If you’re looking for a holistic approach to managing absence, it’s hard to outdo pharmaceutical and healthcare giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). When Nicola Riley, health strategy and vendor manager, talks about managing absence, she does so in the context of how well people perform at work and finding out what gives them their sense of passion in life. When she studies the drivers to better attendance, she focuses on factors such as employee ‘energy’, from physical and emotional to mental and spiritual. And when GSK analyses leadership, it does so using a framework based on ‘behaviours’, ‘execution’, ‘expertise’ and ‘self’ – the latter defined as “self-awareness and knowledge that helps you manage your talents, skills, potential and energy to perform at your best”.

If all of this sounds too ‘soft’ an approach to a problem that loses organisations huge sums of money each year, the reality is that it’s delivered some hard results. As Riley explained at an Absence Management conference run by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development last week, GSK has reported a 60 per cent global reduction in work-related mental ill-health from 2001 to 2005, with a 29 per cent drop in days lost due to work-related mental ill-health. In the UK alone, from 2005-2006 there was a 12 per cent reduction in days lost and a 24 per cent decline in reported cases related to mental ill-health.

GSK’s approach to work/life balance and health sees it divide its employees into four segments using a traditional scorecard quadrant. In the least satisfactory quadrant are employees with low enjoyment and poor work/life balance – people who, not surprisingly, are more prone to quit. Next to that is a ‘comfortable’ segment that includes employees with good enjoyment and work/life balance, but a weaker sense of contribution. And at the top end are ‘engaged and balanced’ employees who have high enjoyment and a good work-life balance, and who take pride in their work – typically executives and older employees.

The fourth category, described as ‘engaged yet unbalanced’, is one of the key areas of focus for GSK, consisting as it does of employees who have a high feeling of contribution and good enjoyment, but a poorer work/life balance. Typically featuring male executives, sales and middle managers in the 35-44 year old age bracket, these employees function optimally, yet tend to be unbalanced in terms of their own well-being. In fact, GSK has found that 38 percent of its senior leaders are highly engaged, but are compromised in terms of their resilience and energy.

It’s this energy and resilience portfolio that lies at the heart of the company’s health and absence management drive. Its efforts to improve health and performance are built around personal resilience programmes – which range from smoking cessation to ‘waist management’ initiatives – and team resilience, where groups of six or more people get together in a facilitated process to identify and clarify issues. The outcomes have been significant. At an individual level, employees who have been through the programme report a ten per cent reduction in fatigue and a 16 per cent fall in frustration, while at a team level, pressure due to work/life conflicts fell by 25 per cent, satisfaction climbed 21 per cent and there was a 14 per cent increase in staff willingness to experiment with new work practices.

GSK also runs ‘Face the Truth’ programs where each employee, their peers and managers – and even their friends and family – are invited to give feedback on factors such as the employee’s spiritual, mental, emotional and physical energy. That feedback is supplemented by physical tests to measure cholesterol levels, body fat percentage and other key indicators. The physical component really matters – GSK has found that 20 percent of UK executives participating in the executive medical are sedentary and over 40% are an unhealthy weight.

Ultimately, the whole programme involves a shift in traditional attitudes to work. One of the aims of the program is to get employees to understand that rather than being a linear working pattern, the working day will vary, with 60-90 minute bursts of activity followed by a break. As Riley put it in her CIPD presentation, it’s the difference between believing that life is a marathon and accepting that it’s really a series of sprints. And it’s about moving from the concept of managing time to managing energy: from avoiding stress to seeking challenges and stretch: and from believing that downtime is wasted time to recognising that it’s actually productive.