Media law firm Wiggin LLP is to launch an absence management programme for its 85 staff early next year.

The system, which will be available online, will help managers to monitor staff taking time off, collate information, and enable them to forward requests to employees asking why they were off sick.

Sarah Mitten, legal finance manager, explained: "We are integrating absence into our online system. It will be much more reportable this way and will allow us to pull absence statistics immediately."

However, she added that absence is not a problem for the company and it simply wanted to use available technology.

"It is not really an issue. We just never had a decent system to manage it, and now we have this online system it makes sense to pull it together under one roof," explained Mitten.

The firm has also added a dental plan to its voluntary benefits scheme.

Its absence management system is being developed in conjunction with Thomsons Online Benefits.