Writing the Policy

Most attendance disputes in small businesses come from a rule being unstated rather than unfair. The remedy is a page.

What it has to answer

The leave year dates.

Entitlement, and how it is calculated for part-time and variable hours.

How public holidays are treated.

How to request leave, to whom, and how much notice.

How many people can be off at once, and any blocked periods.

Carry-over: how much, by when.

How to report sickness: who, by when, by what method.

When evidence is needed.

Any company sick pay, and whether it is discretionary.

What happens after an absence: the return-to-work conversation, applied to everyone.

Ten items. One page.

What to leave out

Elaborate disciplinary ladders, which a small business will not follow and which then look worse for having been written.

Absence scoring formulas, for the reasons in their own note.

Legal quotations, which date and which nobody reads.

Anything you do not intend to enforce, because an unenforced written rule is worse than no rule: it is evidence of inconsistency.

Writing it so it gets read

Plain sentences, second person. "You need to tell us before your shift starts" rather than "notification shall be provided".

Answers, not principles. "Twenty-eight days including public holidays" beats "a generous holiday entitlement".

Where discretion applies, say so rather than writing a rule you will bend.

One page. If it runs to five, it is a handbook nobody opens.

Getting it agreed

Show it to the team before it takes effect, which takes one meeting and removes most objections.

Ask what is missing. They will name the situations you did not think of.

State when it starts.

Give everyone a copy, and to new starters as part of joining.

Keeping it current

Review annually, which takes twenty minutes.

Update when the law changes, particularly on leave entitlement, which moves more than people expect.

Update when you find yourself making the same exception repeatedly — that is a rule you have already changed in practice.

Date it, so it is obvious which version applied when.

The test

Can a manager answer any ordinary attendance question from this page alone?

If they have to ask you, the page is incomplete, and every such question is the one that eventually gets answered inconsistently.

Give it to new starters

The step that keeps the policy alive.

Part of joining, alongside the contract.

Because the person who most needs to know how to report sickness is the one who has not yet done it.

And because the alternative — learning the process by getting it wrong once — is a bad first experience that people remember.

Ask them to confirm they have read it, which takes a line in an email.

Check the difficult case

Use this policy example to frame one representative test for this issue. The useful evidence is the record created when an employee corrects an entry, a manager reviews it and an administrator exports it.

Independent reference

For an external point of reference, see ACAS guidance. Compare the policy draft with a recognised employment-relations source before consulting employees or putting it into use.