How to Stop Poor Employee Attendance

With businesses reopening across the U.K, workers everywhere are having to readjust to the 9-5.

An adjustment period, or even flexitime for the first few weeks/months is fine. But when you want to get back to your ‘normal’ how can you stop poor employee attendance?

Here’s our two step-process to reduce employee absenteeism:

1) Make an employee attendance policy

How long do you accept as a grace period? How much overtime can you give? What about sickness and holiday, or time-keeping rules?

If an employee doesn’t know the answers to these, how do you expect them to keep to your time and attendance schedule?

Make the policy as open, clear and available as possible. Have printed and digital copies available for everyone and ensure that your labour force has read and understood these terms.

Not only will this help set expectations. But it will keep a clear standard to refer to for any employee tribunals or disciplinary action down the road.

2) Enforce your policy fairly

Have employee’s clock in and out, so that there is a record of when they arrive and leave. Using a biometric time clock will ensure employees are on-premise when they say they are.

If employees are late, a time and attendance system can help automatically deduct pay or send an alert to managers so that they can keep track of absence.

Keep track of employees who are absent, late or sick. This document or report will flag repeated absence and show you if there is a pattern with a single employee or a department.

Takeaway Tip

Although being thorough with your attendance policy is important, always remember that workers are people. If your benchmark is set clearly, employee’s will know when they aren’t going to meet them, and hopefully will be more transparent.

Workers can have bad days or emergencies and not always be on time, and this is where your human management comes to play. Only you know what is and isn’t acceptable.

Find out more about our clocking systems here.

Any questions, or if you’d like to request a free online demo to see how clocking in with Citadel could work for you, call 01761 410015, email us or click the chat icon.