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How can businesses manage and cope with absenteeism?
By Claire Hibbert
www.icomplete.com
Running a business can be pretty tough and having a reliable workforce is key to surviving in today’s economic recession. What many small businesses fail to realise though, especially in the early stages of setting up or during a recession is that inadequate staffing means overstretched and stressed workers , and consequently the long term affects lead to a high staff turnover, a drop in quality control and customer service causing business to suffer.
In May 2008, statistics revealed that workers took 176m sick days last year costing £11.6bn - up 10m days on 2002. But employers suspect a large slice of that, 15% or some 25m days, were as a result of feigned sickness. Unreliable staff can result for many reasons so what does a company do to when it is left to cope with staff absenteeism?
The key to avoiding high absenteeism is to ensure that you know and understand your workers. You need to provide an adequate working environment as well as a reward program for good productivity and quality output. Training and personal development are vital to instil staff loyalty and growth and to make certain you get this right you need to have regular appraisals with your team. The old adage ‘treat others as you wish to be treated’ is so true in business and if you adopt this approach you are well on your way to creating a happy workforce who will respect and reward you in the long run.
However, it isn’t easy trying to keep staff motivated especially when many businesses are running a skeletal workforce to survive. We have seen this year that redundancies are at an all time high and look to continue to rise. It is therefore important to look at ways in which business owners can alleviate some of the pressure on their workforce to prevent absenteeism. One way that they can do this is to outsource work when things get tough. In the past the only option was to hire a temp and pay an agency inflated fees for the privilege, or to outsource to other countries such as India! Well fortunately times have changed and there is a new way, thanks to the virtual assistant.
The virtual assistant has become a life-line to small businesses. Gone are the real risks of unreliable staff or unforeseen cover for sickness or absenteeism. The virtual assistant comes in many guises from a book keeper, administrator to a PA or call operator. You can hire a virtual PA for £22 per hour to carry out specific work tasks, i.e type up a reports, data entry, mail shots etc on a pay as and when you need them. Alternatively, if you need someone to answer your calls or book appointments in your diary when you are too busy or on holiday you can divert your calls to a pay as go virtual call operator, so there is little wastage and huge savings compared to hiring your own staff.
If you want to be assured a personal, quality service choose a virtual provider that gives you a dedicated team (up to 3 virtual Assistant/PA to support you), rather than a call centre where anyone can take your call – could be up to 100 operators or more. A call centre is great if you have launched a promotion and need high volume telephone support but for most small businesses the two don’t marry at all. Most companies like to build up a relationship with their virtual assistants which in our experience, is the best method of practice, as it improves communication and quality of information provided between your company, the virtual assistant and the patient.
When choosing a virtual assistant be careful of hidden costs, the monthly payment may seem very appealing until you add up set up fee, maintenance costs, software charge (if using diaries), retainers, transfer or call patching fees and worse still being tied into a long contract. Also check the qualifications of the virtual assistants/PA’s to ensure that you are not only getting quality but also years of experience as part of the service. There are some companies that run their virtual assistants abroad and that can be an issue with language problems and locality (especially if someone needs directions!).
If you want a personal quality service (not a call centre) at an affordable price without any hidden costs then icomplete.com is the perfect solution for supporting you and your staff when the going gets tough.
This article was written by Claire Hibbert of icomplete. Claire can be contacted by calling 01793 250 002 or emailing on claire@icomplete.com
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