Drafting an employee attendance management policy is one of the most important tasks for an organization. Absenteeism in the workplace is a serious issue. There are usually three types of absenteeism that takes place in the workplace and can potentially disturb your organization’s productivity. They are scheduled absences, unscheduled absences, and partial shift absences.
Scheduled absences consist of leaves that are taken for vacation or self-care, unscheduled absences include sick leaves and workers’ compensation leaves. Lastly, partial shift absence is when an employee arrives late to work, takes longer breaks than allowed, or leaves early from the organization.
It is important for an employer to know and be aware of how often the employees take leave without prior information or a valid reason. Imagine what will happen if your employees don’t turn up without informing you? Your work process shall get disturbed.
This is one of the main reasons to have a good attendance management policy in place. This ensures that your company is being benefitted from good work productivity and it also discourages anything that hinders your business objectives. So let’s look at the ways that can help you draft a good attendance management policy:
Benefits of having an online attendance management system in an organization:
- The productivity and efficiency of employees are improved with an automated system in place.
- With just a few clicks, accurate reports on hours worked, absences, overtime, etc. can be downloaded.
- With a centralized, accurate attendance data hub, employers can analyze and improve policies on leaves, working hours, workplace culture, performance, pay, etc.
- The attendance management system’s accuracy and reliability eliminate the need for logbooks.
- Organizations today have employees who work remotely or on a freelance basis, which makes it difficult for HR managers to track their activity. An attendance management software allows employers to track the working hours of employees efficiently.
- An attendance management system is built in a highly secure way. It helps prevent time theft, proxy, and reduce the administrative costs stemming from lost id cards and forgotten pins.
What Every Attendance Management Policy Needs to Cover
Employee work hours
Different companies have different work schedules or shift timings. An organization needs to outline the shift timings. Decide the working hours for your employees and schedule them accordingly. It is also important to define the sign-in/ sign-out procedure.
The organization should be fair while scheduling the working hours for their employees. The employee must make sure that they are available on those hours of their day and should go to work when their employer tells or assigns them any work. Also, make sure that no employee or employer is involved in schedule abuse in the organization.
Scheduling abuse doesn’t only come from the employers, but also employees. Sometimes, the employee might ask for leaving early, or change shift with another fellow employee, etc. Make sure that all these issues are taken into consideration while drafting your attendance management policy.
Create a simple set of rules governing attendance
Draft an attendance policy that mentions that the company can take disciplinary actions employees against those who do not adhere to the company’s attendance requirements. Define absenteeism and tardiness in your attendance policy. While defining absenteeism you should be specific on, under what reason your organization marked an employee absent. For instance, absenteeism involves sick leave, vacation leave, and so on.
On the other hand, tardiness helps explain to the employee how important punctuality is for your organization. An employee is considered to be tardy if he/she arrives 15 or 20 minutes late at the workplace. Also, you should be clear and direct while drafting an attendance management policy to ensure that there are no doubts in your employee’s minds.
Holidays and Other Leaves
Ensure that your attendance management policy covers all the holidays including paid holidays, floating holidays, etc. Also, give equal importance to religious holidays. Besides providing information on the types of leaves, the employer must also properly define the number of leaves an employee can take in a month or annually.
Comply with Employment Laws about Employee Leave
Employment laws should be taken into consideration while drafting an attendance management policy. The company should frequently review the attendance policy to make sure that the policy does not bypass any law. This will ensure that the rules in your policy comply with the existing employment laws.
Work-life Balance
Always remember that your employees are human beings and they need time to de-stress themselves to continue working efficiently. Therefore, an organization needs to ensure that the employees have enough time to maintain a proper work-life balance. Happy employees work harder, work better, and create a supportive environment in the workplace.
Conclusion
In conclusion, companies with a well-defined attendance policy always perform better than the ones that don’t have this policy. Besides having the policy, it is also crucial for the organization to have an online attendance management system that enables real-time tracking and provides automated inputs for payroll processing in no time. Proper management of leaves can be difficult and time-consuming, but with an online attendance management system, you can make it more efficient and easier to manage.
