All organisations experience some degree of sickness absence due to work-related accidents, illnesses and stress. Some have developed a risk management approach to this issue.

However, others do not fully understand the causes and impacts of this important employee risk on their organisation. Many employers may be poorly equipped to address key issues and design an intervention plan to achieve maximum attendance among their workforce.

Critical questions you need to consider

• Have you shown leadership commitment and support in addressing this risk issue?

• Are you providing management training to ensure that managers are skilled and confident in handling attendance issues?

• Can you improve your measurement of absence and direct costs?

• Have you analysed the impact of absence in areas such as lost production, customer dissatisfaction and loss of skills?

• Have you developed interventions to target the main causes of absence?

• Are you using a case management approach to reduce long-term absence?

• Have you created an organisational culture that encourages employee attendance and productivity?