Don't Be An Attendance Issue

Today CNN.com has a link to a Careerbuilder.com article about the “excuses” employees give for missing work.

Some of the excuses listed are quite hilarious. As a prior call center manager I’ve heard some even funnier ones. While the article tends to position these excuses as made-up, I bet many of them were actually true. On many occasions I was heard to remark “You just can’t make this stuff up!” when hearing the excuse a rep gave for being absence.

This leads me to one major piece of advice I want to share with call center reps: Don’t Be An Attendance Issue.

It’s a career killer no matter where you work. In a call center, no matter how high your call quality is, no matter how high the volume of calls you take – if you’re an attendance issue, most of that will become irrelevant.

It’s important to understand that call centers tend to manage the company’s attendance policy much more tightly than other departments because they are working with particularly challenging staffing models. Call center management has to ensure on a daily basis that there is enough staff to continually cover the customer phone calls and emails. They also have to figure into their staffing models allowances for reps' breaks, lunchs, shift changes, vacation days and sick days. This allowance is called “shrinkage” in most call center staffing models. If the attendance policy is not managed very tightly, this shrinkage percentage would grow higher requiring more staff be hired or leaving customer calls and email waiting for long periods. Call center management’s job would be much easier if there were no shrinkage allowance at all in the staffing model – but don’t worry, Human Resources is usually there to keep them honest as depicted in the following cartoon:

Try to avoid becoming an attendance issue by managing your allotted days off very carefully. Sure it’s not easy and it takes some effort – but it can be done. You should be using your allocated time-off for the following reasons only:

• You are truly physically sick – this doesn’t mean just a headache, the sniffles, your period or you’re just plain too tired from partying too late the night before.



• Your child is sick – if you are a parent you are doubly challenged to manage your allocated time off. You will need to step-up to the plate as a responsible adult and save many of your allocated days in anticipation that your child will be sick at some point during the year.



• You have a true family emergency – if there are some ongoing health or personal issues going on in your family, then you need to save some of your allocated time off in anticipation of this.



• You take a pre-planned personal day or a vacation – which all call center reps really need! Try to plan these days in advance – it will then help you more proactively plan & manage the rest of your days off throughout the year.

Again, I know it isn’t always easy to proactively manage your time off when you never know what life is going to throw at you. However, if you demonstrate to your boss that are trying to make an earnest effort to manage your attendance (and the rest of your job performance is good), then follow the advice CareerBuilder.com includes in the article:

“If you're a strong employee and you're truthful about the time you need off, your employer is likely to give it to you." But if you get caught in a lie, you risk your reputation and possibly even your job.”

On an end note – but an important note, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF – STAY HEALTHY! Eat healthy foods, exercise regularly, get a good night’s sleep, and stop smoking. That alone will help to improve your daily energy and health – which is perhaps one of the biggest steps towards a good attendance record.

Feel free to comment and share any particular or unique challenges you have in managing your attendance record - or any tips you'd like to share about how you successfully manage your attendance.