Create an Excellent Employee Attendance Policy and Procedure

Tracking your employees’ attendance helps you give credit to punctuality while simultaneously carrying out disciplinary actions when needed. Tardiness and absences affect the company’s working force and consequently impact performance and operation. Instead of having an efficient working environment, a bad attendance record would cause delays in work production. 

Having an employee attendance policy and procedure will guide you and your employees on the demerits of tardiness and absences. This will be a kick start for your company to learn about attendance policy and improve your company’s productivity.

What Is an Employee Attendance Policy?

An attendance policy provides guidelines on matters such as tardiness, early outs, no-shows, leaves, and other related events. Primarily, it shows the employees the consequences of being late and absent at work. It’s a progressive disciplinary policy on how an employee will be dealt with regarding their failure to follow the guidelines.

What Is the Purpose of Employee Attendance Policy?

Through an employee attendance policy, you can set the importance of having a good attendance record for the company. It will be your reference to show when employees have a bad attendance record. This is so they will be motivated to be present and come on time in the future, as they are reminded and presented with accompanying disciplinary actions.

What Should You Include in the Employee Attendance Policy?

An excellent employee attendance policy should provide complete details of the rules on absenteeism and tardiness. It should have the duties of both the employees and heads in maintaining a good attendance record.

The following are included in an employee attendance policy: 

• Overview of the policy
• Scope of being absent and tardy
• What is considered an unforeseen absence
• Consequences of failing to register the time in and time out when entering and leaving the building
• Perks of having a good attendance record
• Duties of managers to maintain a good attendance record
• Disciplinary actions for consecutive absences and tardiness

These inclusions are the usual guidelines on attendance policy. Sample attendance policies will be listed below to assist you in creating one.

A Sample Employee Attendance Policy Template 

Overview

Employees under [company name] are expected to be present at work and come on time. Attendance is checked regularly to optimize [company name]’s work productivity. Thus, tardiness and absenteeism are not tolerated. The employee attendance policy indicates the guidelines for our expected working attendance.

This attendance policy applies to all employees regardless of position. 

Absenteeism and Tardiness

Absenteeism is the lack of presence of an employee from doing work responsibilities. It’s not sending a notice for not coming to work and neglecting to do assigned work.

Tardiness is when employees are not conscious of their time when coming to work, on breaks, and leaving work. It’s when employees are late to work, going beyond the given breaks, and leaving work earlier than expected.

Five offenses in a year for tardiness and absenteeism are tolerated. However, when one goes beyond five unexcused absences and tardiness, disciplinary actions will be administered.

All employees are expected to be present at work at the expected time to avoid delays in work production.

Failure of Checking In and Out

Employees are expected to check-in and out of the computer system. They need to come on or before 8 AM and leave the company premises at 5 PM.

Forgetting to clock in and out would require a report to the manager immediately. The manager would give a warning after three offenses. However, constant failure of checking in and out would be subject to disciplinary action.

Unforeseen Absences

Employees with medical emergencies and cannot come to work should inform HR. The unforeseen absence would be recorded as a paid leave.

However, unreported absences for more than five days will be considered unpaid absences. 

Always remember to inform the HR or manager of excused absences.

Example of unexcused absences are presented below:

• Going to a recreational event
• Not waking up on time
• Bad weather condition such as rain and storms
• Being too lazy to go to work
• Attending personal matters such as massages, eating out, etc.

Merits of Good Attendance Record

An employee who has less than three tardiness and absenteeism would be a candidate for [company name]’s good attendance award of the year. The employee would receive additional pay and a supplementary paid day off during the following year.

Having a good attendance record isn’t the only basis for the award. Performing well at work is also taken into account. The employee should have exemplary performance in building the company.

Duties of a Manager

Managers are expected to monitor the employees’ attendance. He/she sends out notices and warnings for employees who break the attendance policy. He/she also contacts employees who have constant absences and tardiness and informs HR when emergencies arise.

Disciplinary Actions

Disciplinary actions are given to employees who have continuous tardiness and absenteeism, along with work outputs that are not done well.

More than three unexcused absences and five tardiness will be subject to disciplinary actions. The following disciplinary actions are as follows:

• Attend counseling in the guidance department
• Cannot join company recreational activities
• Reduced paid leaves
• Termination for extreme cases

Start Now

Creating your own employee attendance policy and procedure would be a big challenge. Most of the best HR teams employ software for the records of attendance and creating employee attendance policies. They make use of a computer system to track the performance of employees, including their tardiness and absenteeism. Lanteria, one of the leading HR platforms, provides tons of employee attendance policy templates. Create your account and become one of the companies with the best HR team today with Lanteria!