Absence Bonus

A fantastic Endeavour, I have always struggled with the concept of having an incentive to encourage staff to come into the office to perform a job they are paid to do, perhaps I’m just old school!
However in my experience even when trying to give incentives to employees to turn up for work, the same old names come up time and time again.

In the past I have found the best method is to firstly manage the performance of the individuals concerned which I’m sure you already have in place.

Secondly create a performance matrix that runs at team level which includes attendance.

The team owns the targets and generally the team then manages those individuals that may stop them from winning the incentive.
The other thing that you may want to check out is discriminating against an employee whose sickness is linked to a much wider issues with their health generally.

I’m of the believe that you either do it or you don’t i.e. if your off your off and impacted otherwise you may find yourselves writing a very long list of exceptions. This also ensures a consistent approach so when you go to give out the incentive you don't find yourselves with appeals for being unfair.

The other thing that comes to mind as a last resort

“If you can’t change the people, change the people”

It’s a very interesting topic, and one that also opens up discussion around ideal culture, environment and performance management all of which drive some of the behaviors around attendance.

I can think of only one answer to your above question , Include attendance in your incentive tracker ( probably give a 10% or 15 % weight-age ) . Definitely you will see improvement. Practically implemented in my center and giving me good results.

Cheer's
KM

Call me old school, but I don't subscribe to incentivising people to avoid calling in sick. I agree with a number of you in that it should be a value and ethics thing, and should not be rewarded. In the real world, especially for some of us who are independent consultants, if you dont work, you dont get paid. And that really should be ingrained into the behaviour of the agent. Agents should realise (especially the younger ones, which usually are the worst offenders) that throwing sickies causes big disruption and potential loss of revenue for the business.

In the states, you're given a number of "sick days" per annum. If you go over these days in sick, then its docked off of your pay. I once suggested to a client that they should establish the number of sick days available to the agent (say 3-5 per year), which also can be used as a personal day, bereavement day, etc. And if they're not used at the end of the year, they can be rolled over as holiday time for the next calendar year... that way, there is no "hard cash" being handed over, and it sets some good practice into place for the younger employee.

Thoughts, Gentlemen?

Gene

I thought I was 'old school' but turns out I was new school all along!

Personally I think that giving people any 'allowance' of sick days is stimulating the wrong behaviours. Our experience is that most people have zero or one day off sick and take pride in the fact. Setting a norm of 3-5 a year will, I think, encourage people to take their 3-5. I also think that suggesting you get a 'team' bonus if sickness is reduced will not stimulate the right behaviours in individuals - its too easy to think you can't affect it and leave it to the others. All I know is that, although I don't like it, incentivising attendance does work.