When your organisation can no longer meet its deadlines, or provide customers with the high quality of service they expect, you have a problem. Unplanned absence also has a bad effect on morale, putting the rest of the team under pressure as they struggle to deal with the additional workload. Unplanned absence can occur as a result of force majeure (for example, when an airline is hit by strike action), or because of poor employee motivation and commitment.

This pocket guide, based on best practice guidelines, looks at what you can do to ensure your employees fulfil their obligations and turn up as required. It then gets to grips with the question of how your organisation should handle unplanned absences before and when they arise. While you may not be able to prevent unplanned absence altogether, the advice contained in this guide will help you to keep the extra costs and disruption associated with unplanned absence to a minimum.