Encouraging Employee Attendance – would this work for you?

With some sources suggesting that as many as 50% of all employee absences are not taken because of genuine illness or other bona fide reasons, and with literally hundreds of millions of work days being lost each year in the US and the  UK, it’s essential that organizations establish absenteeism policies which let their workers know precisely what’s acceptable and what’s not. However, there is perhaps an even more basic decision that companies need to make, and that concerns whether they wish to adopt a policy which punishes poor attendance or rewards good attendance.
Studies have shown that companies who have rewarded good attendance, by offering either cash or non-monetary incentives or privileges, have experienced varying degrees of success. While many have demonstrated that reward systems are often more effective than those which seek to punish or penalize ‘offenders’, one of the biggest difficulties with reward systems is that, typically, employees who abuse sick leave tend to value the time away from work more than the financial reward, and so they’re simply not motivated to change their behavior.

What can you do to improve employee attendance?
Two examples of systems which have worked well to encourage better employee attendance  take very different and opposite approaches to the problem.

One tactic is known as: “Paid Time Off”, which lumps together vacation, personal and sick leave but allows for all the time off to be allocated to vacation.  For some organisations, this has proved to be highly effective in discouraging periods of short-term sick absence (whether bona fide or not), which are some of the most disruptive to their employers. Basically, given a choice between taking the odd day off sick when the individual might actually be well enough to attend work and adding that day on to the allocation for legitimate annual leave, most prefer to do the latter.
Another method works by holding employees themselves accountable for their unscheduled absences. In the case of the ‘no fault’ system, each employee is allocated a certain number of days for unscheduled absence, but the reason for the absence is completely disregarded by the employer. Once the allocation is used up, the company would then be free to bring its disciplinary procedures into play and to dismiss the individual if it needed to come to that.

Of course there are numerous different systems and programs which companies can adopt to discourage absenteeism, and you may look at these and think “these won’t work for me”, but if you’re experiencing high absenteeism which  you suspect includes a lot of absences which are not really genuine, maybe it’s worth looking into your current practises and asking: is this working? What might work better?

What is essential is that whatever you decide you  publicize your policies so that no employee is left in any doubt as to the consequences of taking unauthorized leave.

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You’ll find lots more information about dealing with employee attendance, performance management, appraisals, and the all -important skills of giving and receiving feedback, in our comprehensive on-line library. Sinply click on the link below and you can find out more about how to join and access this highly valuable resource.

And for more information to help you with the people side of management,
including how to improve employee motivation and get the best out of your team, take a look at these other great resources:

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