5+ Employee Attendance Policy Templates

Sep 13, 2023

No matter where or who you decide to work for, there are bound to be company policies that you will have to adhere to. Company policies are the rules and regulations that just about every employee will need to follow to ensure that order is maintained within the company. You may also see hr policies.

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Employee Attendance Policy Template

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• Google Docs
• MS Word
• Pages

Size: A4, US

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Attendance and Punctuality Policy

These policies cover just about everything from what an employee can do in the office to how they’re expected to perform. So let’s say that you want to create a policy that will tell your employees how attendance within the workplace will be handled. This would mean that you’re going to have to come up with an employee attendance policy and this article will teach you how to do that:

How to Create an Employee Attendance Policy

You realize that a lot of employees have been abusing when they should come into work and you finally feel the need to come up with an official attendance policy for your company. Coming up with an employee attendance policy will make things so much easier as you’re basically telling the employee when they should come to work, how many absences they’re allowed, what would happen if they decide to abuse their allowed vacation time and much more.

So, while you’re creating the attendance policy, here are the things that it should cover:

Employee Work Hours

Your attendance policy needs to be able to define what a work day would include. Is there a specific time that the employee has to start and end when coming into work? Are there a series of defined shifts which always starts and stops at a designated time? Is there just a set number of hours a day an employee has to work that will be recognized as him/her finishing a full workday? These are all things that you have to consider when writing the work hours in the policy. If hours vary, as is typical for retail or food service, describe how and where the hours the employees have put in will be posted. Also, you have to make sure that the policy clearly points out the procedure regarding how the employee will sign in and out of work.

Define Late or Missed Work Time

You need to be able to help the employee understand what constitutes as him or her being late for work. Is there a buffer zone before an employee is officially late? At what point in the workday is an employee considered as absent instead of just being late for work? Is there someone that has to be notified if ever the employee will be late or absent from work? If so, then what are the contact details of this person? Is it the employee’s responsibility to find someone else to cover his/her shift in the event of any unscheduled time offs?

The Benefits Offered When an Employee has Filed for Leave

These are all important as you want to tell the employee if he/she is qualified to take time out of work, how much the employee will be paid for the leave, and how they will go about in asking for the leave. Write a clear description of the paid and unpaid leave that is available for employees. This would include information regarding when and how an employee will be qualified for leave and how much they are able to accrue for every week, pay period, month, or even year. Be sure that you’re able to explain the policy regarding how the employee can make the leave request. This would include the deadline of when the employee may be able to file a request for a vacation leave and any blackout periods.

Holidays and Other Company Leaves

In the event that your business offers paid holiday vacation leaves, floating holidays or if the business will be closed for certain holidays with or without employee pay, then you have to make sure that your attendance policy has all the information that will cover all of those things. Also, you’ll need to able to cover any leaves for religious purposes as you may have a couple of employees who follow a certain religion in which they need to take leave for certain days to celebrate whatever important event constitutes their religion.

Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)

If your business meets the requirements for an FMLA-covered employer, that would mean you’re going to have to outline the process and qualifications that are required for an FMLA leave. It’s best that you appoint a single employee to handle any FMLA leaves and questions the employee has regarding that matter. This will make things so much easier on your end. Just make sure that you write down the complete name of the person you’ve assigned.

Military Leaves

Depending on the country that your business is based on, you may have to include military leaves into your attendance policy. The reason for this is that there might be those employees who will be required to serve while they’re still employed in your business. This would mean you’re going to have to come up with information regarding how your company will handle military leaves. As with FMLA, it’s a good idea to appoint someone to designate one particular employee will handle all military leaves or questions regarding the matter as anything related to this matter can be quite confusing. So pick someone who has extensive knowledge on the subject and write down that person’s complete name into the policy.

Leave of Absence

If your business offers any other options regarding other types of employee leave-of-absence, then you’re going to have to make sure that these are all covered by the employee attendance policy.

State and Local Laws

Depending on the laws of your country’s government or state, there will be some which will mandate allowable or protected leaves during certain events that an employee will have to attend. This would include school events, blood donations, or even volunteer at certain charities. To make sure that the law covers these leaves, you’ll need to go through the different laws of your state or country and be sure to include them in the attendance policy.

Discipline and Consequences

The last part that will be covered in the attendance policy should be the consequences should the employee violate it. You’re going to have to write down the steps that will be taken for various infractions, as well as the types of disciplinary action that will be taken against the employee depending on the severity of the violation:

Here are the disciplinary actions you’ll need to list down in the policy to ensure that all of your employees are aware of them:

• Verbal warnings. These are for the first-time offenders or to those minor offenses. For example, if an employee were to continuously come to work late at least 5 minutes after the start of his/her shift, then you can call the employee and have a personal chat as to why this shouldn’t always happen. Sometimes, this is all it takes to ensure that the employee will be reminded that he/she has to adhere to the attendance policy of your company.

• Written warnings. These are written in the event that employees fail to heed the many verbal warnings, or has done something that constitutes him/her receiving the written warning such as taking too many absences. You’ll have to write down the reason for receiving the warning, as well as the solution for the issue (a good example being that the employee will need to take part in mandatory training which will involve the discussion of the attendance policy).

• Employee termination. This is the kind of action that has to be done in the employee has failed to heed the written warning or has continued to abuse the policy by committing multiple violations in instances such as no longer reporting to work or not reporting to anyone regarding absences or lates on more than one occasion. You can send out an employee termination letter stating why the employee is being fired and that it’s effective immediately.

Be sure that this applies to all employees within the company as you do not want to be charged for favoritism or discrimination as these will just bring all sorts of problems.

The Importance of Having an Attendance Policy

Now that you’ve learned how to make the attendance policy, it’s important to remind you just why you need one in the first place. There are a ton of companies which make the mistake of not properly pointing out things such as how much vacation time an employee is required to have, how much they’ll be paid for the vacation of time when they’re qualified to take time off and much more. This can lead to all sort of problems as all of this is valuable information that your employees will want to learn during their entire stint in your company.

By creating an attendance policy that’s able to cover all of that, not only will you no longer have to deal with employees questioning the rules regarding attendance, you’ll also be able to point out when they should come to work and just how important it is that they should adhere to all of the things that are covered by the attendance policy. So be sure to go through whatever you’ve written in your attendance policy to make sure that you didn’t miss out on anything.

If you would like to learn more on how to create an attendance policy for your company or anything related to this particular topic, then all you have to do is go through our site, find the articles that contain the information and use what you’re able to gather to help you and your business out.