Unexpected employee absences due to sickness have the potential to seriously disrupt operations, especially when the relevant colleagues are notified too late or — in the worst case — not at all. Quite apart from the direct impact of such unplanned absences, employee sick leave has consequences for the company. Every sick note triggers a cascade of activities that need to be actioned in daily business. These range from capturing the sick note and informing the right colleagues through to final filing and archiving. For many companies, this usually means one thing: manual work!

It starts with the employee who is required to submit the sick note. In some cases they have to send the employer’s copy by regular mail — but when you’re sick even a simple trip to the mailbox can be daunting. It’s a happy colleague who can send their sick note by email. Not only is it faster; it involves a lot less effort, too.

Upon arrival at the company, the sick note is processed — ideally directly by HR. It can only be hoped, not least from a data protection perspective, that the sick note does not arrive in a different department and land in the wrong hands. Once HR receives the sick note, processing can begin. This can involve any number of questions: “What was the employee number again?”, “Which department does the colleague work in?”, “Who needs to be informed?”. Finding the answers and inputting all the necessary information manually before filing the sick note can be a long-winded process with zero added value. Various statistics show that the sickness rates fluctuate between 4% and 6% — and the larger the company, the more work is involved in handling sick notes. As if the HR team had nothing better to do! A digitalized workflow for processing sick notes reduces the workload for everyone.

From a process design perspective, sick notes form part of a structured, recurring process — one that follows clearly defined rules, making it ideal for partial or even full automation. Doxis assists along the entire process chain:

• Sick employees report their sick leave from the sofa. They do this either via a mobile app such as Doxis mobileCube with integrated scanner or they can send a photo of the sick note to a predefined email address. The sick note is directly available to the company with no mailing delays.
• The digital sick note is sent to an extraction service such as Doxis Classification & Extraction Service. The system automatically performs all the painstakingly detailed tasks that the HR team previously handled: It extracts information on the employee and the sick leave duration, automatically informing the right people in HR.
• The data in the sick note triggers an information process which immediately notifies superiors and HR that an employee has taken sick leave. Doxis and/or SAP HR replicate the relevant business processes as a workflow, meaning department heads and employees are notified in real time wherever they are via smartphone, email, or web client.
• In parallel, the sick note is automatically linked to the employee's digital personnel file where it is protected against unauthorized access and archived audit-compliantly. The system can directly pass on the extracted data to the HR system — eliminating manual data entries and the potential for errors!

In addition, the captured data can be anonymized and used as a basis for analyzing sickness rates by users with the correct access permission.

Freed from the time-consuming and costly capture, input and processing of sick notes, HR teams can devote their time to value-added activities:

• For instance, you can sign up for a one-on-one demo of further Doxis HR Self-Services. Learn how they can help you to cut response times, improve employee satisfaction, and reduce labor and costs throughout your HR processes — from simple changes such as a fully automated procedure for viewing personnel files to automated travel expenses claims or fully digitalized payroll.
• Visit job fairs and identify employees who are the perfect fit for your organization — it's easy with Doxis HR candidate and application management.
• Or plan company-wide training initiatives in HR Self-Service and take advantage of the support provided by Doxis HR Staff Training.
• All information is automatically stored in the Doxis personnel file so you don’t have to lift a finger....

This article was written in collaboration with Hendrik Kilian and René Wenzel. If you have any questions about the solutions described here, our colleagues would be happy to present a live demo to you virtually or in person. Schedule an appointment now!