“The Honeydew team goes above and beyond by holding bi-monthly service reviews and helping us to identify different areas of opportunity to make our absence reporting process even better and how to utilise the data and information available. We are more than satisfied with the service, we enjoy working with Honeydew and would recommend the Day-1 Absence Reporting service to any business looking to improve absence reporting and management” Continue reading
All posts by Inka
CIPD Health and Wellbeing survey 2022
CIPD have released their annual Health and Wellbeing at Work report 2022. The headline findings include the prevalence of long Covid and mental health issues. However, with Covid in remission, attention to health and wellbeing is declining. Continue reading
Focus on mental health after Covid-19 restrictions are lifted
Throughout the pandemic, the uncertainty and worries have heightened the mental health issues everyone has to deal with in their daily lives. On 9th February, Boris Johnson announced that the last Covid isolation rule could be scrapped a month early. That would mean we’ll be back to ‘normal’ life, in terms of work and socialising, although it’ll hardly feel fully normal to most. Employers should be mindful of the impacts the pandemic has and will continue to have on their employees. The effects will vary between individuals so listening to employees is important. Continue reading
Mental health at Christmas
Even though Christmas is a time of celebration, it can be a difficult time for many. Rehab4Addiction have put together this useful infographic about the scale of negative mental health issues faced by some people in the UK during this time of year. Read the infographoc for some tips on how to cope better this Christmas. Continue reading
Keeping track of sick and fit notes
Under UK law, employees can self-certificate for the first 7 days of a sickness absence. After 7 calendar days they need to get a fit note from a doctor. The 1-week rule applies to everyone, regardless of how many days per week they normally work. The fit note is essentially a legal document that entitles the employee to statutory sick pay. Continue reading
Indirect cost of absence measured in management time
Absence costs are made up of a lot of parts you may not have considered. The direct costs are perhaps more obvious, but are you aware of everything that makes up the indirect cost of absence? Continue reading
Data exporting made easy with APIs
Engage helps employers keep complete absence records but it is not enough to have your Absence Data stored in Engage. You should be able to use your data to help with scheduling, payroll etc. Therefore, we are always working to improve the data flows to other HR applications. We don’t believe that your absence data should not be locked inside one system. Continue reading
New eBook coming in November!
From the desk of Honeydew Director of Product, Inka Howorth:
I began my work in the absence management sector in 2008. That’s a lot of years of HR discourse and I’ve met a lot of practitioners of all kinds in that time. I’ve also encountered many approaches to writing an absence policy. This puts me in a privileged position to evaluate these approaches and provide a best practice guidance on what actually works, in the form of a new eBook. Continue reading
SMS to absentees
If you subscribe to Honeydew’s Day-1 absence reporting service, Engage can send SMS reminders to absentees whose expected return date was today. These reminders are sent if the absence record has accidentally been left open. Now we’ve also added a further feature to the SMS reminders that will remind tomorrow’s returning employees to confirm their return. The message goes out the day before the planned return. If you are coming back to work as planned, you can simply reply with the word CLOSE to confirm their return. If you are still absent, you’re asked to call the absence line to update their record. Continue reading
Stop overpayments of sick pay
More often than you maybe realise, communication breaks down somewhere along the line between reporting an absence and updating sick pay records. Many companies rely on cumbersome, manual processes to notify payroll about which absences are paid and which are not. Continue reading