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Our absence improvement guide offers insights and strategies for improving employee attendance and reducing absenteeism.
It provides practical advice on addressing frequent or prolonged absences, implementing supportive policies, and fostering a positive work environment.
Purpose
This guide equips managers with clear, fair and supportive steps to address attendance concerns. It promotes open communication, early support and reasonable adjustments while maintaining accountability.
Outcome
Where this guide is followed and, despite reasonable support and opportunities to improve, attendance does not improve to an acceptable and sustained level, dismissal may be a reasonable outcome following a fair process.
Core Principles
Consistency: Apply the Absence Improvement Policy and review points consistently across teams. This avoids perceptions of unfair treatment and builds trust in the process.
Support first: Explore health, personal or work-related factors and consider reasonable adjustments before moving to formal measures. Employees should feel that the organisation is committed to helping them improve.
Good records: Keep accurate notes of all conversations, medical evidence, agreed actions, and review dates. These records form the evidence base for any further action.
Confidentiality: Handle health information sensitively and lawfully. Only share details with those who need to know, in line with GDPR and company policy.
Practical Steps
Clear reporting: Ensure employees know who to contact, by what time, and through what method (e.g., phone call to manager by 9am). Provide a written absence reporting procedure and reinforce it during inductions and team briefings.
Return-to-work (RTW) interviews: Conduct a RTW discussion after every period of absence, no matter how short. Use a standard RTW form to capture details such as the reason for absence, fitness to return, and any support needs. Where patterns emerge, use this as a discussion point.
Support mechanisms: Signpost employees to relevant resources such as Occupational Health referrals, counselling, mental health
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For more value, this is also found in our Full library and Sick management templates toolkit
Most sickness is genuine and unauthorised absence may be caused by family commitments or stress. However, these situations are difficult to manage because they are often sudden and unexpected. This leaves some managers feeling unsure about what they can do. This Guide to Absence Improvement offers a comprehensive roadmap for organisations to proactively manage and reduce employee absenteeism.
This guide comprises strategies and best practices aimed at understanding, addressing, and diminishing the instances of unplanned employee absences.
It provides insights into identifying patterns, exploring the root causes of absenteeism, and implementing effective measures to foster better attendance.
Related HR resources and workflow
Explore the HR resources that may be relevant before and / or after using the Managers guide to absence improvement, helping you understand the wider process, maintain appropriate documentation and follow a consistent approach.
Our Absence Improvement Policy template is designed to support a healthier work environment by helping you to combat absenteeism, ensure fairness, and boost productivity.
Our Absence Improvement Checklist Form Template streamlines tracking and managing employee absences, enhancing productivity and reducing absenteeism.
Employment Rights Act 1996: Provides the legal framework for handling absence, including procedures for managing and improving attendance.
Equality Act 2010: Ensures absence improvement measures are implemented fairly and do not discriminate against employees based on protected characteristics.
Health and Safety at Work Act 1974: Requires employers to provide a safe working environment, including addressing absence issues that may impact health and safety.
Data Protection Act 2018 (incorporating GDPR): Mandates that handling absence-related data complies with data protection principles.
Company Policies and Employment Contracts: Internal policies and contractual agreements may outline specific absence improvement procedures and expectations.
Yes. This template has been designed for organisations of all sizes, including small businesses, charities and growing employers. It follows UK employment law best practice and can be adapted to suit your organisation.
Our templates are developed with UK employment legislation, Acas guidance and HR best practice in mind and are reviewed and updated as relevant requirements change. However, every employment situation is different, so the template should be adapted to the circumstances and checked against the employee's contract and your organisation's procedures before use.
Yes, we highlight the areas of the document that you need to update with your own details, and where you need to make decisions to suit your situation. This saves you time and ensures that you meet best practice.
Yes. Once purchased, you'll be able to download it instantly. Templates are provided in editable format (such as .doc or .xls) so you can customise them easily, and in PDF format for easy sharing.
If you're looking for broader support, we also offer toolkits and library bundles that include the Managers guide to absence improvement, along with other HR templates and policies for fully managing your situation. These may be more cost-effective if you need deeper advice.
AI can produce a document quickly, but effective HR documentation needs to be more than well-written words. It needs to reflect relevant UK employment law, HR best practice, practical considerations and the circumstances in which it will be used. These resources have been professionally developed around that wider HR context, drawing on extensive practical experience, rather than simply generating a generic document from a prompt.
Darryl Horn, Chartered HR Director
Darryl is a Chartered HR professional with over 25 years' experience in senior HR and employee relations roles.
He has extensive practical experience of managing sick management processes and founded hrdocbox to provide businesses with practical, professionally developed HR resources grounded in UK employment law and best practice.
"Darryl provides support and advice with excellent judgement, and has a strong understanding of people, policies and UK employment legislation."
"He is someone I trust; consistent, dependable, and committed to doing things properly."
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