The manufacturing industry is one of the major contributors to the United States economy. with a total value of $2269.2 to U.S. GDP, which makes up 10.8 % of total GDP. Also, the manufacturing industry is one of the largest employers of the labor force in the world. However, its reliance on workers puts it at risk of productivity issues such as absenteeism.
Absenteeism results in a loss of over $225.8 billion to the U.S. manufacturing industry annually. Workers can be blamed for frequent absences from work, hampering productivity and scheduling within a company, but the attendance policy can also be a contributing factor.
Effective working in any manufacturing organization depends on the employers’ punctuality, sincerity, and schedule. In this regard, employee attendance becomes crucial because it is required to ensure regular work. Employees are confused or misinformed in the absence of proper attendance policies at work, which leads to absenteeism.
In this article, we explore in detail how your manufacturing organization should create an effective attendance policy.
Table of Contents
Why is it essential to have an attendance policy at your manufacturing plant?
1. Helps to reduce absenteeism
Excessive absenteeism can deeply impact the bottom line of any manufacturing company. If workers often report late or don’t attend shifts at all, managers might have to restructure workflows and schedules. But this can have a domino effect on the entire organization.
When you have a manufacturing attendance policy, employees know what is expected at work. It also helps maintain a balance between employees as coworkers are not forced to take over extra workload because of the absentees.
2. Increase productivity of employees, which helps in revenue growth
When workers don’t have to rush into things or their working hours are not increased due to a lack of workforce, the quality of their work is high. An attendance policy at work positively affects overall productivity. When workers are regularly at work, they adapt to the changes in the work schedules or environment, ultimately improving their efficiency.
Regular attendance ensures that appropriate numbers of workers are available to work in shifts. Hence, no delay in production can affect the end customers. Uninterrupted production at a manufacturing company helps ensure that the revenue keeps on growing.
How to create the best attendance policy for manufacturing?
Before you create a manufacturing plant attendance policy, it is essential to consider mandatory requirements. First, you must be aware that the attendance policy at your manufacturing company has to be flexible. As the requirements of the company or the workers will change, the attendance policy document must change too.
It must be adjusted over time to adapt to the business challenges and to accommodate the requirements of employees. The best attendance policy for manufacturing is the one that’s amended annually or quarterly based on workers’ attendance data.
Here are some important considerations to keep in mind.
1. Learn about labor laws
All manufacturing attendance policies must comply with federal, state, and local laws. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) works at the federal level, giving workers the right to 12 workweeks of job-protected unpaid leave for medical reasons. You have to mention in your attendance policy that FMLA leaves will not result in any disciplinary action or termination.
If your manufacturing unit also employs workers with disabilities, the attendance policy must adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) rules. It requires you to change your attendance policy to accommodate workers that live with disabilities. Like FMLA, you cannot fire or take disciplinary action against workers for situations covered by the ADA.
As state and local employment laws vary, you must consult local consultancies about these policies.
2. Create a point-based attendance policy
A popular system of enforcing attendance policies for manufacturing is the point system. It’s a simple model where each event is related to attendance, such as absence, tardiness, and too-long breaks corresponding to certain points.
The points are decided based on the severity of the lapse in attendance. A typical point-based attendance policy for a manufacturing company looks like this:
| Issue | Definition | Points |
| Tardiness | Less than ten minutes late | 0.5 |
| Late | Between ten minutes and two hours late | 1 |
| Partial shift | Leaving work early | 1.5 |
| Truant | Over two hours late | 2 |
| Absent | Absent with a phone call | 2.5 |
| No-call, no-show | Absent without a phone call | 10 |
For instance, if a worker is late for more than an hour, his record will have 1 point and so on. These points will be added at the end of each month, quarter, or year to enforce disciplinary actions. Usually, the following actions are taken as per the end score:
| Disciplinary Action | Points |
| Verbal warning | 5 |
| Written warning | 7 |
| Personal improvement plan | 10 |
| Termination | 12 |
The point system is an efficient way to inform workers of the consequences and disincentivize absenteeism. You can include particular issues for your manufacturing company or adjust the points. For example, if the workers are often showing delay, you can allot more points to discourage such behavior.
3. Communicate with your employees and explain the policy clearly
Just putting up an attendance policy will not deliver the benefits you are looking for. It would help if you communicated the attendance expectations with the workers. The language of the attendance policy must be comprehensible to the workforce.
Explain and include definitions of absenteeism, job abandonment, excused absences, unexcused absences, unpaid absences, and attendance policy exceptions.
Manufacturing Attendance Policy Template
We created this sample attendance policy for manufacturing companies to manage the workforce better.
Disclaimer: While we put in our best efforts to create this sample attendance policy for a manufacturing company, it is not a standard template. This attendance policy template is supposed to be a reference document. To create the best attendance policy for manufacturing units, you will have to consider the nuances of your business and the policies best match the well-being of your workers.
Free attendance policy template for manufacturing
Company Employee Attendance Policy | |
Overview
We at have the policy to take attendance punctuality seriously. All employees are expected to be model workers reporting for work on time. Any late arrivals, absences, time theft incidents, and other attendance issues affect productivity and create an undue burden for the other honest and punctual employees.
Attendance Policy Point System
We have created a point system to encourage adherence to the company attendance policy. As shown below, each attendance infraction will result in a point or partial point. At the end of the period, the accumulated excessive points will result in disciplinary action. All workers are requested to review attendance infractions, definitions, and issues carefully to avoid repercussions.
| Tardiness | Less than ten minutes late | 0.5 |
| Late | Between ten minutes and two hours late | 1 |
| Partial shift | Leaving work early | 1.5 |
| Truant | Over two hours late | 2 |
| Absent | Absent with a phone call | 2.5 |
| No-call, no-show | Absent without a phone call | 10 |
All workers must inform their supervisors in advance if they are absent from work.
Attendance-Related Discipline
Management and workers are to follow the rules laid down in this attendance policy, as attendance punctuality is a must for productivity and revenue. At , we have established disciplinary actions regarding ongoing attendance problems if identified. Please read the following disciplinary actions and their corresponding points carefully to avoid these disciplinary actions.
| Verbal warning | 5 |
| Written warning | 7 |
| Personal improvement plan | 10 |
| Termination | 12 |
Attendance Policy Exceptions
This attendance policy complies with federal, state, and local employment and labor laws. Here are some exceptions to our attendance policy. complies with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and will not take disciplinary action for employees absent for reasons of jury duty, bereavement, or military duty. Workers will be required to produce proper documentation to supervisors within 48 hours if they are absent for jury duty, bereavement, or military duty.
How can Truein help with attendance in the manufacturing industry?
Truein is a robust cloud-based time and attendance system for manufacturing companies. It is a hardware-less attendance solution that your workers can use directly from their smartphones. This AI-based face recognition attendance system offers the following features-
- Overtime calculation- Add overtime rules for your employees and the software will automatically process the overtime pay. Just ensure employees are clocking in and out properly
- Accurate time and attendance recording- Truein is a GPS-based attendance system and your employees can mark the attendance only from a particular geofenced location. It uses face recognition to mark the attendance which makes it more accurate and helps to avoid buddy punching and time theft.
- Attendance policy management- Employers can create and add multiple policies like attendance policy, paid time off policy, overtime policy, and many more from the Truein dashboard.
- Leave management– You can set up different types of leaves and rules for your employees in your organization. You can easily approve, track and manage leaves on our mobile app.
- Employee scheduling- Create a manual schedule for your employees or automate it by using our auto shift assign feature.
Creating an attendance policy for a large workforce such as manufacturing is vital and is even more crucial for employees to understand and adhere to attendance policies. It is therefore important that company heads and HR teams involved in creating these policies have discussions both internally and with employees and refine and improve attendance policies from time to time.
