How can a business run with employee absences happening left and right? It’s not possible. Right?
Without employees, a business cannot run daily operations or turn profitable to even stay in business.
When employees show up to work, they can complete work projects and help a business reach its goals. Businesses value high and consistent attendance records.
The critical question most businesses deal with: How to create an attendance policy to ensure employees come to work on time and consistently?
One answer is to have an explicit attendance policy in writing that all employees and supervisors have access to. This would allow you, the business owner, to talk about appropriate and inappropriate reasons for employee absences.
This policy can also cover how employees can ask for time-off and what is and isn’t deemed to be an excused employee absence.
Ensuring every employee has a copy of employee absence policies reduces confusion and hold the employee responsible for their actions.
A clear and concise employee absence policy might increase determination among your workers. On top of morale, knowing that coworkers who don’t follow the policy will have penalties would reduce bitterness.
In this article, we’ll cover what should be written into an employee absence policy and the different types of policies.
Topics Employee Absence Policies Should Include
There are many types of employee absence policies you can model yours on. However, the one you create and implement should make sense for your business goals.
Even though there are different types of policies for employee absences, they all have common elements that must be included.
Here is a brief description of the topics that are found in all employee absence policies:
- Steady Voice: You need to find a balance of an authoritative and empathetic voice in your employee absence policy. You need to be authoritative for employees who consistently have attendance issues. Yet, you need to show empathy for the good employees who need a couple days for a family emergency.
- Multiple Policies: “One policy does not cover all” is the attitude you should have as you’re creating your employee absence policy. One department might vary in their employee needs than the other.
For example, an employee who works at a reception has to talk and answer the phones all day or coordinate schedules. A different employee absence policy is created for Human Resources department that doesn’t have quite as heavy foot traffic every day.
- Increase Determination
Don’t just focus on the repercussions of your employee absences policy. While that is important, you also need to reward people for consistently showing up. This incentive could, in the end, adjust all attendance issues.
- Unemployment Payouts
A clearly outlined employee absence policy functions as a defence against unemployment insurance payouts.
You need to keep a record of an employee’s absences if you terminate them for too many days absent. And, if those days are not following the employee absence policy.
Various Forms of Employee Absence Policies
In this next section, we’ll outline common example of employee absence policies. You can consider each of these as you’re crafting your own policy.
Demerit System
This system is set-up just like the point system. Employees earn demerits for whenever they break the employee absences policy guidelines.
They can earn a demerit for
- Leaving early
- Arriving late
- Excused nonattendance
- Unexcused nonattendance
- Not calling in and not showing up
Progressing Attendance System
A regular attendance system tracks anytime an employee breaks the employee absences policy. This is recorded over a period of time, maybe six months or a business quarter. After the period is over, the employee’s record is clear and it starts over.
If an employee habitually, breaks the employee absence policy, then you might want to take different actions with them.
Showing-Up Late Policies
Define in your policy what is considered “showing up late” for work, remember this can extend beyond the beginning of the workday. You can define what it means to take a long lunch break.
Absenteeism Warning
Assess your employee and shift needs to decide this next part. Maybe, you only need an hour to fill-in someone who cannot make it work.
For other types of businesses, they need a whole day’s notice if an employee is going to be absent to find someone else to cover their shift.
“No Notice/No Presence” Principles
Typically, if an employee doesn’t show up to work without warning three days in a row, they are fired from the business. You can modify this as it suits your business needs.
Incentive Program
Employee Absence policies should include an incentive program to reward employees who have a good record. It can help employees who don’t have a good record to improve so they can more easily request time off.
All of these employee absences issues can be taken care with an automated system that helps manage employee absences.
