I'm curious how other business operators are evolving their time and attendance policies in light of the labor shortage. Please comment below or link to any relevant materials on the topic.
I acquired two manufacturing businesses this year and am leading them both day to day. Like many established manufacturing businesses, we operate with a very traditional view of time and attendance. My longer term employees are accustomed to the schedule and have great attendance; whereas, my newer employees struggle to keep perfect attendance. I'm interested in ways to provide more flexibility to my hourly employees (especially the newer ones that seem to need it) without killing the strong work ethic and disciplined culture exhibited by my longer term employees.
I'm considering this within a context where it is difficult to hire and retain skilled labor. If you have a talented new employee, how much imperfect attendance should they be allowed to get away with? Should their be a universally enforced formal policy or a more flexible approach? Is it better to accommodate someone who is tardy 1 or 2 times per week given how hard it is to replace that person with a new hire, or should you enforce the attendance policy and terminate the individual to preserve the standard for those who remain?
I know this is a complex topic and will depend on many factors that we won't be able to unpack here. If anyone is aware of any thought leadership on the topic, I'd appreciate your help in sharing. Thanks
Time and Attendance Policies in light of hiring/retention challenges
by a searcher from Anderson University
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People management needs to consider all of the levers that are available to you. Not just policies but also start with the principles, programs and practices. You make an astute comment alluding to the employee perceptions and the emerging rift between the two different segments. You may need to make a decision between the two cohorts, but that will be high cost (retention, motivation and productivity) so let’s try to avoid that choice in the first instance.
You also note the recruitment challenges and therefore the limitations on that lever, ie recruiting with the lens of fitting employees into a particular lens and work environment: Rigid and timely attendance is a core value and principle of your firm.
I would encourage you to reflect on a few other options:
1) Test the perceptions of these two staff groups about the issue. This could be via anonymous staff engagemeny surveys, one-on-ones, focus groups or observations from the floor. The older cohort might not really have a problem with the additional flexibility in principle. This will give you a new set of options you might have ruled out.
2) Try to understand the cause of the attendance issue. Maybe it hasn’t been communicated before. Maybe the employees don’t understand the impact on their peers and the business performance. Are there motivational issues that cab be addressed through non-financial and financial incentives? How are these issues being communicated by your line managers? Maybe they just don’t care and they need to be managed out of the business.
3) Work redesign. Is there a reason why timely attendance is so business critical? Are you operations lean, agile and optimised for productivity? Or are you overly dependent on a very particular skillset and tasks with critical failure points that create bottlenecks or supply risks? Do you need to consider what tasks can be outsourced or automated in order to minimise the human capital risks?
I hope some of these questions are helpful. Good luck.