Attendance Policy

Prairie · January 2008

I am trying to come up with an attendance policy that is fair and equitable without penalizing those who are truly sick. We do have some abuse that is obvious to me, but not to our department heads. They think that because we give 12 sick days/year that the employees should be able to take them all. “How can you discipline an employee for using a benefit that is given to them?” On top of that, our STD doesn't kick in for 6 weeks, so it is to the employee's benefit to keep at least 6 weeks in the bank. We can accumulate up to 90 sick days. Our Administrator doesn't think that an Attendance Policy has anything to do with sick days. HELP! I did a search of the archives and came up with some ideas, but if anyone has a formal policy that would apply to an office environment, I would appreciate some input.

Dutch2 · January 2008

We talso 12 days sick pay per year. However, we do not consider attendance to excessive as long as it does not exceed 12 days.

System · January 2008

It's been a year since we combined our sick leave, vacation and personal leave into one PTO pot for each employee. It's been working very well.

NeedCoffee · January 2008

Ditto. We've seen absenteeism decline since going to a PTO system.

Prairie · January 2008

Very interesting about the PTO. Our top elected official has wanted that for a long time. This issue is that if we go to PTO, it would all have to be paid at termination. We have employees who have accumulated 90 sick days - that could be very expensive.

Thanks for your input!

NeedCoffee · January 2008

I would recommend not paying it out at termination. Ours is a use it or lose it policy with no accumulation. What you could do is phase out the accumulation over about 2 years or less. Just a suggestion.

NaeNae55 · January 2008

I agree. In a past life when we combined sick and vacation into a PTO we took only a small part of the sick balances. We put the majority of the sick leave bank into an extended leave bank. If those employees who had a large build up of sick leave were ever off for any illness longer than 1 week they could use that time instead of their PTO. If not, it was never going to be used anyway. We had some grumbling, and in the next few years it was only accessed one time. A few more years after that they discontinued it since it wasn't being used. All in all, most employees are happy with a PTO plan as it gives them more flexibility.

Good luck!

Nae

Nancyli · January 2008

The staff can have 50% of the base salary if they did not use the sick days, we have 10 days in a year and over 2 days, Certified doctor note should be presented to HR. It works.

Thanks.

Nancy

Attendance Policy

Comments