Attendance

Attendance is 1 of 11 catagories we use in our annual performance appraisals.
How would you handle an employee who has a problem with absenteeism and tardiness and shows no improvement from one year to the next? Should the amount of the increase be affected by this? If so, any suggestions?

Comments

  • 7 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • My first response is that the attendance problem should be addressed through your normal discipline process, which if not corrected could lead to termination.
    On our performance reviews each catagory is rated 1-5 (5 being best). If the attendance catagory is rated a 2 (marginal) then this would in effect lower their overall score and therefore also lower the increase they would receive.
  • Welcome to the forum, jdn! I hope you'll find it very helpful and informative, as I have.

    Attendance is one of the hardest things I've had to deal with in HR. My boss says we will get what we'll tolerate, and he's right. We're re-writing our policy manual now, and the part that is taking the longest is where to draw the lines for attendance.

    Termination is a hard decision to make when you have an otherwise good employee that just can't make it to work on time, or who has a tendency to call in frequently. And, if the problem is not addressed but is allowed to continue, the other employees can really get down on management.

    We feel the raise reflects their performance, and that includes their attendance. I saw a fellow get a 4 cent raise (I think) once, and it was because he worked, on average, four days a week. He was livid, but we couldn't count on him.

    I have also found that it will never get any easier to deal with attendance. I had to strong arm a supervisor into giving a written warning to an employee who was late five times last month. (One day, he was almost 90 minutes late!) It's especially tough when one department may not necessarily need to have people in at a specific time, but so far I have pushed for equal treatment in all depts and I think we're going that way with the policy.

    Good luck!
  • >My boss says we will get
    >what we'll tolerate, and he's right.
    xclap

    Welcome to the Forum, jdn!

    James Sokolowski
    HRhero.com
  • If you want to tie attendance with appraisals, put your problem employee on probation for the next appraisal period. Tell him or her what the consequences will be. Either get your needed improvement or follow through on the promised consequences.
  • My company uses a point system for attendance. But similar to JDN we have a 10 category performance appraisal, and attendance is one of the categories. I tell my managers to take into account an employees attendance when calculating the other 9 categories. Meaning, that for Dependability, it should rate slightly lower because the employee cannot be depended upon to show for scheduled work days.
    My Two Cents.
    HRVolley
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