Highlights
- A comprehensive time and attendance policy should clearly outline your organization’s expectations regarding time off, tardiness, absenteeism, and breaks.
- Companies should clearly communicate their attendance policies and provide comprehensive training to managers to ensure fair and consistent enforcement.
- EPAY offers smart time and attendance solutions to help businesses manage their hourly workforce. Contact us to learn more!
Creating a time and attendance policy is particularly important when you manage an hourly workforce. Chronic absenteeism is a problem for most employers—one that hurts productivity and the bottom line. According to the Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index, companies employing service workers lose $84 billion annually due to absenteeism alone.
Beyond financial consequences, inefficient time and attendance management can also have legal consequences. Inaccurate timekeeping records can result in wage and hour violations and costly lawsuits.
To mitigate these risks, employers need to design robust time and attendance policies tailored to their hourly workforce. This article explores considerations and strategies to get started.
What to Include in a Time and Attendance Policy?
A well-crafted time and attendance policy is crucial for maintaining order, fairness, and compliance within an organization.
Your company’s time and attendance policy should detail your expectations about:
- Work hours. Clearly define regular work hours, overtime eligibility, and any shift differentials.
- Time off. Specify the types of time off available (e.g., vacation, sick leave, personal time) and the policies governing their accrual, usage, and carryover.
- Tardiness and leaving early. Outline the consequences of arriving late or leaving early, including any point deduction systems or disciplinary actions.
- Meal breaks. Outline the company’s policy regarding meal breaks, their duration, and whether they are paid or unpaid.
- Absenteeism. Establish guidelines for acceptable absence rates and the procedures for requesting and approving absences.
- Flexible work arrangements: If applicable, outline the company’s policies for flexible work arrangements, such as telecommuting or flextime.
Make sure to specify the steps taken to address attendance issues, including warnings, disciplinary actions, or counseling.
Beyond common workplace attendance policies, you can also:
- Specify how employees should notify managers when they need to deviate from their assigned work schedule.
- Create an explicit overtime policy, prohibiting employees from working overtime unless they have prior manager’s approval.
- Require employees to sign an attendance policy agreement.
Communicate your Time and Attendance Policy Clearly
Once you’ve developed a comprehensive time and attendance policy, it’s essential to communicate it effectively to all employees.
Here are some strategies to ensure everyone understands and follows the policy:
- Make it part of your onboarding process.
- Include it in your employee handbook, job descriptions, and performance reviews.
- Conduct mandatory training sessions to explain the policy, answer questions, and address any concerns.
- Periodically remind employees about the policy through company-wide announcements, newsletters, or team meetings.
Train Managers on Your Company Attendance Policies
To ensure fair and consistent enforcement of your attendance policies, it’s essential to provide managers with comprehensive training.
Here are some key areas to consider:
- Ensure managers fully understand the policy’s expectations, consequences, and procedures.
- Emphasize the importance of applying the policy equitably to all employees, avoiding favoritism or discrimination.
- Teach managers how to review and interpret time and attendance reports to identify trends and potential issues.
- If your time-tracking system offers real-time alerts, train your managers in how to use them to monitor attendance in real time and address problems promptly.
Ensure Your Company Attendance Policies Include Time Clock Procedures
When employees don’t clock in and out properly, it creates compliance problems and opportunities for time theft. In addition to common workplace attendance policies, consider these specific time clock procedures:
For employees who punch conventional or Biometric time clocks
- Assign a designated time clock to each employee, ensuring employees are where they should be before punching the clock.
- Make sure employees clock in before engaging in compensable activities like donning and doffing required items like uniforms or safety equipment—otherwise, it’s a wage and hour violation.
- Establish meal break procedures, including that mandated meal breaks are taken in full.
- Require that employees sign off on their timesheets every pay period.
- Treat missed punches as a serious occurrence. Without consequences, some employees may use missed punches to cover late arrivals and early departures.
For employees who use a Mobile time-tracking app
- Formally train employees to use the time-tracking app properly.
- If your employees download your time-tracking app on their smartphones, obtain their signed consent.
- Direct managers to review mobile time-tracking reports regularly, ensuring employees are clocking in/out from approved GPS coordinates.
- If your mobile time-tracking app offers geo-fencing and geo-tracking capabilities, direct your managers to use them.
Does Your Time-Tracking System Support a Rigorous Company Attendance Policy?
You can have the best attendance policies in the workplace, but they can only be as strong as your time and attendance system. Very few time-tracking systems are specifically designed around the requirements of hourly employees.
If your current time-tracking system doesn’t provide the capabilities or analytics you need to enforce rigorous attendance policies, it might be time to get a smarter time and attendance solution.
EPAY’s time and attendance system is the leading choice of medium and large employers managing an hourly workforce. We offer a range of time collection methods and devices—including biometric time clocks and our advanced mobile time-tracking app—advanced analytics, real-time manager alerts, and more.
Ready to simplify your time and attendance management? Schedule a live demo today to discover EPAY’s software!
