Make 2016 the Year You Get Absenteeism under Control

Posted on

November 30th, 2015

December is the time when organizations create a plan for success in the New Year. As your company determines its business New Year’s Resolutions, you will want to put absence management high on the list. Absenteeism increases costs and decreases efficiency. Instituting an absence management solution now will help you increase productivity in 2016.
Absence Management
Efficient absence management includes:

Having one number for employees to call to report an absence
Understanding the number of absences by employee
Ensuring compliance of all state and federal laws
Having a consistence leave policy for all employees
Aligning absence management with production needs

When a company is able to create and maintain an effective absence management policy, your organization will be able to:

Reduce the number of absences
Reduce the amount of time spent on absence reporting
Determine seasonal staffing needs
Increase productivity
Increase retention

One way to improve absence management is to create an absence-reporting program that ensures management and human resources have up to date information. The experts at Actec can help you find a solution that will make 2016 the year you get absenteeism under control. Contact us today.

Absence Management of Exempt Employees

Posted on

October 13th, 2015

Andrew

shutterstock_174966584 sm Absence management can be difficult if you are a large organization or if you have full and part time employees. Management of employee absences can become even more complicated if some of your employees have exempt status. Make sure you understand Federal Labor Standards to avoid falling into common pitfalls with your exempt employees.
Department of Labor Audits Companies
If any of your employees have exempt status you should be aware that the Department of Labor does perform audits. The organization wants to make sure that designated employees truly qualify for exempt status and that your company is following the rules. If you aren’t, then the Department of Labor may revoke the status and your organization may be required to pay the employee retroactively for any overtime or deducted wages.
Common Mistakes Most Companies Make
Many organizations don’t fully understand the exempt status and make some common mistakes, including:

Only paying an employee for a half day if they left early
Deducting pay if the employee takes time off
Deducting pay if the employee has jury duty
Deducting pay if the employee calls in sick

According to the Federal Labor Standards, you must pay an exempt employee for a full day as long as they are at work for at least five minutes of their shift. An exempt employee must also be paid for days that are missed due to illness or time off unless they miss an entire week.
There are of course exceptions to this rule, such as if the employee has vacation time or sick days he can use to replace the missing pay. There are also exemptions under the Family Medical Leave Act if your organization has 50 or more employees.
Understanding and managing employee absences gets complicated but there are ways to make tracking employee absenteeism easier. For more information on how you can get absence management under control, click here.

Absence Management with Employee Engagement

Posted on

September 22nd, 2015

Andrew

There are times when you want employees to call in sick. Unhealthy employees are less productive and can spread illnesses throughout the office. However, some employees call out because they are unsatisfied with their job and aren’t committed to the company. To reduce this kind of absenteeism, your company may want to increase employee engagement.
What is Employee Engagement?
Employee engagement is a term used to describe strategies that increase worker involvement with decision making, product development and management. It helps employees understand that the company values the people who work for the organization. It also helps companies by increasing flexibility and decreasing the time to launch process.
What Kind of Engagement Strategies Work?
Some of the best engagement strategies to use to increase employee satisfaction include:

Sharing marketing and production goals with employees
Including employees in strategy sessions
Allowing employees to manage small projects
Receive input from employees regarding policy changes

By implementing these strategies employees will feel valued and that they are making an important contribution to the company.
How Engagement Decreases Absenteeism
When employees feel engaged and valued, they are satisfied with their career and are committed to the company. They look forward to going to work every day and less likely to call in sick because they are bored, restless or unsatisfied.
Employee engagement increases productivity and efficiency while decreasing absenteeism and employees leaving for competitors. This will help make absentee management more efficient, but your business may want to consider outsourcing this part of HR to focus on other business processes. For more information on our services, contact us.

Absentee Management During Back to School

Posted on

September 8th, 2015

Andrew

Now that school is back in session, companies may face a surge in employee absenteeism. By being proactive, businesses can create effective absentee management strategies that keep employees from calling out of work.
Back to School Confusion

After a few months off, employees and their families have to adjust to the new routine of getting to the bus stop on time. And if parents transport their children, the first few days can be hectic at the school drop off location. Getting organized takes time and sometimes missteps happen. Children miss their bus, forget their lunch or a traffic jam occurs in the school carpool lane.

Businesses may want to change their attendance policy to allow more time for employees to appear for work before counting against the person as a whole day. Managers may also want to talk to employees with families about changing their schedules for the first two weeks of school to help parents establish the new back to school routine.
An Increase In Illness
Back to school can also mean an increase in illnesses being passed around a family. This is especially true for young children who are going to school for the first time. Preschoolers need time to build up their immune system as they are exposed to more children and more germs.
In today’s households, both parents often work and there are many single parent families with no back up childcare. Daycares don’t allow parents to drop off children who are ill, so many employees end up having to call in to care for their sick child.
One way to help offset employees who stay home to care for children is to allow them to switch shifts with other employees. This way they can wait for the other parent to come home before leaving for work. And depending on the employee’s position, they may be able to do some of their work from home, which allow them to stay productive.
When companies enact creative absentee management strategies, employees will see the business considers them a valuable asset. When people are valued, they will make an effort to make sure that they are able to balance work and life obligations in order to reduce absences. Working together, companies and parents can survive the back to school confusion while staying productive and effective. To learn more about absentee management and how we can help your business, contact us.

Top 5: Blogging on Absence Reporting

Posted on

August 18th, 2015

Andrew

Unreported or incorrectly reported absences can cost companies millions. And while some organizations choose to set up internal absence reporting solutions, the process is complex, expensive, and time-consuming.
Understanding absence reporting strategies, however, is crucial to fixing the problem – even when outsourcing the intake solution. Here are 5 of our most popular blog posts on absence reporting implementation, outsourcing, and strategizing:

Bereavement Absence Benefit in the Workplace

Posted on

August 4th, 2015

Andrew

Bereavement in the workplace can be challenging to manage. Employees may need to take time off unexpectedly, find their performance is diminished or they may not be able to perform certain responsibilities. While bereavement leave is not mandated (except in the State of Oregon), a compassionate approach is appreciated and can help build commitment, reduce absence due to illness, and retains the trained professional.
The amount of leave needed may vary according to several variables:

Distance to the funeral
Responsibility for funeral and estate arrangements
Relationship between the employee and the deceased.

Grief can be unpredictable and may be different for different people. It’s important for people to recognize this and try to be as supportive as possible.
Bereavement leave allows an employee to receive paid leave because of the death of a close relative, friend or associate. It generally is treated as a separate benefit from other types of paid leave.
The following bereavement leave regulation updates are important to keep in mind when developing or updating a bereavement policy:
1. Effective Jan. 1, 2014, Oregon will become the first state to require certain private-sector employers to provide bereavement leave to their covered employees. See Oregon Becomes First State to Require Bereavement Leave.
2. The California legislature has passed, but governors have vetoed, several bills requiring employers to grant employee requests for up to three days of bereavement leave.
3. A bill known as the Parental Bereavement Act that would amend the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to allow eligible employees of covered employers up to 12 weeks of leave one year following the death of a child was introduced in Congress in 2012 and reintroduced in 2013.
Coping with the loss of a close family member or associate can be difficult for the employee; having clear guidelines and policies can help make it easier for everyone in the workplace when difficult decisions need to be made.

Claims Process Outsourcing – Business Performance Efficiency

Posted on

July 28th, 2015

Andrew

Today’s business organizations are faced with multiple challenges across a multitude of business functions and processes. Business challenges requiring high degrees of specialization, such as first notice of loss insurance claims processing, need to be highly customized to meet the needs of each unique organization and industry.
Optimizing processes such as improving the customer experience, dealing with a growing need for data, driving more business, better connectivity and integration can help all companies. To accomplish this, many organizations leverage an outsourcing model.
Business outsourcing isn’t new. As a matter of fact, it’s widely used – and accepted – by many organizations, of many sizes. Today business success is measured by outcomes and KPIs which help drive business growth, innovation and customer satisfaction. Whether the function is staffed internally, or outsourced to a specialty firm, is determined by efficiency and success metrics.
For example, absence claim reporting processes that are outsourced are typically more efficient and less expensive and, because of the dramatic shift toward internet-based work tools, the economy of scale of an existing, staffed 24/7 call center, and the existing systems and knowledge available from the outsource organization. Outsourced claims reporting services can assist companies in accelerating claims process optimization, ensuring fewer claims related issues, mitigating lost claims and wasted time.
Increasingly efficient processes are a huge advantage for companies, especially larger organization. Specialty outsource business process providers can dramatically improve the efficiency, and bottomline, of a company. And that is what a true business partner is all about. For more information about absence management solutions, first notice of loss (FNOL) and 24/7 claims reporting, contact the experts at Actec.

Best Practices to Manage Disability-Related Absence

Posted on

July 21st, 2015

Andrew

Disability-related absences are better managed by building early disability reporting practices and disability duration procedures. In doing so, employers effectively manage and reduce absenteeism.

By setting up the following practices, you can improve how absence due to disability is handled:

Initial disability reporting: Include facts about an employee’s absence or disability in the claim as soon as possible — it’ll help cut down on the amount of time out of the office and increase the “return-to-work” probability.
Disability duration strategy: Guidelines help forecast the length of a disability and create a standardized technique for assessing the usefulness of a return-to-work program. Employers can customize their plans accordingly.

Absence Management can help your business lessen short and long term absences due to sickness. To get rid of additional administration pressure, many companies have outsourced this service. For more information on our services, contact us.

Absence Management – How Do You Deal With Long-Term Absence?

Posted on

July 14th, 2015

Andrew

Businesses are increasingly recognizing the significant costs associated with managing high levels of employee absence. Managers are often unsure about the level and nature of the problems they may be facing, or about how these problems are most effectively addressed.
Most managers realize that some absence is inevitable. Truthfully, no one wants a genuinely ill employee on the job. Furthermore, most managers recognize that handling individual absence issues is often complex and potentially sensitive.
Organizations need to address their absence management policies directly. A good place to start is with assessment:

Do you have an absence problem?
How do you develop an absence strategy?
How do you deal with short-term absences?
How do you deal with long-term absences?

If an employee has been absent from work for an extended period, the employer needs to consider questions such as:

Do you know when the employee is likely to return to work?
If not, what steps can you take to investigate and obtain a clearer prognosis?
If so, are there any practical steps that can be taken to help the individual return to work sooner?
What support and contact is appropriate while the individual is absent?
What actions should you and/or the employer take to prepare for the return to work at the appropriate time?
What support might the individual require following his or her return to work?

Research shows that long-term absence is generally handled most effectively through early intervention and action – the longer the period of absence, the less likely the employee is going to be able to return to work. Although most absence is attributable to genuine medical factors, the precise nature, extent and potential implications of a given medical condition may be difficult to determine.
The American Institute of Stress reports that job stress is the number cause of workplace absenteeism. Acute medical conditions rate the second highest cause, ahead of mental illness. For all of these conditions, it is difficult to obtain a precise prognosis of the individual’s expected return date.
Actec Systems has been the leader of Day 1 Absence Management since 1989. We are here to help commercial and personal insurance carriers, self-insured companies, third-party administrators and managed-care organizations with their absence management needs. Contact us at 1-800-862-2832 today – we’d love to hear from you!

Top 6 Features of a Workflow Management System

Posted on

July 6th, 2015

Andrew

Workflow management systems are quickly becoming an integral part of the internal infrastructure of a work team. Workflow systems are used to setup, execute and monitor the documents and tasks of a business process. Workflow can refer to the progressive sequence of work objectives and activities, or a complex set of processes that take place concurrently. Work flow activities have a direct impact on the rules, routines and roles of the work group.
Workflow systems provide First Notice of Loss (FNOL) service providers with the opportunity to define and control the various activities that are needed to efficiently and successfully execute claim and incident reporting systems. In addition, quality workflow systems allow FNOL providers the opportunity to measure and analyze the workflow process so that continuous improvements can be made.
Here are the top 6 features of a workflow management system to consider when researching your application.

Process design tool. A process design tool enables the administrator to define what activities need to be done, by whom and by when. It may also designate specialized tools and/or equipment that might be needed and any budgetary constraints that should be considered.
Test process capability. A quality workflow system will include the ability to test or pilot a version of a workflow to see how it works before it goes into use. This gives users the chance to fine tune and work out the bugs of a process before it is finalized.
Cloud-based application. As work teams become more mobile, the ability for team members to access workflows from home or anywhere on the go is an essential feature for today’s applications.
Document and media integration. There are many different applications in use across various operating systems in today’s workplace. It is important that your workflow management system have the capability to share and integrate various types of documents created in different formats such as forms, documents, spreadsheets, videos, audio files and more.
Email notifications. It is very important that team members are able to be notified of new tasks and service-level agreement (SLA) violations.
Customized reports. It is essential that evaluation feedback loop is completed at the end of each process to ensure the process and participation flows as planned or adjustments are made. A quality workflow system will enable administrators the opportunity to set up reports that indicate how well the process was executed and enables fine-tuning.

A workflow management tool is an opportunity for FNOL providers to improve both the underlying business process as well as the organizational structure of the work team. Workflow management systems that are designed and implemented using best practices will unify team members with diverse skills into a cohesive, high-functioning work unit.