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SOME THOUGHTS ON ... VISUAL ATTENDANCE

Writer's picture: Richard KunstRichard Kunst

We invest heavily in the recruiting mode to find the best talent and alignment for our organization. After the employee joins our organization, we hope that they will come to work every day and be on time.



The implementation of a Visual Attendance methodology can be the easiest productivity gain you can accomplish within your organization.


The consequences of an absent employee can be staggering to an organization.  If it is an artisan environment, the work on the project will stop until the employee returns.  If it is a process-oriented position productivity will drop since you will need to place another employee in the role that is unaccustomed with the functions.  This places an unfair load on the remaining employees and can possibly create an unsafe work environment.  In the past leaders were able to pad their crews to accommodate for casual absents … but no longer.


Visual Attendance is simple, like production, quality and Health & Safety, we track incidents and display them within our operations.  So why would we not do the same with our most important asset … our people?


The method we have found that works the best is creating a form that contains the pictures of the employees working in the area, along with boxes indicating the days of the month. Then using the existing vacation schedule as a guide we begin to plot;


Green = employee arrived safe and on-time and stayed for the entire scheduled shift

Yellow = employee arrived late or departed early without prior notification (1 week)

Red = employee did not show up at work and did not provide 1 week’s notice

Blue = authorized absence


Now many folks are going to say, that doing visual attendance is an invasion of employee privacy … No!!! I am just tracking who is in the building and if a disaster should happen, I can provide emergency services with a picture of our missing employee


Just putting up the attendance tracking chart is not enough the methodology needs to be supported with infrastructure. A major portion of an effective Visual Attendance Methodology is creating that Adult-to-Adult relationship with all of our employees.


Why am I fixated on Attendance?  Simple … Poor Quality typically comes from a Poor Performer and a Poor Performer is typically a Poor Attender.  I will hammered about disciplining quality since folks will say I need to improve process, add fixtures and jigs, increase training etc., and we all have had experience working poor performers to advance to another career strategy.  But attendance is digital … the employee is present or not.


Hence, you need a strong coaching method around attendance with progressive discipline.  We typically enjoy the following


1st … friendly meeting indicating importance of attendance

2nd … a little stronger session, typically completed by GM or above

3rd … encourage employee to see their MD to find how work is impacting health

4th .. Have employee see company MD for review

5th … day of reflection for employee and have them write an improvement plan

6th … career coaching session


Initially we start with individual attendance tracking, as our on-time improves, we then look at team attendance.  We like to reward teams that have a week of perfect attendance with a small reward typically, a discount coupon at the cafeteria or a local establishment.  Once you migrate to team attendance recognition, your attendance will start to self-regulate which is exactly what you want.  Just make sure the reward is small 2-5 dollars and should be given weekly for the self-regulation to work.


So why Visual Attendance???  Organizations work very hard and invest heavily in Lean, Six Sigma just to add a percentage point to bottom line.  Yet, according to Canadian Statistics casual absenteeism runs around 5% in Canadian Businesses or in the minds of employees 1 day off per month is acceptable.  So, take a look at your payroll dollar expenditure and see how much money can be transferred to the bottom line by decreasing casual absenteeism by 1%.


Is Visual Attendance harsh?  No, I like my employees and I hired them for success, and I want to see them every day knowing they are healthy and that our work environment provides them safe, clean and comfortable surroundings.


A by-product of organizations that have adopted a Visual Attendance methodology has been on average a 30% productivity gain.  This probably a result of not having to migrate employees at the start of shift along with the employees visually seeing management dealing with attendance.


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