Personal illness accounts for just over one-third of unscheduled absences. Why? Family issues and caretaking, personal needs, stress, burnout, an “entitlement mentality” and probably a host of other (unreported) reasons.

According to the 2007 17th annual CCH Unscheduled Absence Survey by Harris Interactive:

Most people today are juggling the demands of busy personal and professional lives, and are trying to do their very best in both places. Organisations need to stop the tug of war with people for their time, and become a partner to employees to help them, and the business overall, be more successful.

...The fact that two of the programs that companies rated as most effective – telecommuting and compressed work week – are not also among the most used signals the need for employers to step back and assess if they have the right programs in place for their people,” stressed CCH employment law analyst Pamela Wolf.

Disciplinary action remains the most commonly used method of controlling absence, but others included yearly review, verification of illness, paid leave banks and no fault programs.

Paid leave banks (that provide a bank of hours to be used as the employee wishes, rather than managing separate sick, vacation and personal time) or other forms of paid time off (PTO) programs continue to be the most effective absence control method. U.S. companies on average offered 9 work-life programs – down from 11 in 2006 – and 5 absence control programs – down from 6.

Productivity declines and presenteeism and disengagement increase when employers rely on disciplinary measures.

• 38% of employers reported that presenteeism was a problem in their organizations.


• Nearly 9 out of 10 sick employees who showed up to work were suffering from contagious short-term illnesses.

Employees show up for work when they shouldn’t just as others stay home. Why?

• Too much work/too many deadlines


• No one available to cover


• Desire not to use up vacation time.

However a full half also said they showed up for work sick because they feared being disciplined; organizations with traditional sick-day polices enforced by disciplinary action may make presenteeism worse.

The survey found that the more unhappy employees were and the lower the morale, the more reasons they found not to come to work.

Data Dome can help.

Popularity: 34% [?]

The main Data Dome web site still requires top priority, so here are a few of the more interesting posts on our kinds of topics. Enjoy!

After finding almost 40 headlines in 21 days that showcased matters relating to corporate fraud or incompetence (or both), Jim Kissane “wonders” if fraud and incompetence can be considered a skillset, even a corporate value.

Has greed overtaken “core values” as being more desirable for workers than working hard, protecting company assets and keeping the customer satisfied?

Workforce Developments has a helpful post on understanding the Department of Labor’s (DOL) monthly jobs report.

You can check out the White House spin, or you can read the business media to find out how Wall Street reacted. One good source of analysis is the monthly Jobs Byte from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Jay Shepherd at Gruntled Employees uses his classic wordplay to make an important point: More Ept managers are needed!

Universal truth: Inept managers lead to disgruntled employees, which in turn lead to diminishing profits. (And employee lawsuits, of course.)

Parallel universal truth: Ept managers lead to gruntled employees, which in turn lead to minishing profits. (And fewer lawsuits.)

Finally, Chief Happiness officer Alexander Kjerulf has office design eye-candy at “10 seeeeeriously cool workplaces.” (I’ve added this blog to the reads).

Many companies have buildings that are sleek, modern, architectural glass-steel-and-cement sculptures on the outside – and cubicle wastelands on the inside. These companies need to remember that most employees tend to work inside the building.

Popularity: 44% [?]

The blog has a brand new look to match some of the features of the main Data Dome site. A very helpful online WordPress Theme generator saved me a lot of time and aggravation.

I’ll probably be fine-tuning the look over the coming weeks.

Please comment if you notice any bugs or other issues with the new design. Thanks!

Popularity: 26% [?]

It’s been a little quiet here on the blog. The reason for that is we’ve been working on a completely new look for the Data Dome Inc. web site.

The new site launched yesterday.

New content is being added daily to create an even better resource for our clients.

We have added an assessments application menu and a job-level menu – we’ll be adding more resources to those sections over the coming weeks.

Popularity: 21% [?]