The Problem With Attendance Awards
This is why you shouldn’t offer perfect attendance awards/bonuses at work.
Let me tell you a story —
One day, my son came to me crying.
We were quarantining after a COVID exposure and after adding the days up, he realized he would be missing school.
At first, I’ll admit I was a little proud, thinking maybe my love for school had somehow been implanted into my child.
“Why are you sad about missing school?” I said hopefully.
He replied, “Because I won’t win the attendance award.”
I took a deep breath.
An attendance award?! 😳 I hadn’t realized that there was an attendance award.
He pleaded with me to let him go to school anyway.
I was immediately reminded about the negative consequences of attendance programs. Not just people coming to work when they are sick, but also —
-Presenteeism - Lost productivity occurs when employees are not fully functioning in the workplace because of an illness, injury, or other condition. Think bad decisions, spreading illnesses to others, and bringing down the morale and productivity of others.
-Unintended signals - Rewards can backfire when they send unintended signals. Rewarding perfect attendance can suggest that attendance is more important than other key areas of the employees’ work. Particularly when you’re not measuring other key factors (customer service, quality, etc.)
-Burnout - Overwork and working under poor circumstances can lead to burnout. Not to be brushed off, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizes that burnout is a responsibility of the organization who needs to set up policies to prevent burnout (hint: this is not one of them).
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY
-Perfect attendance awards (probably) don’t work - While the data is not definitive on this, many experts believe that considering lost productivity, the unintended signals, and burnout created through a perfect attendance reward, more is lost due to a program like this than is gained.
For more on increasing attendance without perfect attendance rewards, let’s chat. Connect with me on LinkedIn here, or click here to get on my calendar for a phone call or Zoom meeting.
