Management of absenteeism
An occupational health physician is often seen as a doctor who sends employees back to work. What is often overlooked is the preventive part of the job for which an occupational health physician is trained.
When you draw up a contract with an occupational health and safety service provider, it is about much more than just sickness absenteeism guidance. OccuMed CN has a partnership with various core experts, such as company social workers, ergonomists, case managers, organizational psychologists, coaches, personnel experts, therapists, so that we can support a company well, appropriately and qualitatively in various ways.
This includes the prevention of absenteeism, problems with high absenteeism rates, frequent absenteeism, advice on reorganization, long-term illness, etc.
Each company is unique and has specific problems.
We screen this together with the company, which provides much more control over absenteeism and the associated patterns.
Working system
You will get control of absenteeism if you know what is going on and can respond with clear, correct advice, not just send employees back to work! How do you gain insight into what is happening within a company… with the help of data!
The companies on Bonaire (BES, Antilles) lack data! We work with an absenteeism registration system that complies with all legislation and privacy protection requirements, AVG, so that the data of employees and the company are safe and you, as an employer, HR and manager, can retrieve incredibly useful information from the system, regardless of the medical data. Namely absenteeism figures, reporting frequencies, sickness reports that always arrive on the same day, just after receiving a salary, for example.
In addition, by matching the problems with the cause of absenteeism (illness, work-related, home-related, etc.), the occupational health physician can indicate trends: mental problems due to reorganizations, Covid-19, physical problems that regularly occur in a department, etc.
These data are processed in an absenteeism analysis so that the employer gains insight into the problems that play a role in the company. In addition, the employer is also given tools to solve these problems.
There are a lot of problems in companies that management has no insight into and that cost the company an immense amount of money. This is the way to make it visible and to be able to handle it properly and adequate.
Legal rules and risks
The Master Class has made clear that there are many factors that are not yet visible for various companies. Being able to influence these factors can increase production, improve the cohesion between employees, improve vitality, improve work culture, teamwork and more.
During this Master Class, the speaker discussed legal rules and risks surrounding absenteeism, explained social legislation and provided information on what the Unit – SZW stands for and what the associated pitfalls are, what you can expect from the examining doctor (insurance doctor) of the Unit – SZW and what the health and safety service provider can help you with. The health and safety service providers on our islands have a signaling and advisory function, should provide advice on work safety and healthy corporate culture and, if necessary, utilize aids / additional treatments. All this to ensure that employees can continue to work safely and sustainably and that there is no unnecessary absenteeism due to illness or otherwise.
During the Master Class we also focused on conducting absenteeism interviews, counseling absenteeism and monitoring complex absenteeism cases. Furthermore, participants were prompted to examine when and in what cases support from an occupational health physician is needed.
Insights
We will continue to provide advice to companies that want to be ready for future changes with regard to legislation, data protection, GDPR and the implementation of more security measures and control options. Through our working method and our absenteeism registration system, your managers and/ or HR professionals will get a lot more insight into what is happening within the company, they will be able to ask the right questions at the right time and determine if help is needed much faster when it comes to the organization of preventive and especially appropriate health and safety care.