What to Record and What to Leave Alone

Attendance records are about people and their health, which makes the question of what not to collect as important as what to collect.

What you need

Who.

Which day.

Present or not.

A broad reason: holiday, sickness, unpaid, training, other.

Approved or not, for anything planned.

That is enough to manage coverage, calculate leave, meet the usual statutory requirements and answer any ordinary question.

What you do not need

The diagnosis. "Sick" is a record; "kidney infection" is health data with a heavier legal weight and no operational benefit.

Medical detail from a fit note beyond what the note is for — dates and any adjustments.

The reason for a medical appointment.

Anything about a family member's health, which arrives in conversations about carer's leave.

If a manager knows something, that is a conversation, not a field. Writing it into the system turns knowledge into a record with retention, access and disclosure consequences.

The difference this makes

Health data is a special category in most data protection regimes, with a higher bar for holding it.

A record saying "sick" does not usually cross that line. A record saying why frequently does.

Which means the simple version is also the legally lighter one, and that is unusual enough to be worth stating.

Where detail does belong

Fit notes and medical evidence: held separately, by whoever handles HR, with restricted access and a retention period. Not in the attendance sheet.

Adjustments agreed for a health condition: recorded as an arrangement, by whoever needs to implement it, without the underlying diagnosis.

Return-to-work notes: brief, factual, about what was agreed.

Who can see what

Everyone sees their own record. This is both fair and the cheapest error-correction you have.

Managers see their own team's presence and reasons at the broad level.

Nobody browses. In a small business this is a norm rather than a permission system, and it needs saying out loud once.

Detailed sickness information goes to whoever handles HR and stops there, including not to the person's colleagues who are covering and who will ask.

The line worth saying out loud

Once, to everyone, when the system is introduced.

"We record whether you were here and the broad reason. We do not record what was wrong with you."

It removes the suspicion that a new sheet or a new tablet otherwise creates.

And it commits you, which is the point: a stated boundary is much harder to quietly cross later than an unstated intention.

Say it again when anyone joins.

A concrete product reference

When translating this principle into a buying test, review the data-flow example provides a concrete workflow reference. Verify the current behaviour in a trial, retain the exported evidence and judge it against the purpose and limits described above.