AIBU or is my employer? Attendance?

[ThrowAwayQP]

I was sent home from work last Wednesday lunch time because I was sick. I was off Thursday, Friday and returned on Monday (don’t work weekends.)

In the last 12 months I’ve had 1 other day off for a funeral, and last month was 4 minutes late to work due to an RTA on the main road into town that made quite a few people late.

I had my back to work interview today. My line manager asked how many days I’ve been absent in the past 12 months, and I said 3.5. At first he agreed that’s what he recalls, but when he brought up the system, it said 4.1 days!

They’ve counted my Wednesday absence as a full day; and recorded 0.1 days absent for being FOUR MINUTES LATE!

AIBU to raise this issue with HR? Or is this standard practice?

If your system can record .1 of a day as absent, then it should be able to cope with .5 of a day, so it sounds like someone has cocked up.

The lateness seems harsh as this was clearly unavoidable and affected others.

In my place of work, if you go home sick it depends how many hours work you have done prior to going home as to whether it counts as a half or full day. I think the cut off is four (so if you’d done 9-1 and go home, that’s a half day, if 9-12 then a full day).

But really you need to check your guidance to see what your employee’s T&Cs are. 0.1 for 4 minutes late sounds harsh but if that’s the rule then it hardly seems worth raising it with HR.

Raise it with your manager again as being late is not absence, especially for 4-mins! I hate clock watching by managers as well as employees, as long as nothing is dropped, what does it matter what time you are in the office?!

That's ridiculous, especially the 4 minutes late one. To be honest I think calling you in for a meeting because you had 4 days off, even if it really was 4 days, would be OTT, especially as 3 of those days were subsequent.

If it turns out that I missed some arbitrary cutoff between a half and a full day on Wednesday; I could deal with that. I’d be annoyed; as my heavy workload was in the morning, and our system seems to be able to work in 0.1 of a day...

But the late thing has really annoyed me. 0.1 of my working day is just under an hour! In was four minutes late and this had no impact on my work at all!

@BeanBag7 where I work it is standard to have a back to work interview after every sickness absence. We have to explain why we were ill, if we saw a doctor, are we fully recovered and what can be done to support/avoid future absences.

Is this not standard? I was informed by my line manager it was?

I would be really unhappy about people recording the occasional five minutes of lateness and treating it as sickness absence. It isn’t. You were late.

Ah I see, I never had that at my workplace but it probably just depends where you work.

@ThrowAwayQP

Back to work interviews are pretty standard in larger businesses but they are not supposed to be a method of assessing whether you really were sick! They are as another poster says supposed to assist with any adjustment needed by the illness and to find if anything needs to be done to prevent future recurrence.

I certainly think that you need to sort out this 4 minute lateness. Is there no flexibility at the other end of the day? Or does everyone start packing up 10 minutes before time so as to be able to leave "on the dot". If not I would certainly put [in writing] my concerns to counter this. 0.1 of a day [if I have understood this correctly] is nearer an hour than 5 minutes!

We have back to work interviews

But for 4mins late, we would just add 4mins on at the end of the day

Seems a bit harsh

Return to work interviews are a pretty common practice after every absence (or at least all of the places I’ve worked).
What I do find odd is everything being lumped together as “absence”. In my experience sick is sick, a day off for a funeral would be holiday/paid special leave/unpaid, and lateness would just be recorded in case it became a disciplinary issue if it kept happening.

Like Calic0 said, my workplace also has set rules about how many hours you have to have been in work for before it is counted as a full/half day or even not counted.

By recording the 4 minutes as 0.1 of a day, they are basically encouraging people to think...
"if I'm not in by nine, I'll go and have a coffee, and do a bit of shopping, because they are marking me as out until 9:48 anyway, so I might as well enjoy it"

in my work it counts as a day off sick regardless what time you went home at

Dis you make up the 4 minutes? Most workplaces wouldn’t bet an eye, some would ask you to work it back (although must people work over their time regularly).

I can't help thinking that a back to work interview after 2 days of sick leave is rather a waste of time. It must take an hour of 2 or 3 peoples time i.e. nearly a half-day of accumulated time. I can see the point if someone is off frequently or for several weeks. But 2 days? I've never worked anywhere that did this. Is it perhaps, a public sector thing?

Back to work interview is standard. The funeral should not be counted with the sick days. It sounds like you use a clocking system so the lateness may be how it's rounded the start time automatically, and will count towards short term absence stats by the sounds of it. It can also be because the line manager hasn't administered the system correctly.

This can be standard in factory type roles where there's a lot of short term absence traditionally and any time late holds up the production line etc/cant be made up.

I wouldn't worry about it unless you've triggered absence disciplinary process.

Yes BTW interviews are standard in larger organisations certainly. We do them to make sure they are fit to return to work, see if we need to do any adjustments, what support we can provide, but also to understand what, if anything the dr has suggested they do, ams see if they are doing it.

Then in the future if they are not doing what the d4 has suggested to make things better they will be leaving themselves open for further action.

It’s also to understand fir instance if you have lots of Monday’s off, why what can be done to stop etc, we look at patterns etc. We soon learn who’s genuine and who is not

The funeral, depending on how close they where would be a days special leave or holiday or unpaid

A BTW isn't (or shouldn't be) a way of penalising you for an absence. It's an opportunity for the employer to check you're ok and really ready to be back at work and for you to say if there's anything wrong that's making it difficult to attend work.

I think the absence for the lateness is harsh but doesn't doesnt really matter in the scheme of things and likewise, the difference between 3.5 & 4 days isnt going to change anything for anyone. If they have a policybregarding what counts as a whole day and they're following it, that's fine.

Your absence must be a long way from any triggers so really not worth making a fuss.

If they are recording lateness of 4 mins, I hope they never expect you to stay one minute after your finish time!

RTW are standard for our place of work, however if you are sick on a Thursday Friday you need to ring in 'fit for work' on the sat ( even if you are not scheduled to work or the weekend) or that is included in the abscence too!

Do you work in a factory or similar setting where you are taking over on a shift change?

(A relative had that sort of thing and 1 min late was half a days pay, as it was a senior engineer job and no cover meant the factory was not allowed to run. He was never late!)

If we are a minute late, it's marked as late but not as sickness. Seems odd