Sick At Work: Why Are Employees Calling in Sick Too Often?


Sick At Work: Why Are Employees Calling in Sick Too Often ?
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We all get it, as a business owner, you need to ensure the health and safety of all the people working under your roof. Sick employees in the workplace should be something that you need to manage effectively. Apart from their health, you need to ensure that they are happy and content with their jobs.

Why are employees calling in sick too often? In this article, we will talk to you about the common reasons clean business makes a free mind for staff, and we will also share with you practical tips on how you can properly manage these numbers.

Stress and Fatigue

Stress is the number one enemy of each employee. Many of us had tried to manage our time at work to balance everything out every single day. Challenging projects, tight deadlines, difficult team members, and other factors can stress out an employee.

No matter how positive a person is, there will come to the point that they want to hide and be still for a day to break free from all these office conundrums.

Make yourself approachable as a boss. Do not create a persona that will make your employees feel that you are difficult to talk to. Be friendly with them in a professional manner.

Get to know your employee deeper, and you will see that they will be coming into the office excited for the day.

Office is Dirty

This is the number one reason why employees are often sick in offices. You need to put cleanliness on top of your priority if you are after the health and safety of your people.

We all know that germs and viruses are present on every surface. Dust and bacteria can trigger allergies. Viruses can cause serious health issues like influenza or Covid 19.

Your best resource is to hire a regular commercial cleaning for shared offices and co-working offices that will take care of the overall cleaning.

You can also advise the commercial cleaning company of your choice to apply disinfectant regularly. Regular disinfection is a sure way to kill harmful germs and viruses.

It is your job as the business owner to choose a commercial cleaning service provider that will make this happen.

Family Issues

Always remember that your employees need time to handle their personal affairs. Let us give a special mention to all the women who work. Most of them also tend to the emotional needs of their families. Some of them need to attend to their children’s school affairs and other milestones.

Unfortunately, some of the employees are also tasked to take care of sick family members. This is one of the unavoidable circumstances, and as a boss, there is nothing much that you can do about it.

Your Employee is Exhausting

Doing the same thing over and over again is indeed tiring. A clear indication of this is if your employee starts to come in late regularly. You may take a look and see if working on a flexible schedule can help these employees.

Low Job Satisfaction

Employees who are not happy with their job roles and that is why employees are often sick in offices – may be true. Imagine the psychology behind pretending that you love what you are doing – how stressful can that be? You need to know what is going on with your employees’ minds.

It will make you understand them better, and you will be able to come up with certain adjustments that you will meet with them in the middle. You can come up with surveys and solicit honest feedback that you can get from them.

Unhealthy Habits

Eight hours of office work is not ideal as far as health is concerned. Sitting down for straight hours while occasionally snacking can cause obesity. Staring at computer screens for extended hours contributes to poor eyesight.

In some cases, employees tend to skip meals to give way to their deadlines. Employees calling in sick too often are caused by these habits.

It is about time for you, or you can also advise your Human Resource to come up with healthy solutions to this.

You may dedicate a certain amount of time of the day when you will encourage your employees to do simple stretches. More prominent corporations and those who can afford, it can get their employees’ gym passes. You can also purchase healthy snacks and beverages for them.

Chronic Illnesses

Your employees calling in sick too often sick does not even want to be in this situation in the first place. The most that you can do is to understand their situation and adjust to what they can offer your company.

Counter Measures for Managing The Sick Call-Ins

Now that we have identified the common reasons why an employee is most likely to get sick or call in sick, we will know to tell you the alternatives that you can offer them. This will encourage them to be productive, which will be a win-win situation for you and them.

Work Remotely

Working remotely is very timely. A lot of business owners converted their workforce to work from home when Covid 19 started. You should have started this campaign even before Covid.

Your employee will feel less stress as you are taking the commute from their day-to-day life. They do not have to wake up super early to prepare, which means they can get more extended rest. Working from home is the best alternative to employees calling in sick.

Give Paid Time Off

This works magic, mostly after a challenging project. Your employee will feel revived, and they will get to enjoy being out of the office. Your employee will definitely look forward to this incentive every after projects.

Lounge Areas

The lounge area is a space where your employees can relax and build stronger relationships with customers. Have one made in your business if you can afford it? Creative brain juices naturally come out during human-to-human interaction. The lounge areas are good for your employee’s mental health.

Talk to Your Employees

Build relationships with your employees. Make them feel that you are human too, and their opinion matters. You can invite them for team-building or team dinner after work.

They will trust you more as they know that you are someone that they can talk to. At Clean Group we care for our cleaners. 

Employees taking too many sick days can be managed. Keeping your employees and making sure that you provide them with proper care can pave the road to a beautiful working relationship. Let us know what you thought about this.

Do you pretty much agree with my insights that these are the common reasons why an employee will not report for the day? This applies to all types of business industries.

All business owners deal with different employees, and it is their primary responsibility to keep them safe, sane, and healthy. Drop us a comment below and share this article if you agree with me.

About the Author

Hi, my name is Amelia. I am a commercial cleaning operations manager at Clean Group Sydney. My duties include handling customer support responsibilities and I manage a team of 10+ fully trained support professionals. Besides managing a team of experts and maintaining communication between clients and cleaners’ teams, I handle customers’ complaints and grievances, especially the ones that need special or immediate attention. If you need help sorting out the best cleaning for you or have a complaint, feel free to connect.

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