Great examples of digital workplace savings:absenteeism

This is the second in my series of posts showing examples of the benefits and savings organisations have gained by shifting work to a digital workplace.  It draws on my previous posts on how you need to plan your strategy, governance, and management of content, tools, and services for a digital workplace.  This is essential when transforming your intranet into a digital workplace.  The first post ‘Great examples of Digital Workplace productivity savings‘ covered productivity.

I will be using examples from the Digital Workplace Group‘s report ‘What is the financial value of investing in digital working?‘ that show what can be achieved if your organisation can take the right approach.  My second example is how reduced absenteeism can lead to savings in your time working and show on your organisation’s financial bottom line.

How to make the savings

I posted on how to encourage people to be more engaged with their organisation:

• Policies that encourage you to move to a digital workplace
• Recognise and reward the right behaviours that make a DW succeed
• Working styles that encourage productive and effective working

What can be achieved

• Studies indicate significant costs to employers from absenteeism. For example, average direct and indirect costs of all categories of absence are estimated at about 35% of payroll.
• The value of reduced absenteeism from half-time telework is estimated at an annual $1,900 per teleworker.
• Improvement in overall work-life balance, and reduction of stress, are key factors in reducing absenteeism enabled by new ways of working.
• The digital workplace produces significant and sustained reductions in absenteeism and the direct and related financial gains from this are dramatic.

Examples

1. A study showed 63% of BT homeworkers take fewer sick days than office-based people
2. And 74% of BT homeworkers have a “good” or “very good” work-life balance
3. Surveys showed 4% of US people have called in sick to work because they couldn’t face their journey to work
4. US Dept. of Labour estimated 3% to 5% of the workforce was absent on any day in 2010.  So, any slight improvement means large sums of money saves.

There are more examples and details in ‘What is the financial value of investing in digital working.  My next post will cover declines in staff turnover.