The six essentials of good attendance

Leadership accountability and management consistency are key

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2012 :: By Shawn Masten

GOT QUESTIONS? GET ANSWERS
Use this contact information to find out more.

Additional Resources

Ann Nicholson, Ann.N.Nicholson@kp.org

Eileen Rodriquez, left, Laura Madrigal, middle, Norma Costa, right

Highlighted Tools

Use these tools to help your team improve attendance

• Attendance Scorecard [Tool]
• 2012 Attendance Calendar [Tool]

High-performing teams—and the patients and members they serve—count on Kaiser Permanente employees and physicians being there to do the tough job of delivering care every day. That’s why the National Agreement provides incentives for good attendance –including innovative health reimbursement accounts funded by employees’ unused sick leave at retirement. 

Yet for many departments, attendance continues to be a tough nut to crack.

That, says Ann Nicholson, LMP Attendance leader for Northern California, is because teams are missing one or more of the six essentials of good attendance.

“To be successful, you can’t have five out of six or four out of six; you have to have all six,” says Nicholson. “That’s the magic.”

Nicholson discovered the six during site visits with teams that had sustained attendance improvement. “These six things popped up consistently as the drivers of success,” she says. They are:

• Leadership accountability

Fresno Medical Center leaders made it their business to work with teams that were not achieving local attendance goals for the year. UBT support staff formed an “affinity group” (comprising all the teams working on attendance), trained them in the six essentials, and monitored their progress. Self-identified attendance experts—like sponsors or project managers—advised the teams as needed.

• Management consistency

The teams’ co-leads gave their teams regular email status updates and conducted monthly attendance reviews with the team and one-on-one. “It’s difficult to keep it up with all the other stuff we have to do, but it’s well worth it,” says Norma Costa, Ob/Gyn management co-lead and service unit manager in Fresno.

• Labor engagement

Labor co-lead Lisa Madrigal, an Ob/Gyn medical assistant and SEIU UHW member, models good attendance and shows enthusiasm for the project. “The more that I helped communicate [our goals] with Norma, the more it motivated the team,” says Madrigal. She also follows up with employees who have questions about their attendance benefits or performance. Labor engagement creates an “aha moment for the staff,” says Ob/Gyn assistant manager Eileen Rodriquez.  “It really helps them to see each other hanging in there.”

• Integrated case management

Each pay period, HR convenes a meeting for managers of employees with frequent absences. Also at the meeting are specialists from benefits, disability and labor relations consultants who help the manager learn to counsel and coach employees, look for patterns in the data and “empower them to act,” says Diane Easterwood, HR leader in San Francisco.

 “Having the ability to dialogue directly with HR staff regarding each case makes a huge difference in my ability to manage attendance, says Barbara Vogeslang clinical services director. Jason Goodwin, Perioperative nurse manager, agrees. “We took a person in danger of being terminated and actively managed that employee back to a highly productive team member.”

• Staff/scheduling flexibility

Managers should allow employees to trade shifts, but check the union contract first, says Tony Borba, assistant medical group administrator for the Greater Southern Alameda Area, which includes Hayward, Fremont and Union City. “Do everything in your power to give people time off when they ask for it,” but always follow seniority, Borba says. If you don’t, a culture of mistrust will prevail. That was the case in Fremont in 2008 when the number of sick days taken per full-time employee hit 8.32 per year. Now it’s at 6.33 per FTE per year, making Fremont the best attended facility in the region. “Employees know exactly where they stand, grievances are down to nothing and the relationship with labor and management is much better,” Borba says.

• Team environment

For attendance to be good, managers must create an environment that recognizes and rewards employees who set high standards and that support a sense of teamwork.  “If employees are engaged, they are more inclined to come to work, Nicholson says.” This approach is working in Fresno. Four of the six teams participating in Fresno’s attendance affinity group lowered the number of sick days per full-time employee in 2011 after learning about the six essentials. For instance, Fresno’s Ob/Gyn department went from a high of 9.07 sick days per full-time-employee in February 2011 to 6.17 days by the first pay period of December.

Want to see how your team measures up on all six essentials? The Attendance Scorecard tool helps teams determine their weaknesses—and strengths.