In my last blog, I started a discussion of schedule predictability and its impact on employee morale. In that first of a series of five articles, I addressed chronic understaffing. In this blog, I will talk about a second cause of schedule unpredictability: lax absenteeism policies.
The worst example I've seen is a manufacturer that allowed employees to call in a vacation day 30 minutes after the shift had started with no penalty. They also allowed employees to take their vacation in 15 minute increments. The result was chaos. Your problem may not be as bad as that, but if your employees are frequently called-in on short notice to cover for other absent employees, you have a problem with your time-off policies.
The best solution is to require employees to sign up in advance for most vacation. Assign a limit to the number of employees on vacation or other paid time off at the same time and stick to that limit. If absenteeism due to illness is a problem, ask for a doctor's note after the 2nd or 3rd occurrence of sickness in a year. Employees tire of covering for others on short notice and often want lax policies fixed even more than management does.
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