Attendance policy or attendance strategy?

Photo credit:  Microsoft

As most of you know, I used to work in the HR field.  I had the pleasure of working in different operational areas, sometimes within the same company.  I’d have to say my favorite was supporting technology the three times I was able to work in that realm because those folks used their HR partners in a different manner than most of the rest of the world seems to.  HR can be a very polarizing career, wrought with enforcing rules and regulations while offering very little value to the business and its bottom line unless your company goes out of its way to utilize the wealth of knowledge their HR partner can contribute to growing the company.  It’s old-school personnel and it’s changing, albeit slowly.  

I spent more than ten years in this field, so it’s not surprising from time-to-time I think about it in terms of what I could have done differently, many times playing “what if” scenarios in my head.  Last night was one such evening, which had me lying in the dark thinking about the call center environment and attendance policies.  I know, I know, there are better things to think about … what should happen next in the books I am writing? Should I blog about this or that?  What does my week look like?  Regardless, it happened and I had an epiphany of sorts.

The most recent call center I worked at had an attendance policy as most seem to.  It was fairly punitive as most call center attendance policies are, and I thought to myself, “What if there wasn’t a policy?  What if, instead, it was more about an incentive to get people to come to work and love what they do instead of being afraid of calling out sick?”  Since leaving the HR field, I’ve done a lot of soul searching over why companies treat people like children, especially when it comes to attendance and warning them about being out sick too much (this shit even happens to the salaried, non-hourly folks where their contributions should be counted, not how many days they make it to work).  Never mind the fact we kill ourselves even when we are sick by working from home and far into the night and early morning when we should be resting and getting better.  No company ever sees that, and if they do, they turn the other cheek.  It’s all about butts-in-seats.  

So, I got to thinking about attendance policies and wondered about offering incentives instead.  Blow away the attendance policy, let people manage their own health and bodies, and give them something as “thanks” for being at work regularly.  My first thought was to offer an extra day off each month for perfect attendance, but as I sit here writing this, I am reminded that we’re not all cookie-cutter and some people may prefer a different kind of incentive.  That’s when knowing your people comes in very handy (Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em is a great book to get you started on why this is important).  What do they like to do in their spare time?  Is there something they’ve been saving for or would prefer to have as motivation to continue contributing to the company?  

The idea is that, given a choice to obtain something they want, people will think twice about making one decision over another in order to get that thing they want.  Companies should have less of a problem of people calling out if they make attendance at work a positive thing.  

This really is just a thought swirling in my head at the moment, and of course I don’t have a company I could contribute this to because I’m not in HR anymore.  There are little details that would need to be worked out as well, such as what to do when people get sick and should stay home if they are contagious.  Perhaps some kind of incentive for those that maybe made it half-way through the month with perfect attendance?  In any event, I’ll leave it to my HR friends to look at doing something completely different and employee-friendly by spring-boarding off this idea.  Maybe this could start a new dawn of making work a positive thing that people don’t dread?