How are you handling attendance policies without burning out your leadership team?

Question

We currently use a 9-point attendance system, don’t require doctor’s notes for normal call-outs, and we’re starting to feel like the policy is being gamed. The bigger issue is the operational fallout (constant call-outs mean constant schedule changes, client reshuffling, and leadership spending way too much mental energy on attendance).

For those of you with field teams, what has actually worked? Points systems, stricter probationary periods, doctor’s notes, progressive discipline, attendance bonuses, something else?

I’d especially love to know where you draw the line between being flexible and creating a culture where reliability actually matters.

anthonysalazar · Answer

Coming from the corporate world, I was inundated with useless meetings that bogged down my calendar and took away from my mental bandwidth to focus on revenue generating projects. So once I started my business and got a crew going, I've been a lot more mindful of how often I do team meetings and 1-1s. Right now we've been doing 1-1s every 2-3 months, and one overall team meeting every other month. I'm still in constant contact with my crew so I still have a pulse on what's happening but I can foresee I will need to up my cadence as my Team continues to grow.

wiringbyron · Answer

We do a Monday morning huddle with the entire team every Monday morning on Zoom. Once a month, we do that one in person and have breakfast together. Everyone gets one goal-setting and review meeting once a month. And I think that's it for us.

chuckhireexpert · Answer

we use a simplified request time off logger/tracker that asks what days the user is requesting and what reason, this will auto trigger an acknowledgment of point accumulation statement where they can e-sign and leave a paper trail for us to keep on our records. Makes it way easier when an employee can visually see "ok ive used "x" amount of time off or ive asked for "x" amount of days.

wiringbyron · Answer

Hi Rose, we've sort of gone the other way. We are extremely flexible. We let our employees block off times and dates in their own Jobber calendar.

They can take as much time as they want off. They can work half days, for all I care.

Now, this goes the other way as well. This summer, we were incredibly busy. My core team did not want any overtime, unfortunately, so I ended up hiring four additional employees, and we were using two to three sub crews throughout the summer. Now it's September, and things are slowing down a little bit, and unfortunately, it looks like there are fewer hours for everyone. This will be our next hurdle, and we're going to have to figure things out as we go here.

What I have tried to realize is that the schedule in construction is never going to be perfect. It does seem like it's almost a full-time role for someone to be dealing with that beast. There were times this summer where I just had to chill out, stare at that calendar, and make magic happen, honestly.

I don't know if that answered your question, but it was just something we've been dealing with this summer that was relating to your question.

Forum Discussion

How are you handling attendance policies without burning out your leadership team?

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