Covering Sick Leave and Absence in the Schedule: the 06:30 Plan
Covering sick leave and absence in the schedule is a twenty-minute job that has to happen at 06:30, not at 08:15 when the customer is already standing in the driveway. The sequence is fixed: take the call, log the absence type in writing before you do anything else, then triage the missing person's day into three piles — jobs that must be covered today, jobs that can be moved with a phone call, and jobs that drop to later in the week. Move the movers first, because that is what frees the hours to cover the criticals. One person from the office rings every affected customer before 08:00 with a new time already in hand, never an apology with a question mark. Record the absence for payroll the same morning, while you still know what actually happened. Everything after that is design work: enough slack in the week that one person off does not break three promises.
The first twenty minutes: a fixed 06:30 sequence
The reason a sick day turns into a bad day is that everyone improvises. Write the sequence down once and follow it every time.
- 06:30 — take the call and ask two questions. "Is this today only, or do you already know it's more?" and "Is it you or the kids?" The answers change the payroll code and the planning horizon. A one-day thing gets patched. A three-day thing gets replanned properly, once, this morning.
- 06:33 — log it before you plan. Absence type, first day, expected return, who took the call. Ten seconds now, or forty minutes reconstructing it at month end.
- 06:35 — mark every job on that day with a letter. C for cover, M for move, D for drop to later in the week. No debate. Use the rules below.
- 06:45 — reassign the C jobs to whoever has slack, holds the right certification, and is already nearest.
- 06:50 — the office starts ringing. M and D customers first, because their news is worse. C customers only get a call if the technician's name changes and they were expecting a specific face.
- 07:30 — tell the crew. One message, whole team, so nobody turns up to a job that moved and nobody assumes someone else is covering.
- 08:00 — done. If you are still calling customers at 09:30, the problem is not the illness. It is that you have no rule.
Triage: which jobs get covered and which ones move
The instinct is to cover everything and drive the crew into the ground. That is how you end up with two people off tomorrow. Sort on cost of delay, not on who shouted loudest when they booked.
| Job type | Decision | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Anything unsafe or uninhabitable — exposed conductors, no power to a vulnerable household, water still running, no heat in winter | Cover today | Safety and habitability. There is no version of this that waits. |
| Work that blocks another trade — you are holding up a plasterer, a floor, an inspection | Cover today | Your one-hour slip becomes someone else's lost day. It also becomes your invoice dispute. |
| Booked inspection, sign-off, or a date the customer took time off work for | Cover today | Rebooking costs the customer money, not just patience. |
| Second fix, snagging, remedials on an occupied job | Move within the same week | Annoying, not damaging. Customers accept a definite new time. |
| Quotes and site visits | Move, but ring within the hour | A quote visit rebooked politely often still converts. One rebooked well beats one rushed. |
| Service agreement rounds, planned maintenance, non-urgent work on empty property | Drop to later in the week | This is exactly the slack you built the agreements for. Use it. |
| A job someone else already started and half-finished | Split — send whoever can close it out | Half-finished is the most expensive state a job can be in. |
One rule that saves arguments: a job only gets covered if someone qualified can actually do it. Sending an apprentice to work that needs a competent person, or a technician without the right certification to a sign-off, is not coverage. It is a second visit plus a liability.
Who rings the customer, and exactly what to say
The office rings. Not the sick person from bed, and not the technician from the van at 10:40 when they realise they will not make it. One voice, before 08:00, with the new time already decided.
The call has four parts and takes ninety seconds.
- State it plainly. "Morning, it's Anna from the office. One of our team is off sick today, so I'm moving your job."
- Offer, do not ask. "I can do Thursday morning, 08:00 to 11:00, or Friday afternoon. Which suits?" Never "when would work for you?" — that hands them an open question at 07:40 and costs you three more calls.
- Say what you protected. "Nothing else changes. The parts are already here and it's still Marcus doing it." People forgive the date. They do not forgive discovering the whole thing has come unstuck.
- Confirm in writing immediately. Email or in-app confirmation with the new date, while you are still on the phone.
What not to say: never give the medical detail, never say "we're really short-staffed at the moment" (that reads as a badly run firm and invites them to shop around), and never say "we'll ring you back to sort a time." You are ringing back. This is that call.
The one exception
If the customer booked a day off work for you, offer something back: a firm slot at 07:00 the next morning, an evening visit, or the owner personally doing the first hour. Not a discount by reflex — that teaches people a moved date is worth money. Time is what they lost, so pay them back in time.
Capture the absence for payroll the same morning
This is where small firms leak money, and it takes two minutes. Record it at month end from memory and you will get the day count wrong, miss the reimbursement, and either pay someone for hours they were not there or underpay them and find out in a grievance.
Log four fields the moment the call ends: who, what type, first day of absence, expected return. Type matters most, because different types are paid by different parties.
If you are in Sweden, three types cover almost everything:
- Sjukfrånvaro (own sickness). As the employer you pay sjuklön for the first 14 calendar days of a sick period, at 80% of the pay the person would otherwise have had, with a karensavdrag (qualifying deduction) equal to 20% of a normal week's sjuklön taken off the start of the period. From day 15 the employee claims sjukpenning from Försäkringskassan. You may normally ask for a läkarintyg (doctor's certificate) from day 8. Check the current rules and amounts at Försäkringskassan — they do change, and your collective agreement may add to them.
- VAB (vård av barn) — caring for a sick child. This one is not your cost. The employee claims tillfällig föräldrapenning direct from Försäkringskassan, generally for children from 8 months up to age 12, at roughly 80% of income up to a ceiling and capped at a set number of days per child per year. You record the unpaid absence and do not run it as sick pay. Treating VAB as sjuklön is the single most common absence-payroll error in small trades firms.
- Everything else — vård av närstående, parental leave, unplanned leave. Different codes, different money. Never dump them all into "sick".
If you are outside Sweden, the shape is the same even though the names differ. In the UK it is Statutory Sick Pay, self-certification for the first seven days and a fit note after that, plus separate unpaid time off for dependants — the equivalent of VAB. In Australia and New Zealand it is paid personal and carer's leave drawn from an accrued balance, which makes accurate day counts matter even more, because you are drawing down a bank. The principle does not move: the absence type decides who pays, so record the type on day one.
The practical bit: whatever runs your scheduling should be what captures the absence, so the planner and the payroll export agree. In OdinTask the geofenced time clock and the planner sit in the same place, so a marked absence shows on the week view and lands in the payroll CSV export without anyone typing it twice. Use something else if you like — just make it one entry, not two.
Design the week so one absence does not take the crew down
Everything above is damage control. This part is the actual fix. A five-person team booked to 100% has no capacity to absorb a person being off, and a person will be off. Between statutory holiday, public holidays, and a normal amount of sickness and child care, any given technician is unavailable a meaningful slice of the working year. If your plan assumes five people every day, your plan is wrong most weeks.
- Book to about 85%, not 100%. One protected half-day per person per week, unbooked. It is not idle time. It absorbs a sick day, an emergency callout, and the job that overruns. If nobody is off, it becomes the half-day the snagging and paperwork finally get done.
- Never single-point a customer. If only one person has ever been to a site, that site is a hostage. Rotate the second visit, and make sure the job card carries the history — photos, protocols, what is behind the wall — so the cover technician is not starting cold.
- Cross-certify deliberately. Ask which single certification, if that person is off, stops you working. Then get a second person that certification. It is cheaper than the callout you could not cover.
- Put the low-consequence work where it can move. Schedule service agreement rounds and empty-property work mid-week on purpose. That is your shock absorber, and it means you never move an occupied-home job first.
- Front-load Monday, protect Friday. Absence clusters at the start of the week and around school terms. A Friday with slack in it is where Monday's chaos lands.
- Write the rule down. One page: who takes the call, who triages, who rings, in what order. It has to work when the person who normally decides is the person who is off.
When it is not one day
Day three is the decision point. If someone is out for a week or more, stop patching. Replan the fortnight properly, once: cancel and rebook a block, bring in a subcontractor for a defined scope, or tell the customers at the back of the queue honestly that you are two weeks out. Patching day by day for a fortnight gives you an exhausted crew and a set of customers who have each been moved three times. Customers forgive one honest move. They do not forgive three.
The honest test: if a technician rang in sick right now, could the office run the whole sequence without you? If the answer is no, you do not have a scheduling system. You have yourself.
OdinTask keeps the planner, the job history, the absence and the customer's confirmation in one place, so the 06:30 reassignment is a drag-and-drop and the new time goes out in writing while you are still on the phone. There is a 14-day free trial if you want to test it against a real week, and the pricing page has what it costs.
FAQ
What should I do first when a technician calls in sick?
Log the absence type before you plan anything, then sort that person's day into three piles: jobs that must be covered today (unsafe work, jobs blocking another trade, booked inspections and sign-offs), jobs that move within the week, and jobs that drop to later. Move the movers first, because that frees the hours to cover the criticals. The office rings every affected customer before 08:00 with a new time already decided.
Who should call the customer when a job has to move?
One person from the office, before 08:00 — never the sick technician from bed and never the crew from the van at 10:40. State it plainly, offer two specific slots rather than asking when suits them, confirm in writing while you are still on the call, and say what has not changed. Do not give medical detail and do not tell them you are short-staffed.
Is VAB paid by the employer or by Försäkringskassan?
In Sweden, VAB (caring for a sick child) is claimed by the employee direct from Försäkringskassan as tillfällig föräldrapenning. It is not employer sick pay. You record the absence and keep it out of sjuklön. Own sickness is different: the employer pays sjuklön for the first 14 calendar days. Confusing the two is the most common absence-payroll error in small firms. Check current rules at forsakringskassan.se.
How much slack should I leave in the schedule for absence?
Book to roughly 85% rather than 100%, which in practice means one protected half-day per person per week left unbooked. Between holiday, public holidays, sickness and child care, a plan that assumes everyone is available every day is wrong most weeks. If nobody is off, that half-day becomes the time the snagging and the paperwork finally get done.
Which jobs should never be moved because of sick leave?
Anything unsafe or uninhabitable: exposed conductors, no power to a vulnerable household, running water, no heat in winter. Work that blocks another trade, because your one-hour slip becomes their lost day. And any booked inspection, sign-off, or date the customer took time off work for, since rebooking costs them money rather than patience. Everything else has a price you can negotiate.
How do I record sick leave for payroll without doing it twice?
Capture four fields the morning the call comes in: who, absence type, first day, expected return. Do it in the same system that holds your schedule, so the planner and the payroll export agree and nobody retypes it. In OdinTask the time clock and planner sit together, and a marked absence flows into the payroll CSV export. Reconstructing absence at month end from memory is where day counts go wrong.
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