Absenteeism as a Mark of Leadership

The Exchange article, "Out of the Box Ideas for Director Evaluation -- Part 1," offers five unusual indicators of center director effectiveness including staff absenteeism:

"In centers where staff morale is low, staff not only leave more often, but they also find more ways to be away from the center.  Staff absenteeism typically rises and falls in inverse relationship to staff morale.

"Since center leave policies and scheduling practices are so varied, there is no single measure of absenteeism that will work for all centers.  What needs to be measured is the frequency with which staff take unplanned or unexpected leave.

"One useful indicator is sick leave.  If teachers use 100% of their sick leave allotment in a year, this is a strong indicator of organizational malaise.  In centers with highly committed staff, directors often need to convince dedicated teachers to take sick leave when they are ill.  As a benchmark, a director should be given credit if sick leave usage falls below 50%.

"A second indicator would be leave without pay... Here the measure would be percentage of scheduled hours where staff failed to appear.  This standard needs to be higher -- if part time staff fail to appear for 20% of scheduled work time, this is a probable sign that something is amiss."

The full text of "Out of the Box Ideas..." can be found on the home page of our web site, https://www.exchangepress.com/ .  

In addition, this article and Part 2 in the series are two of 18 articles and 12 evaluation instruments that can be found on the Exchange Articles on CD collection, "Taking Stock."  On our web site you can purchase all 9 article collections at a 30% discount.  Go to: https://secure.ccie.com/catalog/cciecatalog.php?cPath=54

For more information about Exchange's magazine, books, and other products pertaining to ECE, go to www.ccie.com.

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