Applying the Benchmarking Approach to Absence Control Available to Purchase

Employee absence costs British industry £5 billion per year;200 million working days are lost annually. The average shopfloor worker takes eleven days off each year. In their book, Managing Employee Absence for a Competitive Edge, the authors recommend a systematic seven‐step approach to absence control called ALIEDIM. The framework stands for Assess, Locate, Identify, Evaluate, Design, Implement and Monitor the company′s absence control procedure. The first step of assessing an organisation′s absence problem is examined. How big is it compared with similar firms in the industry? The benchmarking approach can indicate whether an expensive and time‐consuming programme of absence reduction will be cost‐effective. Internal and external benchmarking approaches are described in turn with examples, and the advantages and disadvantages of each are summarised.