As previously noted, absenteeism can have a substantial impact on your bottom line, costing UK employers an estimated £1000 per employee every year (Hewitt 2008 Healthcare Fundamentals Survey). But while extremely costly, can absenteeism actually be reduced? After all, staff will always fall ill and need to take time off work.

More than one in ten sick days, however, are believed to be taken by employees who aren’t actually ill, but have called in sick to extend weekends and holidays or to enjoy sporting events (2008 CBI/AXA Absence Survey). Moreover, more than two-thirds of respondents in a CIPD absence management survey said that simply improving absence monitoring in their organisation led to a reduction in absence levels.

So the simple act of switching to a web-based absence monitoring system, such as LeaveMaster, may be enough to deter employees in your organisation from taking unwarranted sick days and help you tackle the costly problem of absenteeism. Employees will know that a note of their sick day will be added to their permanent online record and will be dissuaded from "pulling a sickie" when they are not really ill.

You can learn more aboutLeaveMaster here.