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How to reduce sickness absence in the workplace?

Absenteeism has a huge impact on your company’s profitability. It is one of the biggest challenges for managers, employers or HR professionals to reduce this number and in the meantime ensuring smooth operation of an organisation or department without the absentees. Therefore, it is in your interest to determine the reasons for absenteeism and how these can be reduced or even prevented completely. 
How to reduce sickness absence in the workplace?
1. Encourage a sensible work-life balance with flexible work hours and a proper break culture
A good work-life-balance is important for the health and wellbeing of your employees. Exhausted employees, who are not taking lunch breaks, working overtime, could be absent in the future due to stress or fatigue. Achieving a good work-life balance goes hand-in-hand with the concept of flexible working in combination with a good break culture.

Flexible working hours
The first initiative, flexible working hours, is easily explained. Some people enjoy getting to work early and leaving before the rush-hour, but others, find that their productivity levels are at their peak later in the day. Flexible working can raise the motivation and satisfaction of employees and reduces their stress levels – which in return can have a positive impact on absenteeism.

To achieve a companywide culture on flexible hours, you’ll need a clearly communicated policy, which specifies how employees are free to organise their working day, but also defines what the organisation expects from them with this additional form of freedom.
Proper breaks
The second initiative is something that every organisation should do. Which involves proper breaks during the workday. You as a manager can start to set a good example, but to be sure, that you don’t need to remind your team to take breaks, we’ve developed WORK & MOVE™ Software. This software is your personal coach, providing healthy alternation between digital screen work and mental and physical movement. The software advises you on an optimal work-movement-pitstop rhythm based on your personal needs and helps you to make this personal rhythm your own.

Little pop-up windows are shown on the screen and motivate to take periodic pitstops of 10 seconds up to 3 minutes. By building in periodical mental and physical movement you keep concentration and energy at a high and stable level.  Allowing you to improve the quality of your work, make less mistakes while doing so and do that all in less time! By using WORK & MOVE™ Software your team is more productive with more energy left at the end of the day.
Learn more about the WORK & MOVEā„¢ Software
2. Improve the workplace and reconsider the ergonomic- and light conditions.
It is necessary that your team has the working tools they need to do their jobs ergonomically correct. An ergonomic way of working not only avoids absenteeism due to physical pain, like back or neck pain, but it also leads to a more efficient and productive way of working. And also the light conditions have a big an impact on the quality of work. Too much artificial light or too low light conditions can cause tiredness or even worse, can lead to winter depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which in turn can lead to high levels of stress or burnout symptoms

With circadian rhythm lighting solutions, like the human centric EnergyByLight, you can illuminate the entire room with direct and indirect light and still simulates the natural course of daylight to ensure a well-balanced day-and-night rhythm.
 
Read everything about EnergyByLight
3. Optimize different workplaces
There are also different ways of ergonomic screen work from a physical point of view. We have the best ergonomic solutions for different workplaces to avoid physical pain of your people and to reduce sick days. Here are some examples of different workplaces: 

Fixed workplace at the office (the classic one)
For the employees that need the workplace to be optimally adapted to him/her once. See what it takes to optimise the office fixed workspace!
Learn more about the fixed workplace
Shared-desk at the office (the contemporary one)
For the employees that need the workplace to be easily, fast, and individually adjustable. See what it takes to optimise for the shared workplace in the office!
Learn more about the shared-desk workplace
Mobile working set-up during a meeting or at home or on the go (the flexible one)
For the employees that need the workplace to be light weight, easy to set up, portable and space-saving. See what it takes to optimise the mobile working set-up!
Learn more about the mobile workplace
4. Encourage your employees to be more active
You’ve probably heard of the phrase “sitting is the new smoking”. Experts believe that sitting for more than six hours a day can greatly increase your risk of early death. Too much sitting is as bad for the body as it is for the brain. In other words, exercise makes people feel great, reduces stress levels, and it can strengthen the immune system.
 
You can encourage your team to take walks on their lunch breaks, but we offer a way to make exercise a regular part of the working day. How? Every employee just needs an electrical adjustable sit-and-stand desk, like the WORK & MOVE Desk. This desk is available with the WORK & MOVE™ Software. As already mentioned earlier, WORK & MOVE is your personal coach, providing enough alternation between digital screen work and mental and physical movement. Before, we focused on the mental break part of the software, now we explain you the advantage of the physical movement part in combination with an adjustable sit-and-stand desk.

Make your team more active
With WORK & MOVE the employees can set their optimal ergonomic sit and stand profile. The software reminds them when it's time to get up with a pop-up window based on their active computer time, which is measured by the mouse and keyboard usage. The alternation between sitting and standing increases concentration, creativity and fitness at work, and makes your team more active.
Absenteeism can be minimized
With an electrical adjustable desk in combination with a software coach, physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour of your people can be avoided. At the same time the impact on absenteeism can be minimized and the workplace performance increased.

 
 
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