Thursday · 21 November 2019

Writing an absence policy in plain words

Posted by Call In Sick Tips Revealed · Filed under Rest and Wellbeing · Permalink

Most absence policies are written for a dispute that will probably never happen and read by a person who feels unwell at half past six in the morning. The second reader is far more common than the first and is almost never designed for.

The test is simple. Can somebody who has not slept find out, in under a minute, who to tell, by when, in what way, and what happens next? If the answer is buried under eligibility clauses and definitions, the policy will be ignored in favour of whatever the person's colleague told them, and the organisation will effectively be running an oral tradition.

Structure that survives being read badly

Put the procedure first and the framework second. The opening should be the notification route, the deadline, and the statement of what the employee must do on the first day; entitlement, certification and review belong further down, where somebody will read them properly on a day when it matters.

Say what is covered by name. If time for a dependant is included, name it. If a preventive day is covered, say so plainly rather than leaving it to be inferred, because an unstated category is the single largest generator of invented explanations. Ambiguity here is not neutral; it pushes people towards saying whatever seems safest.

Language that does not undercut the policy

Two habits do most of the damage. The first is hedging every entitlement with a reminder of the consequences of misuse, which tells a reader that they are presumed to be lying. The second is the abstract passive, which removes the person who is supposed to act: absences should be notified at the earliest opportunity names nobody and commits nobody.

A policy also has to describe what the organisation will do, not only what the employee must do. When a manager will make contact, what will be recorded, who can see it, and what happens at a review. A document that lists only obligations reads as an instrument rather than an agreement, and it is treated accordingly.

The best sign that a policy is working is that people quote it back accurately. If everyone in the building has a slightly different account of the rules, no amount of length or precision in the document has helped, and the fix is almost always to cut it down rather than to add to it.