The Integrated Benefits Institute recently analyzed the absence management practices of a call center that handles all human resources, benefits and payroll issues at a financial service company.

IBI found that unscheduled absences resulted in performance problems for the department not only during busy months, but also during slow periods.

Yet overall, 80% of paid-time off was scheduled during less busy days of the week and months, which helped the department to meet its workload demands.

This suggests that workers understood that scheduling PTO in October, November, December, January and February was probably not a good idea, given that those months corre­spond with the benefits enrollment period when employees are likely to call the department with ques­tions.

"Employee willingness to schedule time off during the less busy days and months means that the crunch of too few workers to handle the work­load during busy times isn't as dire as it would be if employees scheduled PTO uniformly throughout the week and the year," IBI researchers write in the report "The Business Response of Employers to Absence".

The California-based institute, which is a nonprofit focused on benefits services, also reports that, if an employee's absence in the department is unexpected, then the percentage of calls answered within 30 seconds would be 2.3 percentage points lower on that day from the baseline average of 76.6% to 74.3%.

IBI observes that the employer's inflexibility in managing the workload in the HR call center does mean an unex­pected surge in unscheduled absence, regardless of whether it occurs at a busy or less busy time, will result in poor performance, the report explains. That is because the workload is too high for the remaining employees to handle, and it isn't possible to bring in replace­ment workers, the report explains.

Consequently, it may be prudent to add additional staffing during busy periods. This may prove to be the cheapest response to absence, if such an option is available, the report notes. Because in the end, the more time employees spend in getting answers to their questions from the call center, the less time they have to spend on customer-related issues.