You might not think it, but worker absenteeism is actually one of the biggest expenses that an organization can face. With healthcare costs grabbing all the headlines, it's easy to see how this important but low profile issue ended up swept aside. According to some labor reports, absent workers cost companies billions every year. Some of this cost is built into planned absences, such as vacations and sick leave, while some of it is unexpected absenteeism.

Unexpectedly absent workers account for around 9% of all absenteeism costs, with planned absences such as vacation accounting for the rest. Although this might not seem like such a huge number, it actually adds up to billions of dollars per year. The impact on company productivity can sometimes be hard to quantify, but the disruption to the workflow cannot be underestimated.

Employers frequently measure the cost of absenteeism strictly in the tangible sense, with the amount of sick hours and vacation time that is paid out. The indirect costs often go unaccounted for, even though they can be far more serious than anything incurred directly. Although difficult to quantify, the lost productivity can have a serious affect on a project.

When a worker is absent, it often causes other employees to lose productivity as well. A breakdown in communication can often occur if key members of the team are absent, leading to inefficient production. Temporary workers are usually unable to really fill the gap, only being partially capable of acting as a stopgap. Repeated absences, or a high frequency of absence across an entire team, can put tremendous drag on a project.

The moral of the story is to watch employee absenteeism. The average American worker has about 5 unplanned absences per year. Keeping a lid on this problem can go a long way to improving and maintaining productivity. If unchecked, employee absenteeism may become a rampant problem that seriously drains productivity.

Should absenteeism become a serious problem for your organization, it can help to educate employees about the costs associated with the issue. Letting employees know how damaging unplanned absence is may give them second thought when they are about to call in for reasons that might be somewhat less than legitimate.

Tracking attendance is an important task that all organizations must undertake, so that they are aware of how time is managed. With effective attendance tracking, problems like absenteeism can be dealt with before they get out of hand.