Absenteeism from work can be damaging to the Irish economy as well as impacting on an employee's welfare and wellbeing. It is one of the most persistent problems affecting productivity, profitability and competitiveness for Irish organisations and companies.
IBEC has estimated that the cost of absenteeism in Ireland is about €1.5 billion per year.
To try and deal with this problem, Fusion HR, a corporate health services provider is introducing FirstCare into the Irish market. FirstCare provides a Day One Absence Management Service through which it records 100% of absenteeism for an organisation or company via a 24/7 contact centre.
The contact centre is staffed by Absence Advisors and Registered General Nurses, who provide general primary care advice to every employee calling to report an absence, regardless of length or reason. Following the notification to the contact centre, the FirstCare service issues notifications, prompts, reminders and calls to action to employees' line managers, helping them to manage their absences as effectively as possible.
Fusion HR, which is headquartered at NexusUCD, the industry partnership centre at University College Dublin, has run a number of FirstCare pilot studies with Irish corporate organisation over the last 2-years.
These pilot studies have shown that the introduction of FirstCare has resulted in a reduction in average absenteeism levels of over 20% and has assisted in improving employee welfare, resulting in improved productivity and competitiveness for the organisations.
The service is highly configurable and a broad range of public and private clients are already using the service in the UK.
Speaking at the launch of the service in Ireland, Conor Hoey, Chief Sales Officer, Fusion HR, said, "We have now worked with a number of large organisations in Ireland and have been able to benchmark the reduction in absenteeism within a specific division against the organisation as a whole and against the broader industry sector. It is clear that the savings and benefits that have been experienced by organisations in UK can be replicated in Ireland and this is very exciting for organisations, managers and employees.
A 20% reduction in absenteeism will result in savings of €300 million for Irish companies in addition to improvements in employee welfare, productivity and competitiveness."
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