Reducing absenteeism in your workforce

Reducing absenteeism isn’t easy. It requires a proactive and compassionate approach that balances the needs of your employees with the demands of your organisation. Here are some effective strategies to minimise absenteeism at work:

• Provide holistic support: Address the root causes of absenteeism with 24/7 access to medical, mental health, and safety support.
• Foster engagement: High employee engagement reduces absenteeism by creating a supportive and inclusive workplace culture.
• Track absenteeism rates: Use an absenteeism formula to measure and monitor trends, helping you identify patterns and take action.
• Promote wellbeing: Encourage preventative care and early intervention to minimise unplanned leave.
• Define clear policies: Ensure employees understand the definition of absenteeism and the importance of attendance, while also feeling supported when they need time off.

At Sonder, we make it easier for organisations to implement these strategies and see real results.

Reducing absenteeism in the workplace is crucial for maintaining productivity, morale, and cost efficiency. Frequent absences can lead to:

• Increased costs: Covering for absent employees often means paying for overtime, temporary staff, or lost productivity.
• Lower morale: When team members have to pick up the slack, it can lead to frustration and burnout.
• Reduced retention: High absenteeism rates can signal deeper issues, such as disengagement or poor workplace culture, which may drive employees to leave.

By reducing absenteeism, organisations can create a more positive, productive, and cost-effective work environment.

At Sonder, we understand that behind every absence is a person who needs support. That’s why we take a holistic approach to reducing absenteeism in the workplace. Here’s how we help:

• 24/7 access: Employees can get help anytime, anywhere, reducing the need for unplanned leave.
• Proactive care: Our services address the root causes of absenteeism, from mental health challenges to safety concerns.
• Early intervention: By identifying and addressing issues early (before they escalate), we can help prevent small problems from becoming big absences.
• High engagement: With a 40% engagement rate, employees actively use our support, driving measurable impact.
• Individual support: We work with organisations to create strategies that align with their goals and values.

When employees feel supported, they’re healthier, happier, and more likely to stay at work. With Sonder, reducing absenteeism moves from being a goal to becoming a reality.

Our world-class Customer Success team will direct you to the tools, resources and reporting you need to help you drive company-wide awareness, uptake and usage of Sonder.

This process starts upfront where we understand your broader wellbeing strategy and business goals in advance of your Sonder launch date.We then provide you with the right mix of self-service tools and technical support to ensure you have what you need to successfully drive awareness and adoption of Sonder among your people.

And beyond that, we provide you with regular reporting and check-ins to help you further embed Sonder into the culture of your organisation and ensure you’re getting the most out of your investment with us.

Alongside these services, we also have an intelligence team, who are constantly scanning and filtering safety information and sending push notifications to your people to keep them informed of the world around them about relevant threats and disruptions like extreme weather, traffic jams or online scams.

These notifications build familiarity and trust with Sonder as a service they can count on. We find that by nudging people proactively with helpful safety information, they are more likely to turn to us in times of personal ill health, because they think of us in those moments. And this might be for their more sensitive physical or mental wellbeing challenges that they open up about at a later date.

1) The first is through our activation emails, which we send directly to your people, introducing our services and encouraging them to download and engage with the app. Over time, we’ve refined these messages to be as relevant as possible to the audience and it remains the biggest activation driving channel to this day. You can control the timing of when these emails are sent to your people to make sure the timing suits you best.

2) Alongside the direct emails from Sonder, your people will become aware of and engage with Sonder through the wide range of material you have available in your Sonder communications toolkit.The online toolkit contains assets relevant to all phases of your Sonder partnership. From launch marketing material, through to ongoing engagement, product education pieces and timely monthly themed materials. And everything can be easily co-branded should you wish to do so.

Yes, you don’t have to replace your EAP to have Sonder in place. Many of our customers have continued with their existing EAP service while transitioning to Sonder as their complete employee care platform.

For the most consistent and effective employee support experience however, we do recommend replacing your EAP with Sonder altogether but that doesn’t have to happen straight away or all at once.

We will work with you to help ensure a smooth transition and clear communications with your workforce – as we have done with many of our customers to date. Talk to us today to explore your options.