How to Improve Your Employee Attendance Record

Building something from scratch and watching it grow and blossom is a truly wonderful thing. This analogy is especially true when speaking about building your own business from the ground up. In the business world, you get out what you put in. If you’re dedicated, committed, and ready to put the hours in, you’ve already given yourself a great advantage over many of your competitors. As a manager/business owner however, once established your business may provide you with different potential challenges. That’s why today, we’re going to be looking at how to improve your employee attendance record. A business’ employees are its backbone, and it can only be as strong as its weakest employees. We know that we may all need a sickday once in a while, we all injure ourselves, and we all have real-life commitments that can get in the way of our working lives, but is your employee attendance record hindering your business? If so, then it could be time to incorporate the right time tracking software into your business structure. If your employee attendance record is giving you cause for concern, take a look at these tips and attendance records will soon improve.

Set clear expectations

Remember, you’re the boss and what you say goes. While we would never advise that you abuse your power and make unreasonable demands, at the same time you need to ensure that employees understand what your company expects of them. If you take a relaxed attitude to sick days, personal days, late arrivals, and early finishes, the sad reality is that some employees may use this to their advantage. Think about it, if you arrive ten minutes late for work and nobody pulls you up on it, the next day you’ll be far more tempted to again arrive late, because you know that you can get away with it. If however, you arrive late and are kindly reminded by your employer what time your shift is supposed to begin, and are informed that you won’t be paid for the time that you didn’t work, the next day you’ll almost certainly ensure that you arrive on time. Inform employees that time off for legitimate reasons is fine, but ideally could they provide as much notice as possible, so necessary cover can be arranged if necessary.

Incorporate time tracking software

When it comes to your employee attendance record, the right time tracking software is, without a question, one of the most effective tools to have at your disposal. The idea behind timesheet software is that it monitors the days, weeks, months, hours, and minutes employees spend at work. Not only that, it also helps to monitor how much time is being spent on each specific project. The thing to remember is that time tracking software is not designed to let you spy on your employees and to make sure they aren’t slacking, it is to identify strengths and weaknesses and to then act accordingly. If for example, you can see that you have one employee assigned to a project with a fast-approaching deadline, and you can see that that employee is behind schedule, you can then pull other employees off of less-pressing projects and place them on the more urgent tasks instead. Not only that, but it also lets you monitor employee attendance records. Employees must use the software to track their work hours, and this can be done in a very user-friendly way if you find the right solution. The advantage here is that you can access attendance records of each employee at the touch of a button. If you can see that one or two employees have had much more time off than other members of staff, you can use this info to take them to one side, sit down with them, and see if there is a problem. You’d be amazed by how more punctual employees become with the incorporation of time tracking software, so why not give it a shot yourself?

Improve employee morale with an employee attendance record

A business is only as strong as its weakest employees, and as you know, an unhappy employee is never going to be a productive employee. Negativity is unfortunately contagious, and it only takes one or two negative and unhappy employees to really drag down the morale of your entire company. Basically, what we’re trying to say here is that you should do everything in your power to boost the morale of your employees. Treat them with respect and like human beings, praise them when they do a good job, don’t berate them in front of their peers if they struggle, and don’t set unrealistic goals and targets for them. Again, this is another reason why time tracking is so useful, because it helps identify when/if employees are facing difficulties with a certain project and lets you assign help for them, rather than working them into the ground. How you run your business is entirely up to you, but it is always advisable to keep employee morale as high as possible. This helps building trust, it boosts productivity, and it also means that staff are more likely to show up for work when they’re supposed to.

Track employee leave

As far as running a business is concerned, when it comes to employee absence you need to know exactly who has had time off, and when. You see, everybody is entitled to holiday days and personal days, but don’t just try to keep tabs on who was off, and when, through memory alone. You see, this goes back to employee morale. It’s no good having one member of staff having close to four weeks off per year due to illness, yet another facing disciplinary action if they have had just two weeks off. Employees want and deserve to be treated fairly, which basically means that they all want and deserve the same amount of time off from work each year. To ensure that there is no confusion when it comes to time off, make sure you track employee leave and absences throughout the year. Time tracking software allows you to do exactly that as employees are required report their hours and log what it is that they’re working on. If they’re off work, it will show up in the system and you can then tally up time off and see precisely who is off work, when, and why. Accurate data which can be accessed at the click of a button will help to avoid any discrepancies and takes away any guesswork when it comes to employee time off.

Make sure you communicate with your employees

When it comes to employee absence, unless there is a clear-cut reason for why they were off work it is always advisable that you speak to them and communicate face-to-face. People often see this as managers berating employees for daring to take time off from work but in reality it is often the exact opposite. If an employee has been off work for an unusually large amount of time, or if they’ve perhaps had more sick days than they are supposed to, something could potentially be wrong. Sitting down with them and speaking with them face-to-face will allow you to get to the bottom of what is going on. It could simply be a case of them just getting sick a lot more frequently than average, or there could be other underlying issues that need addressing. If an employee is stressed or struggling, this could be reflected in the amount of time they’ve taken off of work. By using time tracking software you can identify potential issues and find out whether help is required. This helps showing that you care and helps build trust, which in turn will boost morale and make them more likely to actually show up when they’re supposed to. It could also simply be a case of employees taking liberties, in which case you can let them know that they have had too much time off, and discuss this with them.

Be firm but fair

Finally, if your employee attendance record is giving you cause for concern, you may need to have a talk with your staff. Yes, we all get ill and we all are legally entitled to time off from work by law. In the event of excessive absence, or unwarranted absences, let them know that, while you appreciate the work they do, the amount of time they are having off from work is concerning, and work together with them to find a solution.