A huge problem organizations often face is when an employee fails to show up to work without any prior notice. This can sometimes escalate to job abandonment, particularly in industries like construction where employees work based on shifts. No call, no show employees can quickly become a nightmare.
These employees are unprofessional and leave managers with no other choice than to look for a last-minute replacement for the shift. In other words, they disrupt the flow of your business and increase your expenses.
However, there are measures you can take to avoid such unethical work problems.
A no call, no show employee is someone who does not come to work and does not inform their manager about it. It might be the case that an employee has had an emergency and had no way to get in touch; however, those are rare. In a study by reed.co.uk, 4.3 million people confessed to having lied to their employer to get a day off work. You can’t stop your employees from lying to you, but you can train them to be more honest and communicative. Unless you have proper procedures in place, these instances can start happening too often, and in the end, harm your sales and decrease employee morale.
There’s not much you can do at the moment, but look for a replacement for the shift if you’re having a no call, no show. However, there are many policies you can implement to be proactive about preventing these instances. You may still occasionally have an incident here or there, but now you’ll know what to do about it and how to punish the no call, no show employees. Here are some protocols you can implement.
Setting the expectations for attendance should be your first step. It is obvious what a no call, no show means, but you still need to define it. Additionally, you need to identify excused and unexcused absences or missed shifts.
Once you have your attendance rules defined, your next step needs to be deciding the consequences for missing work. You need to clearly communicate to your employees the actions that will be taken for no call, no shows, being late, and absences in general. Doing so will instill a sense of responsibility among your workers since they’ll know they have something to lose.
Do not forget to be realistic with your expectations. If your workers miss only one day of work, firing them may be too harsh a punishment. Most HR managers implement a “3 strike rule,” which is enough to recognize whether the act is mischievous or simply the result of an emergency. Don’t hesitate to contact no call, no show employees yourself to understand their side of the story as well.
Once you have your attendance rules and consequences defined, you can move on to creating your no call, no show policy. The only two things you could be missing are specifying the proper ways to request time off, and the documentation needed to warrant an excused absence. Additionally, you could hire a lawyer to go over the policies and make sure your policy is legally binding.
Try to make sure everyone in your company knows and fully understands what the consequences of their actions will be. It may be a good idea to print out the policy from your employee handbook and hang it in a common space for everyone to see. You can also email it to all your workers and hold a separate meeting to explain the policy to them. Additionally, every new employee should get a specific introduction to the procedure to make sure they know about it from day one.
If your employees see that they could be fired for not showing up to work, they will become more responsible, and therefore more reliable. The same is true for vice versa. Educate your employees on these policies and make sure to treat all your workers equally. The consequences of missing work should be the same for your most responsible employee as they are for someone who is often late. Making exceptions can be seen as an opportunity to violate the policy.
There are many ways to deal with no call, no show employees. The policies you implement come down to what kind of manager you want to be. Setting up harsh punishments may be the answer for some people. The procedures mentioned above address the root of the issue and help you train your workers to be more reliable.
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