Most HR functions are sitting on an uncomfortable secret: the absence and case management numbers reported to the board are rarely a true picture.
Matt Smith, CEO of Empactis, has had the same conversation with HR Directors and CPOs at large employers so often that he now has a name for the pattern: HR turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
The issue starts with data capture, not data management. Absence logging depends on managers remembering to record it consistently. Case files depend on one person holding the full picture in their head, rather than a documented, repeatable process. The result is a board pack number that isn’t dishonest, but isn’t real either, alongside a case management process that quietly relies on escalation and improvisation rather than a clear, followable path.
That creates two uncomfortable admissions most HR functions avoid. First, the true absence and case figures are usually higher than what’s been reported for years. Second, fixing the underlying process means taking work away from the people currently propping it up by hand, a direct conversation about the shape and size of the HR team itself.
Neither is a technology problem to solve. Both are a courage problem. Admitting the numbers understate the picture risks credibility, and fixing the process risks headcount. So the safer, more common choice is to keep managing the numbers already in hand rather than pursue the numbers that are real, sometimes even funding a new, more visible initiative instead of building the harder business case leadership actually needs.
The organisations that get this right treat the discovery as an opportunity rather than a threat. One FTSE client identified this gap and took £4m a year out of absence costs as a result. A healthcare client found £7m. In both cases, the saving came not from adding headcount, but from giving managers the data and process to handle cases properly the first time, freeing HR from being the manual backstop for work that should never have needed one.
The function that finds its real numbers, fixes the underlying process, and hands the routine work to a system does not shrink in importance. It moves into workforce planning, manager capability, and the conversations that prevent the next tribunal claim rather than merely documenting it after the fact, work that is harder to replace and more valuable to the board, not less.
The question every HR function should be asking itself, Smith argues, is not whether the truth is uncomfortable. It is whether they are willing to find it out now, on their own terms, or wait until the real numbers surface some other way.
