What do you use to keep up with attendance of your employees and why they were not there? I have recently been back and forth with Employment Security about a past employee wanting to get unemployment. This employee was fired for excessive absences and Employment Security is asking me for the reasons given for the absences. I have not really kept up with reasons in the past but would like a good way to keep up with this for employees. What do you use?

We have a simple in-house, online system where employees choose the type of absence (personal, vacation, sick, jury duty, etc) from a drop-down menu, input the date and reason for the absence.  This works well for us and provides back-up in case anyone or any agency has questions.

Is this software or just something you created there at your office?

It's just something that our IT dept came up with.

It is just a really simple thing, but seems to do the trick.  Before that, we had people fill out a time off request form.  The online thing is just a digitzed version really of the info on the form.

We have employees email time off requests.  Then I track them on an Excel spreadsheet and usually I will indicate the reason if they told me. Otherwise I have their email requesting the time off.

Luckily we don't have anyone abusing the amount of timeoff they get.

I went with an absence request form and an absence notification form.  The prior was for letting us know about planned absences and the latter was for telling us about unplanned absences during or after the fact.  Both helpful for FMLA purposes as well.

Our company utilizes a Absenteeism Calendar (Excel).  Essentially I created a calendar, mapping the whole year (fiscal), and included codes for us to place in the calendar for the type of absence (P = PTO, J = Jury, etc.).  For additional documentation, we place their absence request form into a binder for backup.  I keep these on file for 2 years or until they part ways with the company.  Easy and efficient for battling unemployment claims.

Thanks for all the input. There are some great suggestions here.

SubGrapHR - you created this excel spreadsheet or did you download something and build off of it? Just wondering if something already exists without all the time going into creating it.

cmanders-

 This was created by me in Excel in my free time.  I took a basic absentee calendar that I saw and recreated with some modifications to save from having to purchase the package.  Simple yet effective for the Managers.   It is considered my property prior to my current employment as I brought it with me to share so I would be happy to share it with you if you are interested.  Email me at pcrumley@comsoltx.com.

Actually, in my organisation we worked in shift schedule which has a fixed date of commencement and a fixed date of pay period to conclude a particular shift and commence a new shift.  In ensuring that every employee plays his role, we make use of what is called Timesheet.  The timesheet indicate the name of the employee, the department, the pay period under review, which is within 28 days period, the normal hours and overtime worked for each day and how many hours worked for each work.  The depatment manager give approval for each week timesheet and shows.  In any event of absentism, there is a code that would be indicated in the timesheet and no hours will be reflected.

Using this timesheet system, it make all employee to be at their duty post at all time because should in case they fix incorrect hours in thier timesheet, it will be rejected and re-adjusted to indicate the correct hours worked.

Its really working well for us.

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Felix Ugokpa,
HR Department,
Sourthern Gas Constructors Ltd,
Escravos - Warri,
Nigieria.