PeopleMuster

Attendance policy template

Attendance policies fail on definitions, not on rules. Nobody disputes that lateness is bad. People dispute whether 9:12 was late.

Written for a workplace with fixed or shift hours and a record of who arrived when. Teams with no set hours at all need a different document, because most of this one is about defining a start time.

ATTENDANCE POLICY — [Company name]
Effective [date] · Owner: [HR lead]

1. THE WORKING DAY
Standard hours are [09:00 to 18:00], [Monday to Friday], including a
[60] minute break. Some roles run a different shift. Your shift is on your
profile, and lateness is judged against your shift, not against 09:00.

2. GRACE
A start up to [10] minutes after your shift begins is not recorded as late.
Beyond that, the minutes are counted.

3. WHAT EACH STATE MEANS

  Present      Marked in and out, [7] hours or more on the clock.
  Late         Marked in after the grace window. Late minutes are counted.
  Partial      Marked in, but under [7] hours, or a missing mark out.
  Absent       No mark in, and no approved leave for that day.
  On leave     An approved request covers the day. Not an absence.

4. MARKING IN AND OUT
Mark in when you arrive and out when you leave, both. A missing mark out
makes the day partial, whoever was at fault.

5. WHEN THE RECORD IS WRONG
Terminals and apps both drop records. Raise a manual punch request within
[3] working days, say what the real time was, and why. [Approver] decides.
After [3] days the record stands.

6. REPEATED LATENESS
[Three] late days in a calendar month gets a conversation with your manager,
not a penalty. What happens after that is set out in [the conduct policy].
Lateness caused by a disability, a caring duty or a medical appointment is
handled separately, by [HR], and is not counted here.

7. WHAT WE DO WITH THE DATA
Attendance records are used for payroll input, leave reconciliation and
capacity planning. [Name any other use. If you rank or publish individual
attendance internally, say so here, plainly.]

8. WHO CAN SEE IT
You can see your own record. [Managers] see their team. [HR] sees everyone.

Approved by [name, title], [date].

Before you send it

  • Set the grace window before you publish, and then keep it. Shrink it after a bad month and it reads as a punishment aimed at whoever caused the bad month. That argument runs for a year.
  • Rules on collecting fingerprint or face data vary a great deal. They differ between countries, and between some US states. Get local advice on consent and retention before you switch a terminal on.
  • Clause 7 gets read twice. Be specific. Vagueness there costs more trust than the whole document earns, because people assume the worst use you left room for.
  • If your team works split shifts or nights, replace the single working-day clause with your shift table. A night shift crossing midnight breaks most simple attendance wording.
  • PeopleMuster counts late minutes against the shift assigned to that person. Not against one company-wide start time. A corrected punch is kept as a manual punch request, with its own approval trail.

What the attendance module records

Questions people ask about this letter

How long should the grace window be?

Ten minutes suits an office with a commute. Five suits a shift handover where someone is waiting to go home. The number matters less than never moving it quietly.

Should a missing check-out count against the employee?

Treat it as an incomplete record, not a breach. Give people a few days to correct it and log who corrected it. Terminals fail often enough that blame is usually the wrong first move.

Can we publish a team attendance ranking?

Some workplaces do and some cultures accept it. In others it reads as surveillance and can carry employment-law risk. If you do it, say so in the policy rather than surprising people with a leaderboard.

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