Rewarding Attendance

This is actually quite an interesting topic – should you hand out an additional reward to someone for coming into work?  Basically give them a reward for just doing their job – something that they are getting paid for anyways?

Well to answer the question I’m afraid this time I’m going to have be a bit ambivalent so … Yes and No … or it depends would be my answer.  Allow me to explain.

What is the structure of your company?  Do you have a forward thinking organization that allows remote working or does everyone have to be “in the office” everyday?  If you do allow remote working, then lets be honest – what possible reason is there for someone being late?  They need to roll out of bed and sit down at a computer!  There should not be any tolerance for people taking advantage in this situation.  If however you do have an office based culture you are going to have to take into account weather and other travel disruptions – while all of your staff should be expected to be in the office 10-15min before the start of their shift (after all they will need time to grab that first coffee or smoke and get their computer setup prior to getting started with their job) there are sometimes issues that are outside of your employees control that will impact them.  Make sure that you are able to track these instances and also allow/disallow based on the circumstances appropriately.

 

Sickness and Absenteeism – well people get sick … you should really not be considering this as a measurement UNLESS you see a definite pattern – for example the employee is ALWAYS sick on Mondays or Fridays OR they are sick for a couple of days just before they go on holiday.  If this happens it must be dealt with and immediately.  Otherwise follow your standard guidelines – probably something like 3days+ of sick in a row require a Doctor’s note etc…  One important point – if someone is sick and you do offer remote work as an option … they should not choose to work from home (if they are scheduled to be in the office) and claim that they were sick.  If they are truly sick they should not be working.  If they are not sick – they should be in the office!

Now hopefully you are capturing lateness and absenteeism as part of schedule adherence and rewarding it appropriately in your end of your reviews or something similar.  However there is no harm in having an employee rewarded for good behaviour and something small that is made public to the rest of the team is a great incentive.  Heck even a gift certificate to Amazon or the equivalent for a not too large sum is something that people will strive for.  A friend mentioned in passing that he had heard of one company that had problems with absenteeism introduced a free lottery for staff – however tickets were only provided to employees that made it into work on Fridays – if you think about it … this is more of a carrot than a stick and as they say “you’ll catch more flys with honey than … “