How to Reduce Absenteeism in the Workplace by Implementing a Point System

It is a known fact that absenteeism has a big effect on your bottom line, so controlling it has become a priority for employers. There are many reasons why employees may be absent from work or even late; sickness, death in the family, accident, jury duty, etc. No matter what the reason is, it should be communicated to management with enough time to allow them to find a replacement or prepare for the days the employee will miss accordingly. To control this, some companies opt for points & incidents. Having an advanced point system will allow you to address attendance issues, reward and/or deduct points, and enforce your company policies. If you already use a cloud-based Time & Attendance software, then your points should automatically flow into your system. The following are some ways that points & incidents can help you reduce absenteeism in the workplace.

Encourages Good Attendance Habits

An attendance policy provides the guidelines and expectations for employee attendance at work. Every company has their own policies. When using a point system, points are assigned to specific attendance incidents, depending on your own company’s policies. Incidents can be arriving late to work, leaving early, not showing up at work without prior approval, and more. Most timekeeping softwares allow administrators to change or edit policies at any point. These point policies are set by companies for fair and accurate enforcement. Keep in mind that points are not always negative, they can also be used to reward employees and to notify managers and supervisors when positive events occur. With that said, a point system can encourage good attendance habits in your employees because they will not want to accrue enough points to potentially get let go or written up.

Easier Recordkeeping

Having a Time & Attendance software that automatically tracks points according to your company’s policies can not only reduce the workload of the HR department but help them keep track of all employees’ points. Your Time & Attendance software should automatically track these points on each of your employees’ profiles. Once an incident is tracked by the software, it immediately becomes part of that employee’s attendance history. If at any moment managers want to see how an employee is doing, they can easily log into their account and view this. Also, if at any moment you need a report of an employee’s history, you can easily run a report and have it in a matter of minutes, which brings us to the next point.

Instant, Detailed Reports

In the old days, whenever a report had to be made, people would have to manually calculate the numbers and assemble everything by hand. Now, online time and attendance software allows the HR department to generate reports that give managers and supervisors everything they need from absentee policy assignments to incidents and points each employee has accrued. Detailed reports also have the capability to show year to date history and other data requested by the administrator, depending on the system setup.

Most timekeeping softwares have the ability to track points and incidents. Dominion’s Time & Attendance software automatically assigns points when employees have irregular punches. Once a threshold is reached, it alerts the manager or supervisor that they need to address the employee’s behavior. This helps ensure that employees don’t abuse their PTO, sick days, or number of approved absences. By tracking absences, managers will be able to see which employees are taking too much time off and they will notice certain patterns that will help them address the problem in a more effective way.

Sources:

http://www.mappinc.com/images/benchmarking-reports/2016-HR-Attendance-Policies-Benchmarking-Handbook-148.pdf