Every service company manager has to deal with problems related to poor employee attendance at some point. As if finding and hiring the right CSRs wasn’t difficult enough, getting them to show up at work as scheduled can be a whole other challenge. Avoid the damage caused by running your business shorthanded by learning the best ways to deal with attendance issues in the workplace.
Why Poor Attendance at Work Is a Big Deal
When one or more CSRs call out sick or arrive to work late too often, it creates a trickle-down effect of negative consequences throughout your entire company. Here’s how attendance issues in the workplace can impact your business.
Problems Caused by Frequent Employee Absenteeism
Whether your CSRs are calling in sick too often, missing shifts without notice, arriving at work late, or even leaving their shift early, the negative consequences are unavoidable.
Increased Workload
The most obvious problem with running an office short-staffed is that everyone else’s workload increases to pick up the slack for their missing coworker. This can lead to increased stress throughout the workplace and a lower quality of service and operational efficiency. Missed revenue and unsatisfied customers can do serious harm to your reputation and profitability.
Lower CSR Morale
Whenever one CSR call out sick, the rest of your team notices right away and can become discouraged quickly. If it becomes a pattern with certain employees, resentment and hostility can create interpersonal issues as well. In some cases, other employees might feel like they should be able to take time off too, and then you have an epidemic of empty desks on your hands.
How to Improve Employee Attendance Problems
The most important thing to keep in mind when dealing with attendance issues in the workplace is that most CSRs only use sick days when they have to. Try to be as compassionate and understanding as possible while also mitigating the problems created by their absence.
Create & Enforce an Employee Attendance Policy
Your first step should be to create a rock-solid attendance policy that’s clear as to what your company’s standards and expectations when it comes to:
- Showing up and leaving on-time
- Allotted break periods
- Sick and vacation days
- Procedure for how to call out sick
Go over this policy with each CSR one-on-one and have them sign it as part of their employment documentation. This helps to prevent any confusion over the consequences of breaking with these procedures. Just make sure that you’re keeping accurate attendance records!
Reward Good Attendance
While some missed workdays are unavoidable, those employees who stand out with stellar attendance records should be commended and rewarded for the whole team to see. This provides an excellent incentive for the rest of your CSRs to improve their own attendance and punctuality.
How Virtual Assistants Can Help with Attendance Issues
There is one surefire way to avoid all of the problems created by attendance issues in the workplace: hire a virtual assistant to pick up the slack! When one of your CSRs misses a shift during a busy workday, a virtual assistant can help to answer phones, help with customers’ questions, and book the service calls that you might have missed while operating short-staffed.
The best part about using a remote CSR is that you have access to as much help as you need. Whether you just need one extra CSR or several, your days of missing out on valuable business will be over with the help of a virtual assistant service.
For more information on the industry’s best service company virtual assistants, call or visit New Vision Telecommunications today!