Optimize

Employee Absence Cost Strategies

through

Efficiencies in Absence-Related Data

Collection and Analysis

October 2015

Louise Ellis BHA RN COHN GBA

Director, Attendance Support Services

SCHOOL BOARDS’ CO-OPERATIVE INC.

louise.ellis@sbci.org

Setting the Stage

• Acknowledge the knowledge in the room

• Build on that strength

• Open sharing/facilitated discussion

• Some ‘ways of doing business’ will NOT

align with your organization’s reality…

Setting the Stage

Canadian organizations have varied

approaches to understanding and addressing

employee health and absence cost-drivers

• How long have you been working with

Employee Health and/or Absence Data ?

• Are you making gains with you

organization?

Setting the Stage

• What do you hope to learn today?

• What do you think are your organization’s

biggest barriers or gaps in being able to

facilitate more change in relation to

controlling employee health and/or absence

costs?

Setting the Stage

• What gains are you hoping to make?

Reducing costs

Improving employee morale

Enhancing productivity

Reducing attrition

Setting the Stage

• Potential to reduce DIRECT costs: Sick Leave Cost

Replacement Cost

Risk mitigation Cost

• Potential to reduce INDIRECT costs: Failure to meet organizational goals

Supervisor’s time

Payroll Admin costs

Human Resources’ time

Retraining

Presenteeism

Setting the Stage

Employees health related costs (including

absence costs) are complex and multi-causal.

Managing employees’ absences requires

consideration of all possible causes in order to

develop appropriate and targeted strategies,

interventions and policies.

Data is the starting place

Attention applied to the measurement

methodology and benchmarking efforts.

Is there an opportunity to reduce the effort

and cost of collecting, organizing and

analyzing all employee health data?

Data is the starting place

a) Health Risk Assessments

b) Biometric Clinic Reports

c) Employee Surveys

d) EFAP Data

e) Para-medicals

f) Drug Utilization studies

g) WSIB

h) short term disability (sick leave plans)

i) long term disability

j) Employee benefits costing related to ongoing employment relationship into LTD period

k) Others?

What next?

• We have covered the why?

Now focus on:

• When ?

Timing? Frequency?

• Who?

Leads this?

Partners with vested interests?

Influencing parties who oppose?

Data Dangers

• Come in many shapes and sizes and have small

or large impact

• The quagmire of different HRIS systems

• Other limitations to doing it right: resources,

leadership commitment

Absence Data – Particularly important when we start to

benchmark

• Consider the source

• Ask the right questions

Examples: Counting Days Absent or Durations

- from 1st day absent vs. 1st day paid

- Include partial days?

- Paid days only counted?

- What ends an absence (duration)? Any RTW? Or Full

time, full duty?

- Employees lives vs head count

What have you seen?

Data Dangers

Data Dangers

Paramedicals –

• Data contaminated:

Family data included

Benefit funding years overlapping (date of service

versus date of claim)

• Pharmaceutical indicators -

misinterpretations

There are many industry standards – it is helpful to know

them to ensure valid benchmarking.

Example:

Ask your provider for industry benchmarking – they

probably (or should have it !)

What have you seen?

Data Dangers

STD LTD

Absences/Claims Per 100 lives Per 1000 lives

Durations Weeks Months

Average Durations ?strip out absences

converting to LTD

?Strip out absences

past 2 yrs

How to get the info

Health Risk Assessments

Fully investigate what is offered by:

• Health Benefits provider

• The big players in the benefits world have

invested extensively, to offer this augmented

service

• Often available next to your on-line

extended health claim submission gateway

How to get the info

Health Risk Assessments

A campaign to drive up on-line participation may be all that is needed to produce a meaningful data set of employee health risk factors.

Plus – it increases your employees’ exposure to the on-line programming offered (but often ignored)

e.g. Basic EFAP through to one-on-one lifestyle coaching

How to get the info

Employee Satisfaction Surveys

Use satisfaction surveys to build a positive, productive workforce by focusing on:

• Management development

• Team development

• Training and career development programs

• Benefits programs

www.surveymonkey.com/mp/employee-satisfaction-surveys/

How to get the info

EFAP

Employee and Family Assistance Programs

• Now it is an industry standard to receive extensive annual reporting from your provider, including volumes:

• Calling in (and repeat callers)

• Who is calling in? Employee or family member?

• Issue identification

How to get the info

Paramedicals

Source: Benefits provider

Frequency: at least annually

What: Analysis of organization‘s paramedical spending.

Plus: opportunity to explore (or understand) your benefits providers‘ approach to fraud management

(and what you can be watching for)

How to get the info

WSIB

In short – extensive reporting

available on-line.

Regardless if you are Schedule 1 or 2

employer, this should be integrated into your

overall employee health costing

How to get the info

Short and Long Term Disability Information

Industry standard now to provide the critical

measures:

• Claim incidence (volume per employee number)

• Average Claim Durations

• Diagnoses (primary and secondary)

• Benchmarking ( including specific industry)

How to get the info

Employee benefits costing and calculating the

risk for employees away for extended periods

of time, receiving LTD

Wide variation in organizations, particularly

public sector.

Appears public sector is aligning with the

private sector.

Where is your organization at?

Integration of the Data

• Toughest part

• Multitude of Options

• Can be onerous task - absorbing too many

resource$

Integration of the Data

Only your organization can identify how they

want to

• Analyze all the elements

• Present it to leadership team for action

• Continue to fund the efforts (this all takes a

financial commitment)

Integration of the Data

KISS = KEEP IT SIMPLY SILLY

"When your work speaks for itself, don't

interrupt." Henry J. Kaiser

Integration of the Data

Ensure your scorecard revealing

your employee health data and

programming results is easy to

understand.

Consider something simple like

red/yellow/green indicators ….

Measuring Outcomes - Examples

Sick Time Costs and Biometric Outcomes Associated with the Implementation

of Employee Health Initiatives

Sick Time Costs and Employer Survey Results Associated

with the Implementation of Employee Health Initiatives

Measuring Outcomes - Examples

Sick Time Costs associated with the implementation of

EE Health Initiatives & Absence Management Strategies

Measuring Outcomes - Examples

Integration of the Data

To make your health data review

most meaningful, apply

benchmarking

• To your own organization

(3 to 4 year period ideally)

• To other sector organizations

Trends

• Regardless of the source, employee health

costs are increasing

• In most industries, the leading cost is

related to two different categories of days

lost:

1. Sporadic absences

2. Longer duration absences

Trends

Sporadic absences

In repeated absence data analyses, we note the

costs of the sporadic absences, remains at 60 -

70 percent of the overall absence cost.

Trends

Longer duration absences representing

approximately 30 percent of absence costs,

require their own strategies.

Within these absences we want to ensure

employee is able to secure appropriate and

progressive treatment for all conditions -- a

very holistic approach.

Trends

Comprehensive assessment of an organization‘s overall employee health data

(with all the data points discussed)

Identification of common threads to develop meaningful, targeted action plans

to drive down employee health costs and enhance productivity

Wrap up

Questions