This is the third and final article in a series exploring three factors that can have a major effect on the culture and morale of your organization, and can make the difference in an employee’s choice to stay or leave. Consider the Employee Holy Trinity:

• Scheduling
• Monetary Gain
• Time Off

As we conclude our discussion on the Holy Trinity of employee morale and performance, we dig into Time Off. It can be challenging to find that balanced approach to reducing staff cost, hitting your required staff needed, and allowing for Time Off so that employees can balance the needs of their personal lives. This component can affect absenteeism, attrition, performance, and definitely morale.

A representative’s time away from work is vital for managing their stress, health, personal responsibilities, and feelings of fulfillment. Not having sufficient time away from work can cost an organization in the long run as they begin to see higher staffing needs and costs related to lower performance due to burn out, absenteeism, FMLA, and eventually attrition. This can become a vicious cycle that is difficult to get out of and can be a huge determining factor for an employee’s decision to stay or go. But every cloud has a silver lining. If managed properly, you can use this hurdle to strengthen your workforce and create an environment of motivated, focused, “planful” (important), and loyal employees.
How do you do this you might ask? Well, we all know we have to bake in an out-of-office factor into all our staff plans. It’s a part of doing business, and can be a real struggle especially in environments where FMLA and absenteeism are real concerns. In high churn environments, how you respond or handle these situations can impact the way you do business and the culture of your organization. Consider some of the following items when planning your out of office programs and plans:

Planned vs. Unplanned

Out of office can be broken up into two buckets, planned and unplanned, with the preference on planned. If you think about it, even if your out of office is going to be high, knowing about it ahead of time gives you way more options for success than the latter. Keep this in mind when considering reducing your out of office allotments when you see rises in unplanned. This alone will start you down the path of the before-mentioned vicious cycle. An employee once told me, “Life will find a way.” What she meant was that it doesn’t matter how restrictive you are, people will do what they want in the end. However, this doesn’t mean open the floodgates, but it does give you something to consider. Be realistic in your planning. The goal is to try and offer some solutions to a representative’s needs so that it doesn’t come to this. Once this line is crossed, you have already started the process of losing that representative.

Accrual vs. Allowed Ratio

This simple concept can help guide you on your consideration of how much time to allow for out of office. Do some analysis on how much time off your employees earn in a year from a planned standpoint (vacation usually since sick time is usually not planned). Now that you have this number you know your potential out of office. Now start to lay out your allotment plan (allowable time off per day). Add up how much time you are planning to allow for the year. Now compare the two. What is the ratio of time off allowed compared to the amount accrued? Now ask yourself if that ratio is realistic. Remember you need to allow more time off than you accrue because employees will not want to only plan their time within the limited scale you have planned out for. Ideally in most organizations, a ratio of 2x-3x is ideal to offer enough time to choose from to realistically plan their time off, but different regions/queues/environments can add or subtract from this so use what makes the most sense for your organization. If you are in doubt, pull what you have used in the past and make adjustments based on what the resulting absenteeism, FMLA, and attrition rates were.