BUSINESS: Continuity – what it means to you (From Your Local Guardian)

BUSINESS: Continuity – what it means to you

11:05am Thursday 21st January 2010 in

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Unplanned absences have a major impact on small business, and staff absenteeism is a major cost to consider.

The Federation of Small Businesses has estimated that the overall cost to businesses of a 10 per cent absence rate could be as much as £600 million a day, meaning that this does not just affect the individual business, but has a major impact on the economy as a whole.

You may have noticed during the recent heavy snowfall that you or your staff had difficulty getting to work due to the transport disruption caused by snow and ice on the roads and on railways.

Businesses are also impacted because schools often shut due to the bad conditions and other concerns such as safety mean many parents need to take time off work to care for their children.

Poor road conditions also mean that customers find it a lot harder to get to the shops and companies find it harder to move their goods and services around.

The majority of small businesses have four employees, meaning a potential loss of 50 per cent of their work force during such incidents.

These recent events may have made you wonder what you can do to help manage absenteeism at times like this, and what rights you have to require your employees to turn up to work.

In these circumstances you might want to consider introducing an absence procedure for severe weather or similar events where transport is badly affected.

It is the obligation of your employees to turn up to work regardless of the weather situation.

If they feel they are genuinely unable to attend, having made their best efforts, they should know how to contact their manager or other designated work colleague to discuss their absence.

Furthermore, if they have made it into work they may want to leave early if the situation gets any worse.

For the periods of absence you could consider a number of alternatives for your employees.

They could:

• Make up the time at a later date.

• Take any absence from work as part of their annual leave entitlement.

• Take any absence from work as special unpaid leave (in this case, pay will reduce accordingly to take account of the hours/days not worked).

• Be paid as if they had attended work on the day(s) of absence.

• Work from home or otherwise work remotely.

By having such guidelines in place it makes it a lot simpler for your business to deal with sudden and unexpected absence caused by circumstances beyond the businesses control.

By having a clear and transparent procedure it will help you to consider each employee’s circumstances on an individual basis and assess the absence fairly.

You can base your decision on the distance from home to work, your mode of transport and how viable it is for you to work from home, and on the needs of the company.

You may wish to consider a formal business continuity plan for all such incidents, which will help you to better manage unplanned events such as, for example, fire, theft/loss of stock, significant staff illness, or an IT failure.

You can find out more from Business Link about how to go about assessing your need for such a plan, and how to formulate one.

Staff absence can cause your business many problems, however forward planning can help minimise the impact.

Hannah Holdroyd is the London policy officer for the Federation of Small Business, the UK’s leading business organisation. She can be contacted at hannah.holdroyd@fsb.org.uk