There may be an employee who shows up every day, on time, without fail. But, like a mermaid or a yeti, there’s no concrete evidence that such a creature (human or bot) actually exists.
Why? Because we’re fallible. And assuming you employ some humans, you will most likely deal with employee absenteeism at some point.
Here are some tried-and-true ways you can reduce employee absenteeism and increase the odds that your human employees show up to work.
How to tell if absenteeism is a problem at your business
While some no-shows are normal, you might start to notice these signs that chronic absenteeism is becoming a business problem:
It feels like you have an understaffing problem, even though you're fully staffed.
You're missing deadlines, turning down work, or apologizing to customers because someone had an unplanned absence.
Long-term, important-but-not-urgent projects are never getting done.
You've started to expect callouts. Certain employees just don't show, or are continually calling in sick.
Your overtime spending is creeping up because you're paying other people to cover open shifts.
Morale is slipping. Your dependable employees absorb the extra work and they're noticing.
You have employees who ghost you, meaning they stop coming to work without giving any notice at all.
How to calculate your own absenteeism rate
Pick a stretch of time (like a month or a quarter) that’s long enough to avoid anomalies. Then add up every unplanned absence across your team and divide by the total number of days your team was scheduled to work:
(Unplanned days missed ÷ total scheduled workdays) × 100 = absenteeism rate
Include call-outs, no-shows, and late-notice absences. Leave out approved vacation and scheduled time off, since those aren't the days catching you off guard.
Here's the math for a team of 12, each scheduled 20 days in a month:
Total scheduled workdays: 12 employees × 20 days = 240
Unplanned absences that month, added up across everyone: 9
9 ÷ 240 = 0.0375, or 3.75%
Your team-wide rate can be misleading. A single employee who was out two weeks for surgery will make your rate look higher than it should be. To test your results, see how your rate looks quarter over quarter, and what each individual employee’s absenteeism rate looks like.
Don’t rebuild six months of shifts from memory. Gusto's time tracking logs clock-ins and clock-outs automatically, and its attendance report compares scheduled hours to hours worked.
How to reduce employee absenteeism in the workplace
1. Add an attendance policy to your employee handbook
A clear, consistently enforced attendance policy helps you clarify expectations and explain the proper procedures for employees to request time off. It also helps you legally discipline folks who don’t make it to work on a consistent basis.
Here's sample language to start from:
Regular attendance is expected and matters to our operations and to your teammates.
Employees are expected to arrive on time, work their full scheduled shift, and not leave early unless excused by a manager.
Hourly employees must follow clock-in and clock-out procedures, return on time from meal and rest breaks, and not clock in before their scheduled start time without manager approval.
If you know in advance that you'll be out, request the time off at least [timeframe] ahead through [process]. If something comes up unexpectedly, notify your manager by [text, phone call, email] as soon as practicable.
An excused absence is one that's approved in advance, covered by your available paid leave, protected by law, or caused by an emergency you reported as soon as you were able. An unexcused absence is a missed shift that doesn't meet any of those conditions. Tardiness is arriving more than [X] minutes after your scheduled start time. A no-show is a missed shift with no notice at all.
Some absences require documentation to be excused:
Medical absences of three or more consecutive days: a note from a health care provider confirming you were unable to work
Jury duty: your official summons or court notice
[Other situations where you require proof]
Absences protected by federal, state, or local law will not be treated as unexcused and will not count toward discipline under this policy.
Unexcused absences and repeated tardiness may lead to discipline, up to and including termination. The company may depart from any disciplinary sequence at its discretion, and employment remains at will.
If you don't report for work or contact us for [number] consecutive scheduled shifts, we may treat it as job abandonment. We'll make reasonable attempts to reach you first.
Fill in the brackets, then have an employment attorney review the result before it goes in your handbook—particularly your notice deadline and documentation rules, which are most likely to conflict with state paid sick leave laws.
Get a signed acknowledgment from every employee. If you ever need to discipline someone for attendance, that signature is what shows they knew the rule.
Gusto's Employee Handbook Creator builds a handbook for the states you operate in, and flags policies that need to be updated when the law changes.
2. Enforce your attendance policy consistently
If it appears that you don't care whether employees show up or not, pretty soon your employees won't care, either.
Consistency is also your legal protection so that you’re not left explaining why you treated two similar situations differently.
Here are a few ways to protect yourself when enforcing your policy:
Keep attendance records as you go. For each absence, note the date, whether the employee gave notice and how, and what was said. Do this at the time, rather than after you’ve decided to fire someone. Keep doctor's notes in a separate file from the general personnel file to maintain their confidentiality.
Look for the root cause before you discipline. Chronic attendance problems usually have a cause. Ask what's making it hard to get to work before you escalate. That conversation is also how you find out an absence may be legally protected, which employees may not tell you up front.
Escalate in writing. If you've ruled out a fixable cause, follow your policy's sequence. Put each step in writing and state what happened, what specifically needs to change, and by when.
3. Pay attention to legally protected leaves
Like we’ve mentioned above, some absences are protected by law. Federal, state, and local laws that may protect an absence include:
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), along with state disability and fair employment laws
State and local paid sick leave laws
State paid family leave (PFL) programs
Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), which requires accommodations for pregnancy-related conditions
Workers' compensation laws
Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) and state military leave laws
Jury duty and time off to vote laws
Which laws apply depends on your size and where your employees work. The FMLA only covers businesses with 50 or more employees within 75 miles and the ADA starts at 15, but plenty of state leave and sick leave laws reach much smaller employers, so being under those thresholds doesn't mean you're excluded.
Most legal trouble with attendance comes from not recognizing a protected absence. Remember these essentials:
Employees don't have to name the law. The EEOC says an accommodation can be requested in "plain English" without ever mentioning the ADA. "I'm having trouble getting here on time because of my treatments" counts as a request for a disability accommodation.
Mental health conditions count. The employee with a "bad attitude" who's a frequent no-show may be experiencing depression, which can be protected under the ADA, the FMLA, or both.
Protected leave doesn't have to come in a block. It can be a single afternoon, one day a month, or a recurring Friday. Intermittent leave is no less protected than twelve straight weeks.
More than one law can apply at once. The same absence can be covered by the FMLA, the ADA, and your state's sick leave law at the same time, each with its own rules. When they differ, you have to follow whichever one is most protective of the employee.
You can't retaliate, and that includes indirect penalties. Beyond not disciplining someone, that means not cutting their hours, reassigning their shifts, or passing them over because they took time they were entitled to.
That doesn't mean you have no say. Protected leave doesn't always exempt them from telling you they’ll be out. For FMLA leave, you can require employees to follow your usual call-in procedures, including calling a specific number or person, and leave can be delayed or denied if they don't and no unusual circumstances explain it. Paid sick leave laws are stricter; many only let you ask for notice as soon as it's practical.
4. Find workarounds for when your employees are out
When you've only got five people, one missing shift is hard to absorb cheaply. Here are some ideas to help you close the gap:
Cross-train your team. If only one person can open the register, run payroll, or handle a specific client, you’re vulnerable even if that person is reliable. Write down how the routine tasks work so someone else can do them when an employee is absent.
Keep a standby list. Part-timers who want extra hours are often happy to be called first. Start a list of anyone who is interested so you’re prepared.
Allow voluntary shift swaps. Let employees trade shifts among themselves with manager approval. But keep it voluntary so that covering a shift doesn’t become the absent employee's responsibility.
Use temps for longer gaps. For an extended absence like a surgery or parental leave, a staffing agency is usually more practical than stretching your existing team for six weeks.
How to prevent absenteeism before it starts
Prevention is easier than remediation. Here are three things that reduce absenteeism and make your business stronger either way:
1. Be specific about the schedule when you hire
A lot of chronic absence starts as a mismatch. Someone takes a job needing the work, then discovers the closing shift doesn't fit their childcare or the 6 AM start time doesn't fit their bus route. But instead of quitting, they show up late or miss shifts.
Put the real schedule in the job posting: shift times, weekend expectations, whether hours vary. Then confirm it in the interview. Hopefully you'll lose a few candidates who would have become attendance problems.
2. Make the schedule predictable
Schedule instability is one of the most fixable causes of unplanned absence on an hourly team. If people find out their shifts three days ahead, they can't arrange childcare, schedule appointments, or plan around a second job, so they end up calling out.
To solve this:
Try posting schedules further in advance and keep them consistent week to week.
Collect availability and use it.
Give people a way to request specific days off before the schedule is built rather than after.
Some cities and states have predictable scheduling laws with advance-notice requirements, so check whether one applies to you.
3. Invest in health and benefits
Absence can be caused by something an employee is managing alone, like an untreated condition, a mental health issue, or a family member who needs care. You can support employee well-being and work-life balance in a few ways:
Offer health insurance. Instead of letting a manageable problem get worse, your employee could get help right away. The benefits go beyond reducing absenteeism: Gusto’s research found that small business owners who offer health insurance are 25% more likely to say that their employees have exceeded their expectations.
Offer flexible working hours. If you can’t offer health insurance yet, you can start with work flexibility through alternative schedules. A quarter of small businesses do this. Flexible hours, where the work allows it, let someone attend an appointment without missing a whole shift.
Consider an employee assistance program (EAP). An EAP gives employees free, confidential access to counseling and referrals for things like mental health, substance use, financial trouble, and legal issues. It's often one of the cheaper benefits you can add.
Offering health insurance doesn't have to mean becoming a benefits expert. Gusto's licensed advisors help you compare plans, and premiums and deductions flow straight into payroll.
Watch out for the flip side: presenteeism
Presenteeism is when employees show up to work when they really shouldn't. Think of someone coming in with the flu, or the day after a parent died when they should be out on bereavement leave.
An employee with no paid sick days has two options when they wake up ill: lose a day's pay, or come in. Many people pick the second. And on a small team, there's often nobody to cover, so the employee knows their absence lands on a coworker.
Presenteeism can cost you more than it saves. Someone with an illness works more slowly. They also get other people sick, which turns one missed shift into three. If you're in food service, health codes generally require keeping employees with certain symptoms away from food.
Use these tips to avoid presenteeism:
Offer paid sick time. Sick leave gives employees the freedom to stay home when sick without losing pay. Your state or city may already require it.
Don't count sick days in an attendance point system. Beyond the legal problem in states with sick leave mandates, it tells employees that using the benefit you offered will be held against them.
Don't make employees find their own replacement. Some sick leave laws prohibit this, and it makes calling in feel like a favor they're asking for.
Model it yourself. If you work through every illness, your team will see it as an expectation, no matter what your handbook says.
Paid sick time shouldn't create a tracking headache. Gusto suggests accrual rules based on your state's requirements, and time-off requests sync straight to payroll.
FAQs
Can you fire an employee for excessive absenteeism?
Yes, in most cases. Attendance is a legitimate reason for termination, and no law sets a maximum number of absences. You define that threshold in your own policy. But you can't count absences protected by law, like FMLA leave or state paid sick leave, and you have to apply your policy consistently across employees.
Can I require a doctor's note for a single sick day?
No, usually not. Many state and local paid sick leave laws only let you request documentation after three or more consecutive days of sick leave. Some jurisdictions restrict it further, or require the employer to cover the cost of obtaining the note.
Can I dock an exempt employee's pay for missing work?
Generally only for full-day absences. You can deduct from an exempt employee's salary for a full day missed for personal reasons. But deducting for a partial day can jeopardize their exempt status and make you liable for overtime. You can generally require them to use accrued PTO to cover the time instead.
Is it cheaper to pay overtime or hire a temp to cover a shift?
Overtime is usually cheaper for a shift or two, and a temp is usually cheaper for an extended absence. Overtime costs 1.5 times a nonexempt employee's regular rate every hour, while a staffing agency's markup is a fixed premium on a standard rate. The longer the gap, the more overtime can add up.
How do you manage absenteeism with remote employees?
Set availability expectations rather than tracking attendance. Define core hours for remote work (when everyone should be reachable), how quickly you expect a response during those hours, and how someone should tell you they'll be offline. Remote attendance disputes can come from vague expectations, where the manager and the employee are measuring different things.
