Attendance Policy

Frenchie

Our attendance policy states that if an associate is absent 10 or more days within a rolling 12 month period they are in violation of policy and subject to discipline. We have a new supervisor who is fairly black and white. He had an associate who was absent for six days due to his brother-in-law being killed in a violent crime. Our funeral leave does not cover brother-in-laws, therefore this was unpaid time off. The supervisor feels this should be counted toward the days allowed by the policy. I feel it should'nt because of the circumstances, however I also realize that making exceptions to policy could create problems. Any advice or policy suggestions would be very helpful.

Margaret Morford

Frenchie,

I agree with you. Your attendance policy should always have a special circumstances clause. If it doesn't, do you have a leave of absence policy? I'd grant this guy a 6 day leave of absence, which would take you out of the attendance policy. Hope that helps!

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]

Carol CA

I agree that not everything can be black and white and you have to look at the circumstances. I would count all of those 6 days as one incident. That still leaves him 9 more to go.

Gillian

I agree with Margaret, but I think that you have a bigger problem and that is the supervisor. What an awful message would be sent to the employee and everyone else when they found out that this was counted as an absense. This instance is the clue that should tell management that they have a supervisor who will create big time morale problems if he/she doesn't modify their behavior and bring a bit of common sense into the decisions.

Miriam George

Related to this question: We are in the process of developing an Absentee Policy. We do not have one in place at this time. I would love to receive some sample policies for consideration. If any of you are willing to share them, please email me at: [email]mgeorge@blitzusa.com[/email]

System

I agree that there needs to be some leeway due to the extenuating circumstances, however, you do have to be careful. Does your policy provide for any supervisory discretion? Providing one employee with flexibility and not another could lead to problems down the road.

I am in the process of reviewing our attendance and punctuality policy as well. In our policy, employees are in a "needs improvement" category if they are out for non-FML illness or unscheduled absences for 91 hours within a 12 month period. For punctuality, it's "needs improvement" for 8 occurrences of tardiness within a 12 month period. I'd be glad to provide more details if anyone is interested, and I'd love to see or hear about other examples out there. My e-mail address is [email]fountain@ocls.lib.fl.us[/email] and my fax number is (407)835-7630. Thanks!

sawyert

91 hours seems like a high number. When an employee is categorized as a "needs improvement" what does that mean in your policy? Are they in a progressive discipline process? If yes, does the 91 hours trigger a verbal or written warning? Do you have a set number of hours that employees receive as a benefit for sick and/or personal days in addition to the 91 hours before they are categorized as "needs improvement?

We do not have sick/personal days for our salaried non-union employees. Approval of time off for illness/personal reasons is left up to the discretion of the managers and counseling/disciplinary action is initiated when the manager feels the time is becoming excessive. What our company has struggled with is what is considered "excessive". As you can imagine leaving it up to the manager's causes much inconsistency across the organization and the managers continually asked for HR to give them hard and fast guidelines on what that magic number should be.

I am trying to determine if we should establish a set guideline identifying a set number of hours that an employee can be absent before it is considered to be excessive. What do other company's have as their trigger level of hours/occurences before disciplinary action is started?

Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks.