Absenteeism in small to medium businesses can have a huge impact on productivity, crew morale and company culture. I’m sure many business owners are repeatedly frustrated by unplanned interruptions to contract delivery targets and unmet client expectations (excluding external factors). I own a business myself, so am no stranger to poor excuses from employees, last minute panic and the stress of delivering on once easy to meet targets. There’s no doubt that something has changed in industry in the last decade or so. Aside from those external factors, my focus is what can be managed and controlled.

Initially, I set out to find out how the introduction of “flexi-time” would impact my own business, if I could recommend to my clients that they use it for attracting and retaining skilled labour, and tackle unplanned absenteeism to better manage project risk. But the research unearthed some very interesting and candid responses from blokes (I wanted the view of male blue-collar workers who are under-represented in the popular “flexi-time” conferences that are popping up both sides of the Tasman at the moment).

The key talking points are:

1) Working fathers are increasing the time they dedicate to family and meeting with negative or indifferent employer responses.

2) Many companies dabbling with the concept of “fatigue policy” aren’t applying it or pay lip service to it (deliberately or otherwise).

3) Work types that are impacted by inclement weather often demand employee work time flexibility but do not necessarily respond well to requests from the employee to do likewise.

4)Every single person interviewed responded yes to the questions “Would you have more company loyalty if they offered some form of flexible working?” and “Would you be more likely to stay longer than 3 years with an organisation if they had some form of flexible working arrangements, even if the pay did not change?” - that’s pretty significant in a high employment economy, where rising pay expectations are a legitimate employer concern.

What struck me during the interviews is that there is a genuine opportunity for employers, who may be losing staff and almost completely unaware that fatigue management can be the vehicle by which to manage flexible working arrangements and compliance with regulatory expectations. We only have to look at how the likes of John Holland are doing in Australia to see how it could be implemented here in New Zealand. The benefits of offering an: application-only flexi-time agreement could assist in sectors where talent is hard to attract and even harder to keep, with skilled working-parents forming the perfect candidates to trial the concept. One interviewee Andrew James* told me that shortly after the birth of his daughter, when he returned to work, he had “operated (an excavator) on zero sleep for six days straight because the boss said we needed to complete the job, he laughed when I said that my partner was too tired to lift her out of the cot and feed her”. An extreme case maybe but how many fatigued workers are out there operating machines in close proximity to others or working at height? To ignore the issue of fatigue is to fall short of meeting your legislative duty of care. According to Worksafe:

43% of workers said they worked when overtired ‘from time to time’ or ‘a lot’

24% of businesses said their workers worked when overtired ‘from time to time’ or ‘a lot’

*Health and Safety Attitudes and Behaviours Survey in the New Zealand Workforce 2016.

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015:

Employers must eliminate or minimise risks to health and safety so far as is reasonably practicable.

These risks include:

• workers becoming fatigued from the work they do
• workers coming to work fatigued.

And so to the useful portion of this editorial –

1)How do employers deal with requests for flexi-time from the group of millennial workers now entering parenthood? (reference: Part 6AA of the Employment Relations Act 2000).  - Follow the recommendations on the business NZ website, there is a help document.

2) How can fatigue be measured and managed? (reference:  Health and Safety at Work Act 2015).  - Put a self-reporting and peer-reporting system in place and use Safety reps to select how best to address each case.

3) Attract and retain skilled workers?  - Use the potential and option of Flexi-time as a key strategy but formalise the terms in writing to ensure abuse can be managed in a fair and swift way.

4) How do we all meet our duty of care whilst making a profit?  - Think outside the box, talk to the workers and find out what matters to the people the organisation employs. Set up a trial (in writing) and go for it! You may be pleasantly surprised by the outcomes.