Letter from Annie Excuses and hooray for school hols

It’s summer time, children will be on holidays, if we’re lucky the weather is mostly sunny and many would love to take some time off work, perhaps more than their annual leave allows. Annie Excuses is one of our Usual Suspects, who is very good at doing just that. The Usual Suspects are part of our tongue-in-cheek take on some problematic absence behaviour. We make absence management a little bit more fun this way but each persona is based on real life experiences and character traits. Here’s what Annie has to say today: Continue reading

Letter from Butch Presentee and how to engage employees

Here’s a letter from one of our Usual Suspects, Butch Presentee. As you might remember, the Usual Suspects of poor attendance (see the animation here) are that 20% of the workforce responsible for 80% of absence problems. Butch’s main issue is presenteeism and dis-engagement. Here’s how he has been doing recently: Continue reading

Cycle to work – a miracle medicine

“To promote healthier journeys to work and to reduce environmental pollution, the 1999 Finance Act introduced an annual tax exemption, which allows employers to loan cycles and cyclists’ safety equipment to employees as a tax-free benefit” as you can read on the gov.uk website. This Cycle to Work scheme is still going strong with nearly half a million bikes sold through the Cyclescheme. Continue reading

Letter from Sleeps-with-Smartphone – and how to manage holidays more efficiently!

One of our Usual Suspects, Sleeps-with-Smartphone, has written us a letter to update us on how her summer is going so far. If you were at the HR Software Show 2014, you might have met her there. In her letter she also tells us about the new holiday booking tool at her workplace that helps the company manage holidays better. Continue reading

Letter from Buffalo Skiver and avoiding work during the World Cup

Howdy, Cowboys! Greetings from the wide open prairies of Skivers. I thought I’d drop you a line to let you know how I was getting on. I’ll tell you one thing: things are definitely looking up in the world of Buff, yours truly, and that’s because the football World Cup starts next week!

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Our response to “5 reasons NOT to have an absence policy”

We recently came across an article that suggested it is sometimes better not to have an absence policy. The subject of criticism was strict attendance policies, which were said to breed discontent and be counter-productive to employee engagement among other things. Continue reading