Handling unscheduled leave in project management

Unplanned leave can throw off project timelines and impact your business. This guide shows how to handle it effectively, so your team stays on track and clients stay happy.

In professional services and project management, the ability to deliver work on time will majorly influence your firm’s level of success.

However, if you have unexpected days without key members of the project, this can quickly derail timelines, leading to delays, unhappy clients and tighter margins than originally anticipated.

No matter the reason, there are many types of unscheduled leave that your project may need to adapt around. Without a flexible workforce management plan, any time a staff member is unavailable at short notice will lead to delays in the delivery of your projects.

Projects often run on tight margins. If a key team member departs or if a crucial phase of the project is disrupted, it can negatively affect the project's overall profitability.

Unscheduled absences are just one cause of derailed projects, and they’re a common reason why deadlines are missed. As a business leader, your approach to managing unplanned leave is twofold:

1. Minimise the amount of unscheduled leave that’s taken.

2. Mitigate the impact of any unscheduled leave.

Both of these approaches will help to avoid projects getting derailed when it happens.

Understanding the impact of unplanned absences in the workplace

As much as you might try to avoid unplanned leave, you can never fully prevent it. In reality, people will get sick. Their children might be unable to go to school, or a family emergency might take priority over work. 

However, due to the detrimental impact these disruptions can have on your project, it’s crucial you’re prepared to deal with them and have a backup plan.

In addition to affecting your timeline, unplanned absence will lower your profit margin if you need to bring in an experienced contractor to fill the gaps and still have to bill your client at the initial rate you agreed on.

According to a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), unplanned absences cost U.S. employers an average of 5.6% of payroll per year. This only gets worse for service firms that rely on employees to bring in revenue. Not only are you still incurring the cost of employees, but you’ve also lost an opportunity to bill your clients for their work.

The survey also found that unscheduled absences can have a significant impact on employee productivity, customer service, and overall profitability. All of these negative impacts on your firm are enough to make anyone who owns a services business want to get a plan in place to mitigate project distribution.

Developing a plan to manage unplanned absences

So how can you manage unplanned absences in the workplace? The key is to have a continuity plan. 

One of the first things you can do is build a buffer into project timelines so you can accommodate unforeseen occurrences. Timelines can still be challenging, but this gives you extra scope if you need it - and if you don’t, you can impress clients by finishing ahead of schedule.

A workforce continuity plan gives you a documented strategy that outlines how your firm will continue to operate and maintain essential functions during and after a disruptive event. This includes recognising and listing the skills you have across the whole business, so you can identify a backup option if your first choice isn’t available.

Creating a workforce continuity plan for a professional service firm involves several key steps:

1. Develop a clear communication plan to ensure that team members understand what their roles and responsibilities will be in the event of an unexpected absence.

2. Identify important functions that are essential for the firm's daily operations, including client services, financial management, and other specialised departments.

3. Evaluate the potential impact of unexpected absences on critical functions, including the availability of backup resources and the implications for client relationships and project timelines.

4. Create a strategy for ensuring the continued execution of essential tasks during an unplanned absence, such as cross-training employees, utilising temporary staff, or engaging external contractors.

5. Continuously review and update the workforce continuity plan to reflect changes in business operations or staff.

6. Regularly test your continuity plan to ensure that it is effective and responsive to potential business disruptions. This can be accomplished through simulation exercises and scenario planning.

Single points of failure

How often do you hire people that are specialists with only one skill? If you are hiring based on individual specialty, are you ensuring that they’re very, very good at that one thing to justify it?

By hiring specialists your projects can become vulnerable as the person with the skill could become sick, or require unplanned leave. Without the required backup or skilled ring-in, this will shift your project’s delivery milestones.

Single points of failure can be avoided by hiring generalists, or people that are good at a few things, rather than just the one.

Identify single points of failure and train others to fill the gaps

Having key staff that are good at a few, or many things could in the long term help projects that suffer from your people having unscheduled leave.

In Projectworks you can easily see what people in your organisation have the skills that you need with skills mapping. When you’ve identified these people, you can easily see whether they are going to be available or not when you need them so that you can schedule them work.

Implementing strategies to reduce unplanned absences

Now that you have a plan to deal with unplanned absences, the next step is reducing them in the first place. As mentioned, unplanned absence prevention is not about totally eliminating it. There will always be times when it happens. 

But there are also common reasons for unplanned absences that are avoidable. For example, leave not being communicated, staff burnout, low team morale, and bullying can all contribute to staff being unavailable at late notice. 

There is a range of ways you can reduce the number of unplanned absences:

• Having flexible work arrangements and good remote team management processes so that if someone can’t make it into the office at late notice, they can still work from home.

• Linking payroll and leave systems to project planning and resource allocation so you can see when staff have booked time off and accommodate for it in project planning.

• Promoting a positive, healthy workplace culture where people are supported and encouraged.

• Actively monitor metrics such as utilization rates to prevent overwork and burnout.

Employee engagement is a key aspect in the battle against unplanned absences. 

Promoting engagement includes ensuring people are committed and motivated by their work, aligned with both their colleagues and business goals, and excited by how they can contribute to the company. This provides the emphasis to overcome small obstacles that could otherwise result in an unplanned absence.

Summary

Implementing a workforce continuity plan is crucial for any professional service firm to prepare for unexpected absences that can disrupt daily operations. By recognizing your firm’s critical functions, assessing the potential impact of unplanned absences, and creating strategies for essential tasks, you can mitigate the effects of disruptions and maintain the quality of your services.

Using professional services automation software like Projectworks will allow you to manage leave requests, resource staff, forecast revenue, and ensure that your firm is better equipped to handle any unforeseen circumstances.

Ultimately, a proactive approach to workforce continuity planning can lead to better client satisfaction and set your service firm up for success.