Missed Punches - disciplinary action

skippy

We have a time clock and had 252 missed punches last year for 28 employees. In January, management said there would be an allowance for 4 missed punches per year with disciplinary action to follow. We are not in a position to give written warnings then termination. We need an alternative. I have two options:
1) We calculate that each missed punch costs our company $4.76 to fix (at a minimum). We do annual evaluations but it is clearly stated that there are no guarantees of salary increases annually or at evaluation time. Does anyone see a problem with reducing any amount of the next rate increase by $4.76 for each missed punch above 4 per year?
Option 2) Employees earn 1 1/2 hours of personal time for each month of perfect attendance. I'd like to change that to 1 hour of personal time for perfect attendance and 1/2 hour of personal time for perfect punches. I think the employees would prefer this option because they have no control over the health, but they are in full control of the time clock.
Does anyone have any other options they might like to share? Thank you

Hatchetman

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 03-16-02 AT 12:36PM (CST)[/font][p]It's not clear form your post, what is happening. Are the employee's just not punching in...or is it a mechanical problem? If the former, why aren't the employees punching in? Aren't there things you can do to address the failure of the punch-in at the very time it happens? What has been the "non punch-in rate" over the years? Don't you expect in a sitation like that is that there will always be non-punch-ins -- is 4 a realistic number?

In many states, such as Calfornia, it is illegal to fine an employee in the manner you're proposing with the first option.

Your second option sounds better, but do you address the oppostie problem of employees who fail to punch out?

Rockie

Our policy states that consistent misuse of the time clock is grounds for disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment. It's usually the same people who miss punches. There are a variety of reasons for this, but we look upon this as a responsibility of employment. I agree it does take a lot of time as well as extra expense for payroll to have to manually correct times. We have also gone to a system where the supervisors have to actually make these corrections electronically before they are passed on to payroll. You would be surprised at the decrease in missed punches since this has become a supervisory responsibility.

cebudragonlady

I am puzzled as to why it costs $ 4.76 for EACH missed punch.What is not clear -is what kind of time system costs so much to correct ? . In our factory, sure, there are missed punches every day. All punches are reviewed every day by the shop supervisors and myself. Review of missed punches and corrections take maybe , at most- on a real bad day , 5 minutes .And it costs a lot LESS to fix , on -line in the computer !

WOCO Frank

I agree, the dollar figure seems pretty high - I would see that as a symptom of some other administrative inefficiencies perhaps.

We have 300 employees and correct about 60 missed punches each week. It takes one person about 2 hours.

That doesn't mean we don't see it as a serious problem, though. While some missed punches are legitimate, others are an intentional means of cheating on time. Our employees all pass by video cameras on their way in and their way out. If I find a serious discrepancy, I terminate.

We also ding location managers in their performance reviews if they fail to keep missed punches to a reasonable level.