A Positive Approach to Reduce Absenteeism

Absenteeism is expensive. Some estimates put the direct costs of unscheduled absences at $2600 - $3600 per year, per employee, and those are just the potential direct costs. Indirect costs of high employee absenteeism can range from low productivity of the frustrated employees who have to make up the slack to a lowered respect for management for putting up with it.   

If you periodically experience a spate of absenteeism try taking a positive approach to it in the form of well-planned incentives.  It can be a good strategic decision that can save a great deal of bottom line profit and add to a positive and engaged employee base.

Most company attendance policies focus only on the consequences and penalties associated with poor attendance.  While it is important to have this "stick-side" as a policy, consider the alternative of using the “carrot-side” as well.  Simple behavior science knows that reinforcing good behaviors has more lasting value to you than punishing bad ones.  Including incentives for employees who exemplify good attendance can be just as effective for improving absenteeism as penalizing them for noncompliance.

A Presenteeism Program

Things to consider when planning your incentive program:

• Set the timing for the program to include seasons where you have the most absences,
• Have a clear start and stop date
• Set clear goals for the program that are based on realistic expectations and use past performance as the measurement to start.  Unrealistic goal setting will guarantee that you program will fail.
• Communicate the program measurement and improvements before, during and after program completion
• Start awarding minor awards at achieving an improvement to the base, with escalating awards for incremental improvement. Think inspirational yet achievable when setting attendance rewards.
• At program conclusion make sure you recognize those employees with perfect attendance.
• The logic of the program should be as transparent as possible to avoid disputes.
• Finally, make sure the program isn't penalizing employees for allowable absences.

How Can Incentives Promote Healthy Behaviors?

Seema Verma, the CMS Administrator, and Adam Boehler, the Director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, have been outspoken regarding the need to address proactively keeping people healthy, instead of waiting until they get sick and require expensive services.  In today’s healthcare world this is known as value-based care. 

In value-based care, providers are rewarded for the relative health of their patients, instead of getting paid to treat them when they are ill.  The management of chronic conditions is a key to lowering healthcare costs and improving patient outcomes. 

What’s the Cost?

60% of all Americans have at least one chronic condition, and 40% have two or more.  These are the leading drivers of the nation’s $3.3 trillion in annual health care costs.

The Center for Disease Control estimates that that eliminating three risk factors – poor diet, inactivity, and smoking – would prevent: 80% of heart disease and stroke; 80% of type 2 diabetes; and, 40% of cancer.  While elimination might be unattainable to some, reduction of these is certainly a real goal.

The Need for Incentives

A survey of 2500 consumers conducted by Survata in association with HealthEdge in 2018, found that 53% of millennials want more incentives for healthy behaviors from their health plan.  It is well known in the award industry that properly designed wellness incentive programs can and will produce results.  When just the communications of the desire for a change in wellness habits doesn’t work, incentives have.  They can get employees off the couch, eating right, smoking less and enrolled and involved in the classes and programs offered to help them along the way  And they can keep them on the path.  Changing habits is hard, but motivation can help get it done.

A survey conducted by Incentive Research Foundation revealed that almost 59% of wellness programs contain gift cards as awards for certain objectives such as weight loss, exercise, smoking cessation, and enrolling and completing parts of the program.  An Aflac study found that 61% of employees agree that they have made healthier lifestyle choices because of these types of wellness activities. 

And among those incentives and programs for healthy behaviors, it has been proven that cash rewards do not have a sustained impact on life habits. Incentives such as gift cards for healthy habits make a long-lasting difference, helping to contain costs of healthcare, improve overall health outcomes and boost employee engagement.

A Good Reason for Peer to Peer Employee Recognition

Current incentive research shows that over 80% of businesses use rewards to overcome business challenges.  According to Gallup 57% of baby boomers, 76% of gen Xer’s, and 81% of millennials say that receiving recognition better connects them to their organization’s products and services.

Employees today want to work at companies where they are recognized for their performance.  And it’s not just management to employee recognition that is important.  Incentive research also shows that 80% of millennials say that the act of giving someone else recognition makes them want to stay at a company longer when the company cares about and invests in their employees.

Take the time to look through your organization for award opportunities to increase engagement.  Get your employees to become more engaged in company initiatives, like taking a company survey, signing up for a service, or joining a committee.

Show appreciation and build a company culture where employees and customers feel valued. When you do you will have a workforce that is more likely to feel good about where and for whom they work.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

The Confusion Surrounding Employee Engagement

“Employee Engagement” as a term (and now culture) has been around a long time. Before that it was called “Employee Satisfaction.”  Not to oversimplify it, but employee satisfaction had little or no connection to performance.  With major changes in industry and more emphasis on service, there began a more pronounced link between HR and the “service-profit” chain and Employee Engagement was born. 

We googled “employee engagement” in preparation for this post and were rewarded with over 83 million answers.  HR consulting firms, training consultants, research companies, statistical analysis firms and even the award industry each define it in relation to their own revenue.  Is it any wonder why executives seem to be a little chagrined by the entire subject?  A simple concept it isn’t.  From 1996 to 2012, nearly 25 million employees in almost 3 million workgroups from 195 countries have completed Gallup's Q12®survey…the father of the statistics used in the design of how best to measure EE. This does everything except answer the one question everyone wanted to know…why.

You can readily see how things became confusing when the major HR consulting firms jumped onto the employee-engagement fray with their own, branded, proprietary, employee-engagement surveys, also based on statistical analysis. Even the academic community is confused by the term “employee engagement” because it was developed by consulting firms outside of the normal channels of academic research. 

The award industry hangs their hat on seemingly general concurrence that employee recognition helps promote employee satisfaction, which in turn is an important fundamental of employee engagement.  This was reinforced by the Conference Board and the Harvard Business School with a meta-analysis that compared the main employee-engagement approaches side-by-side.  

This meta-analysis concluded that “employee engagement” boils down to an emotional and intellectual connection between employees and their employers that results in improved performance.  

This was reconfirmed by two academic researchers, Nitin Nohria, the dean of the Harvard Business School, and Paul Lawrence, an organizational-behavior pioneer, in their books “Driven,” and “Driven to Lead.” These books built a new 4-drive motivational model of Employee Motivation.  This model created the emotional connection discovered by the meta-analysis…when these universal drives are satisfied; employees experience emotional pleasure and feel engaged.  Employee recognition helps to drive that emotional pleasure.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net