LDRDocs/Foundations and Governance/General Policies/Attendance.md

Attendance is a key factor in job performance. Punctuality and regular attendance are expected of all employees. Excessive absences (whether excused or unexcused), tardiness, or leaving early is #unacceptable. If you are absent for any reason or plan to arrive late or leave early, you’re expected to receive authorization from a supervisor before doing so, or at least notify your supervisor promptly.

Absences can't be entirely avoided because life happens, but everyone is expected to minimize unplanned absences as much as possible.

Types of absense and attendance issues

We classify attendance situations a few different ways to make it easier to talk about and understand them.

Planned absense

We consider an absence planned when it was communicated about far in advance and received sign-off by affected people. Generally speaking, an absence is considered planned when everyone it will effect knows about it at least a week ahead of time, but several weeks is preferred.

Unplanned absence

We consider an absence unplanned when we receive short notice about it. We expect the amount of notice to line up with how soon an employee could have anticipated the absence.

Unauthorized absense

An absence is considered unauthorized when an employee is absent from work without permission. That can include situations like failure to provide notice, being myseriously missing from work (at any point), or failing to show up to work after a time-off request was denied. This is also the case if an employee tells us they're not coming to work instead of asking for the day off.

Presenteeism

Presentiumeeism is what happens when a person is at work when they shouldn't be. For example, a person is too sick to be at work, but they show up anyway. If a person shows up at work unfit for duty and has to be sent home it may be considered an unplanned absence.

Virtual Absence

A virtual absence is when an employee is working remotely or at a satellite location but they're not reachable by other people who are working. Here are some examples:

• An employee working remotely leaves their company chat app closed or muted and isn't responding to messages.
• An employee working at a sattelite location isn't answering the phone.

The situation being the person might actually be doing work, but since supervisors can't communicate with them they may as well be absent because orders and information about the work can't be exchanged.

Missing from post

A person who is at work but is mysteriously missing from their assigned work area without a good reason might be considered absent, particular if it's habitual. While the person might actually be at work, they're not in the area they're supposed to be.

Here are some examples of when an employee might be considered missing from post:

• An employee who is supposed to unload trucks around the same time each day is habitually found using the bathroom for long periods of time instead.

• An employee who is supposed to attend a meeting every Monday at 9:30am is habitually absent from the meeting because they are working on something else.

• An employee who is supposed to start work at 9am is habitually missing from their work area because they are eating breakfast in the breakroom instead.

• An employee shows up to work, but doesn't report to their supervisor. Instead, they spend the majority of the day doing something nobody assigned them to do.

Excused and unexcused absences

An absence can be excused in two main circumstances:

1. It's a planned absence that was approved of ahead of time by a supervisor.
2. It's unplanned but it was approved of because there is evidence it couldn't reasonably be avoided.

In just about any other situation an absence is unexcused.

In general, a person who misses more than 3% of their scheduled hours due to unexcused absences can be terminated. For a full-time person that means 7 or more unexcused absences in a year probably leads to termination.

An unauthorized, unplanned absence usually leads to an infraction for Absences and Absenteeism, and may be subject to corrective action more swiftly.

What makes something an unplanned, unauthorized absence?

Here are some examples we would usually consider unauthorized, unplanned absences. In general, these kinds of absences can't be excused. There are plenty of other situations where an unplanned, unauthorized absence wouldn't be excused, but these represent the most common situations.

Example 1: Failure to schedule appointments in a responsible manner

A person who calls off work unexpectedly because of something they should be able to plan in advance is probably absent without authorization. In the example below, the person called off work because they were having a washer and dryer delivered. Then, despite saying they would come to work after the delivery, they never showed up. In this situation, the person told us about it 45 minutes before their shift was supposed to start.

!

Example 2: Sick and going back to sleep

! In this case the person messaged us about 30 minutes before their scheduled shift, and they didn't ask for the day off. Instead, they told us they aren't coming in and they didn't provide any evidence they are sick.

Example 3: Somebody else has an emergency but the employee isn't obligated to do anything about it

A person might call off work because a family member or child is sick or needs some kind of help. It happens from time to time.

In order for that kind of absence to be excused, the following things need to be evident:

1. The situation is real and not exaggerated or invented.
2. The employee is obligated to do something about it. There wasn't another practical way to handle it.

For example, imagine an employee calls off work because their dog needs to go to the vet. For that to be excusable the person would be expected to provide a note or something from the vet, as well as reasonable evidence there was no practical way to get treatment for the dog without calling off work unexpectedly.