Fully integrated with SMART's workforce management suite, SMART Absence Management gives you greater visibility and control over all aspects of employee absence.

Key benefits include:

• Minimises the people costs of planned and unplanned absence
• Minimises the impact of absence on productivity
• Minimises the administration time and costs of managing absence
• Ensures staff are paid correctly
• Ensures absence-related disciplinary measures are appropriate, fair and accurate
• Enables staff to plan and manage their absence, to enjoy a better work-life balance

Putting absence to work with SMART

According to a recent report by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), absence costs British businesses £12.5 billion in direct costs each year. Worse, this figure doesn't include the effect of absenteeism on productivity, management time, low morale of colleagues and reduced quality standards, so some analysts estimate this figure to be double in real terms.

At the same time, The Health and Safety Executive have recently launched an initiative to reduce the number of days lost from the workplace by 30%, by the year 2010. As a result, effective absence management is one of the key challenges facing businesses today.

With a configurable Bradford Factor tool, absence planning and management, integration with payroll and time and attendance as well as accessible self-service functionality, SMART Absence Management gives managers the information and insight they need and staff the flexibility, fairness and choice they expect.

Key features

Bradford Factor Absence Analysis

This configurable tool enables the analysis of absence, lateness, overtime or any exception-based time/occurrence data according to Bradford Factor principles.

Return to Work

Alerts managers when staff clock back in after having been absent, prompts post-absence interviews and helps identify the causes of unplanned absence to develop 'trends of absence' reports.

Absence Self-Service

Employees are able to use the web-based, self-service system to see their holiday entitlement, check which days off have been requested by colleagues, and request absence. Managers are alerted to absence requests and can approve them, also via the SMART system.

Absence Administration

Automatically identifies and alerts managers to unplanned absence, manages the workflow around absence requests, and highlights absence requests requiring further authorisation. It also integrates with payroll data to ensure staff are paid correctly, with absence accounted for. With flexible employee leave handling, staff can request time off via PC, Kiosk or other web device.

Absence Planning

Designed to help manage both planned and unplanned absence, the system takes absence into account when planning and validating rosters. It can roster leave to suit business demands and can re-roster immediately to include changes in staffing, such as new holiday bookings. Fully integrated with Time and Attendance it alerts unauthorised absence and can automate repeat absences such as day release or training. It can even identify when this training will be required and the corresponding absence.