excused and unexcused absences

cbs · January 2003

I am looking for help in defining excused and unexcused absences.

Terri B · January 2003

You should consider changing it to scheduled and unscheduled. Using the terms excused and unexcused makes it seem like you will weigh each excuse and determine whether or not you will hold it against them. If you use scheduled and unscheduled the majority of the grey area is eliminated.

Don D · January 2003

Our hourly employee attendance policy defines excused (no points) absences as: Approved FMLA, military leave, documented jury duty, and approved funeral leave per policy. We have no state laws requiring other approved absences. We do not currently approve any other types of absences. Other types of absences fall within the penalties of our points system, a no fault system which allows for a number of absences charged to their remaining point balance. By the way, at one time, in our misguided attempt to be 'fair' and 'do what made sense', we excused multiple types of absences when certain documentation was produced or certain sob stories were told. Absences went through the roof, and so did overtime required to back up those people. When we changed to our current policy, all of those absolute needs for emergency absences seemed to just go away.

The problem I have with 'scheduled' is the employees who would claim, "I scheduled it; I told you about it the other day." Their definition of scheduled would not resemble mine.

Terri B · January 2003

Don,
Thanks for the great anecdotal information. You have experienced a whole lot more that I can even imagine.

We always require the request in writing. That way nothing is left to doubt. It is still up to the manager/supervisor to be consistent and even handed. You always have the supervisor or manager who will cover for the employee he wants to give a break.

But, back to my point of not trying to define what is or isn't a good excuse. This gets you out of that business.

Rockie · January 2003

We have scheduled and unscheduled. Employees are required to fill out a proper request for leave form and have it approved by supervisor in advance. Everything else is unscheduled (unless as per the ones Don stated). Employees are given 3 "free" unscheduled absences a year. On the 4th absence they are assessed a "penalty" PTO day which means they are charged the day they took plus a penalty day for an unscheduled absence. This may sound harsh, but we asked for employees' cooperation in curbing our massive call off problem but to no avail. There were much screaming, hollering and gnashing of teeth, but it has started to turn the tide around on this monster. It's sad, though, that we had to go to such measures to make people become "responsible".

safety · January 2003

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 01-31-03 AT 01:49PM (CST)[/font][p]We allow ee's to complete an absence request for needed time off. In tracking ee hours an Access database is used and computes % unavailability for each ee on a week to date, month to date and year to date basis. An ee has the option of completing an absence request for needed time off in advance and are approved accordingly. While we do not offer any sick leave, our system allows approx. 6 days per year of unexcused absences before progressive discipline occurs. In the tracking of ee hours discipline is issued when the MTD % and YTD % are 2.5% and greater. Excused absences are not used in the % unavailability calculations.

I like the scheduled and unscheduled terminology and will consider revising the policy. Sorry this didn't answer the excused and unexcused question.

blw · January 2003

We also switched to scheduled/unscheduled. In my industry, social services including childcare, attendance is crucial to being within state mandated ratios. Our childcare staff are only allowed 2 unscheduled absences without disciplinary action beginning. However, employees are allowed 5 occasions of scheduled absence and 3 occasions of scheduled tardy in each calendar year. That is beyond any vacation or sick leave since the part-time childcare staff only get 4 vacation days per year. Don, when you say you don't approve any absences other than what you listed, what do you when an employee asks for a day off and they don't have any vacation time? Are all requests turned down? Tks, Barbara

Rockie · January 2003

We are very generous with our PTO policy and on the front end at orientation we encourage employees to "bank up" at least two weeks in case of emergencies. We expect them to manage their PTO responsibly just as they do their bank accounts. If an employee goes into Leave Without Pay (LWOP), it could affect their review (Of course, this doesn't include FMLA, etc type leaves). Those individuals who have available time are given priority on requests; if an employee does request LWOP, it is granted on the condition that no one else in their area with sufficient leave is off.

Don D · January 2003

This policy applies only to the hourly workforce, none of whom have vacation. The no-fault attendance policy has a built in tolerance for missing a certain number of half-days or whole-days. Once they reach that point, they are terminated. We do have a form to use to request an excused absence but none of them are ever excused so I suppose I should reprint the form with (denied) already checked.

blw · January 2003

Thanks for explaining. Just out of curiosity, what industry are you in? With your hourly staff not having any vacation, do you have trouble recruiting and/or retaining? Tks, Barbara

Don D · January 2003

We are a manufacturer with two plants in the county of the state with the lowest unemployment rate, 2.5. We have no trouble recruiting, but have almost no turnover to speak of. Our attendance policy actually isn't that bad since it does allow as many as 14 half day no-fault absences without being terminated. All of our hourly, non-production staff are salaried and have great benefits. Practically zero turnover there too. Best features seem to be 401k 6% match at dollar for dollar and entire family insurance paid by company, health, vision and dental. Plus the added perk of having me as the HR guy. All that seems to ensure a happy group.

blw · January 2003

Benefits sound good! Tks, Barbara

blw · January 2003

Still one thing bugging me Don. Does the plant have a scheduled shutdown when hourly people are off? I guess I can't imaging working long term without ever being allowed vacation/time off that didn't count against me. Barbara

Don D · February 2003

I mispoke, or at least didn't give the whole story, when I said hourly people can't take vacation days. Actually, they do have vacation, as much as 5 weeks with 25 years. However, we do not allow them to take them one at a time without at least a week's notice; so, my point is that they cannot miss a day, unannounced and take a vacation day to save their bacon. In these cases, the point system charges them for missing and can conceivably cost one his or her job, even if they do have vacation. All of this is of course contractually agreed upon in the form of a collective bargaining agreement. We also allow them to sell their vacation back to the company in blocks of one week at minimum, if they so desire. Many of them do sell their vacation. Obviously this benefits the company as well since we avoid overtime costs associated with filling in behind them if they're actually off for the week. The form that they must complete to request it spells out very clearly that they may well suffer period of vacation shutdown when they will neither receive company nor unemployment insurance pay. We have two announced week-long shutdowns, one in July and one in December. These are technically and legally termed "Vacation Shutdown". Our state UI law recognizes these weeks as two weeks that are scheduled in advance which are vacation periods and the ee DOES NOT receive UI for those weeks (in Mississippi), period, whether or not they draw a vacation check from us. We strongly suggest to the ees that they save two weeks of vacation for these weeks so that they will have a check (vacation check) for those weeks. Otherwise they receive no pay nor do they receive UI. Since we are located only 45 minutes from four or five casinos in Vicksburg and another two on the Choctaw reservation in Philadelphia, we see quite a bit of vacation selling.

Sr HR · February 2003

How about this? Don't define 'em. I've always felt that defining "excused" was jousting with a windmill. What should be "excused" is often like beauty- in the eye of the beholder. For some people, being off on the first day of deer hunting season would be more important than attending a graduation ceremony of their niece or nephew. For some people, having a cold is an "excuse" for staying home. Others, get bored staying at home and would rather come to work even if they have a fever.

So who are you to say who's right and who's wrong? What makes your values right and mine wrong? So why play god and try to pass judgements on people? Absence is absence, period.! (Unless, of course, it's FMLA covered, sabboth, etc. etc.- then someone's defined it for you.)

Sr HR

Don D · February 2003

I think the point is, "What does our policy 'excuse' as opposed to which events does the policy apply discipline to?" Every employer must have a mechanism through which someone there makes decisions as to whether absences are 'excused' without penalty, discipline, loss of pay, etc., or whether those absences are penalized in some manner. The inference I would draw is that if the occurence is excused, it is without penalty to me. To answer your dilemma, though, of 'whose definition of excused is right', the answer is that the decision of the individual your company vests that authority in is, ultimately, the answer that will be applied to the situation, unless somehow changed through appeal.

March22Collector · February 2003

Don, Your attendance policy sounds a little like the one we currently adopted. Our former policy allowed for excused absences for just about anything, as long as a doc's slip or some kind of documentation was provided. It was getting out of hand though, with some employees missing 40-50 days per year with no unexcused absences on file, as they were submitting doc's slips upon their return. That policy was hurting us in two ways. First, because we were requiring doc's slips for absences we were ultitmately paying for the absences through our insurance. And, second, of course the amount of absences were outrageous.

We now have a policy that allows for 5 excused absences per year, of which 2 1/2 can be unexcused. An employee can be disciplined in two ways. One, if they exceed 5 total absences they will receive our first level of discipline. Their account will then be credited (excused absences only) back to 3 days, so that the employee will be able to miss another two days of excused absences without any discipline. And two, if the employee exceeds 2 1/2 unexcused absences they will be disciplined. The day they are disciplined for is credited back to their account and they remain at 2 1/2 days unexcused. They are disciplined for every unexcused absence over 2 1/2, until termination. We have a three step policy, written warning, 3-day, and termination. We only use verbal warnings as a training tool, if we feel that an employee may have truely not been aware of something.

Examples of excused absences are: An employees own injury or illness (not work related), in which case we now require an employee to have their doctor fill out OUR own medical form that states if the employee exhibited sufficient evidence to prevent performance at work, and if so for how long. Other excused absences include medical care for immediate family members, callings and funerals, and possibly weather emergencies.

Unexcused absences include lack of baby sitter, not providing proper documentation (our medical form) upon return to work, house related problems, car trouble, cat turned off alarm...hmmm.....lots of others...

Absences which do not get credited as excused OR unexcused include vacation, FMLA, ADA, Military Obligations, Jury Duty, Work related injuries, etc.

It has really been a good policy for everyone, and absences, for some really strange reason, are almost non-existent.

OK Don, you're probably thinking "That doesn't sound anything like our attendance policy!" But, It was the closest to ours of any other poster, I think. One more question for your though...If an employee comes to work 30 minutes late and says that their house caught on fire in the middle of the night, killed two of their dogs and totaled their car in the garage, is that still considered an unexcused absence in your book?

Don D · February 2003

>OK Don, you're probably thinking "That doesn't sound anything like our
>attendance policy!" But, It was the closest to ours of any other
>poster, I think. One more question for your though...If an employee
>comes to work 30 minutes late and says that their house caught on fire
>in the middle of the night, killed two of their dogs and totaled their
>car in the garage, is that still considered an unexcused absence in
>your book?

A year ago I was excusing the following: Mother had to drive to Oklahoma to meet ex coming from California with her child (2 days), employee attended child's graduation up East (2 days), Employee wrongly institutionalized for being present at a late-night apartment altercation (i.e. thrown in jail for whupping up on friend girl), Employee 2 hours late due to flat tire on way to work. Policy called for it to be no call-no show. I determined ee had no opportunity to call and had to be late since he had a flat and no way to call in from his car. And on and on and on. We changed back to the 7 point no fault system which excuses NO absences other than FMLA, military, jury duty, bereavement leave according to guidelines, and Comp. No more excused absences for cats turning off alarms, house flooded by plumbing problem or body parts caught in zippers. The point system is specific and allows for plenty of no-fault occurences if people will reasonably rise to a minimum level of work ethic. There is no policy in existence which employees will not 'milk'. The trick for H.R. is to find one that will be subject to the least amount of milking possible. P.S: I also charged a half point to the guy who told me he missed half a shift because his wife had just returned from a 5 week trip and they needed a chance to be familial while the kids were gone to school.

POPEYE · February 2003

We try to take the subjectivity out of the hands of supervisors
and have a NO FAULT policy. Regardless of why you are absent or
tardy it is an attendance incident. We allow 4 in a rolling 6 month
period with no penalty and start a 3 step disciplinary process on the
5th. Once everyone became familiar with the policy it has worked very
well.

excused and unexcused absences

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