fill out forms. Train operators to be able to notice potential underlying issues and resolve them immediately or pass the information on to the right department. Solving problems before they occur will help the claims process run smoothly and increase customer satisfaction.
Offer Convenient Communication Channels
Multi-channel FNOL reporting has become an essential element – leverage this strategy by having the same operator help process the claim from start to finish, even if this occurs over multiple channels. If one representative answers a customer’s tweet, email and phone call the customer will feel a personal connection to the employee and this will improve their experience.
Offer Multiple Methods of Form Delivery
In addition to allowing customers to file their claims on multiple channels, your company should also be prepared to deliver forms in multiple ways. Attaching a jpeg to a tweet, texting information or attaching forms in an email can help customers receive the paperwork they need sooner so they can begin the recovery process faster.
Don’t Promise What You Can’t Deliver
In an effort to calm an upset customer, a customer service representative may make promises the company can’t keep. Not only does this not improve the situation, it can hurt the company’s reputation. Train your representatives to only make promises the company can keep and to always tell customers the truth, even if it is something they don’t want to hear.
Learn more ways you can improve your First Notice of Loss reporting by contacting the experts at Actec.
What A Rubber Stamp Absence Policy Costs Your Business
Many companies struggle with aligning absence management, employee efficiency, and legal compliance. This often leads to a “rubber stamp” mentality when dealing with FMLA and state leave issues. What employers frequently fail to understand is that such policies this policy is a direct result of absence abuse and loss of company productivity.
FMLA Litigation Costs
Litigation in FMLA cases costs an average of $78,000. This leads businesses to believe that they need to avoid a potential lawsuit at all costs. Rubber stamping FMLA leave requests seems like a less expensive solution to the problem.
Unique Leave Requirements
Another factor in creating a rubber stamp policy is the fact that approximately 95% of employees work in a state that has unique leave requirements. This makes managing and tracking leave entitlements difficult, especially if the company has offices in more than one state. When management becomes too complicated, granting an employee’s leave request seems like the easiest solution.
An Alternative to Rubber Stamp Policies
The money that a rubber stamp policy costs in productivity loss and employee efficiency can cost some organizations far more than the possible litigation of an FMLA case.
The first step in creating an effective absence management strategy is an absence audit to determine if revisions are necessary. One of the first signs of a potential rubber stamp issue is an existence of absence abuse. If HR doesn’t investigate an employee’s state or FMLA absence request, this can encourage an increase in false claims.
If the audit shows that your company needs to revise its current legal compliance policy, then you need to design a system that can manage and track all leave entitlements. This will help to reduce false claims and help to show your company is in compliance with all requirements.
A comprehensive absence tracking and management system can help you replace your rubber stamp policy with a strategy that will manage unique leave requirements and employee productivity. Contact the experts at Actec to learn more.
FNOL: Goodwill Towards Non Customers
Efficient First Notice of Loss processing helps with customer retention. FNOL strategies can also help improve the reputation of your brand. When you are considering FNOL systems, understand you also need to consider people who aren’t your customers.
If your customer is involved in a car accident that involved another vehicle, your company will also have to work with the other driver and their insurance company. During the claim process you may need to speak with the other driver, either verbally or in writing. The speed with which you handle your company’s end of the claim process will affect the attitude the non-customer will have regarding your company.
Different areas where you can shine during the FNOL process include:
- Contacting the other party’s insurance company regarding the accident
- Contacting the other driver regarding your claims process and what your company will contribute should your insured be found liable
- Working with the other company regarding assessing blame
- Working with the other company regarding what your company will pay to satisfy the claim
- Issuing any funds owed to the other driver.
If the other company handles the FNOL and claims process more efficiently than your organization does, this can have a negative effect on your company’s brand.
Even though that person may not be your customer now, they may be considering switching insurance companies in the future. If the other insurance company offers superior customer service, then the insured may decide to stay with that company. They may also tell others about their bad experience, which may affect the number of customers you gain in the future.
If you offer superior customer service and the other company doesn’t excel in the claims process, then the other driver may decide to switch insurance companies after the claim is processed.
An efficient FNOL process affects your ability to retain your current customers and help you gain more customers in the future. Contact the experts at Actec to learn how you can streamline your FNOL process.
Benefits of New Absence Management Strategies
At a recent HR conference, corporations like Pepsi Co explained the benefits they have seen by creating a cohesive absence management strategy.
Corporations aren’t the only organizations that silo their absence management, disability programs and other Human Resource tasks. Whether you are an organization of 50 employees or 5,000, separating HR functions can lead to:
- Duplicate forms to satisfy all regulatory requirements
- Inefficiencies in returning employees to work after their leave has expired
- HR staff struggling to track all the different types of leave
These inefficiencies also lead to drop in their revenue. Pepsi Co and other organizations merged their absence with disability management in order to coordinate claims tracking, integrate lost time data and implement best practices across all HR operations.
The result:
- A reduction in overall costs
- An understanding of employee leave and absence drivers
- A company-wide increase in productivity
Another step in this integration process was to establish a centralized reporting center. The call center offers employees a phone number that will connect them with a representative capable of tracking all absence types and answering any absence-related questions.
You don’t have to be a large corporation to leverage an integrated absence management program. Contact the experts at Actec to learn what an integrated call center can do for your business.
Completing the FNOL Process with Value Added Services
People are taught that when they get into a car accident the first thing they need to do is call their insurance agent. What your FNOL call center and adjusters do when customers call to report an accident will help make the entire claims process easy or just another part of their new nightmare.
Putting People First
When a person calls to report an accident, the call center agent shouldn’t just open their computer screen and start asking questions so they can fill out the necessary forms. The first question anyone asks when they hear someone has been in an accident is “Are you all right?”
Before an agent event touches a form, they should ask the customer if they are all right and tell them how sorry they are that this has happened to the individual. Put the person first before the claim and this will help your company make a human connection with the customer.
Immediately Send Important Details
In addition to filling out the necessary paperwork, the FNOL specialist needs to let the customer know everything that will happen in the next several hours, days, and weeks. Let them know if they qualify for a rental car, explain how the car will be inspected, let them know how quickly the claim will be processed, and when the customer can expect funds for repairs or to pay off a loan if the car is totaled.
After completing the FNOL process, the agent needs to send a written copy of this information to the customer. The person will have many things going on in their heads at that moment and may still be in shock. They may forget what the call center agent said five minutes after they hang up the phone.
Sending a copy of a list of next steps and customer responsibilities will help increase customer satisfaction and make sure the customer does what they need to do to complete a claim. Sending it in multiple formats, such as text and email, in addition to updating their online insurance information, will offer an added value that your customers will appreciate as they try to get their lives back to normal.
Be Proactive
The FNOL specialist, adjuster and anyone else who handles the claim should be proactive throughout the process. Contact the customer via phone or email on a regular basis to offer updates and to check on how the person is doing. This will reduce the customer’s stress and help them understand what is going on with their claim without having to log on to the company website or call the insurance agent.
Offering value added services doesn’t have to be time consuming or expensive. Showing that your company cares about the individual, being proactive with claim updates and offering next step information across multiple channels are small improvements that will offer your company big rewards.
And to learn more ways your company can improve your FNOL process, contact the experts at Actec.
Employees Who Eat Healthy Are More Productive and Less Frequently Absent
If you want your employees to be more productive and reduce absences, you need to encourage them to eat healthy. Studies show that people who maintain a healthy diet are more creative, remember more and can think better than unhealthy employees.
Healthy Diet and Job Performance
Studies show that employees on a healthy diet:
- Are 27% less absent
- 11% better at work than unhealthy employees
- 20% more likely to be productive
- 25% improved job performance
Brains and Calorie Consumption
A person’s brain uses 20% of the calories they consume in a day. For optimum performance, the brain needs a continuous stream of healthy fats and glucose. When people eat things such as:
- Vegetables
- Proteins
- Fruits
- Whole grains
- Healthy fats
They keep their brains going and stay fuller longer.
What Employees Should Eat
What are some good foods that your employees should eat to make them more productive? 
- Eggs
- Yogurt
- Blueberries
- Avocados
- Almonds
- Salmon
- Brown rice
- Cashews
- Walnuts
- Dark chocolate
Educating your employees about a healthy diet will reduce absenteeism, make your employees more productive and make your company a better place to work.
To learn more absence management strategies, contact the experts at Actec.