An employee attendance point system is easiest to understand from the employee's side, one year at a time, rather than from the policy's side one clause at a time. This page takes a single employee on a small crew through twelve months under the worked policy on this site: 1 point per unexcused absence, 0.5 per tardy, 2 per no-call no-show, a threshold of 8 and a 12-month rolling window. Every event is scored, every warning lands where the policy says it lands, and the total at the end is a number the employee could have predicted in March. The attendance points calculator on this site runs the same arithmetic on your own policy and your own events.
The first quarter: two tardies and a conversation
In January the employee is late twice, both outside the grace period, and each scores 0.5, so the total on the last day of January is 1. February is clean. In March a tardy takes the total to 1.5, and under the worked policy that is not yet the first warning, which the policy sets at a quarter of the threshold, 2. What matters in the first quarter is not the number but that the events are recorded the same way each time: the date, the scheduled start, the arrival, the weight applied and the policy version in force. A lead who scored the January tardies at a whole point each and the March one at half has produced a total of 2.5 that nobody can defend, which is the failure the point system exists to remove.
The second quarter: an absence, a no-call and the first two warnings
In April an unexcused absence scores 1 and the total reaches 2.5, crossing the first step, so the lead gives a verbal warning and records it with the total and the four events behind it. In May the employee does not turn up and does not call, and the no-call scores 2, the heaviest weight in the policy because the shift went uncovered. The total is 4.5, past half the threshold, and the written warning that follows cites the verbal warning from April, the five events and the policy paragraph that sets the weights. In June a doctor's appointment is reported the week before and the absence is excused: it scores zero and the reason stays with the event. The total on the last day of June is 4.5, and the employee has been told, twice, in writing, where they are.
The third and fourth quarters: the window starts to give points back
July and August are clean. In September a tardy takes the total to 5. In October an absence takes it to 6, three quarters of the threshold, and the final warning follows, citing the two earlier warnings. Then the window does its work: in January of the second year the two January tardies from the first year age out and the total falls to 5, and in March the March tardy ages out and it falls to 4.5. Under a fixed calendar year the total would have reset to zero in January, which forgives December and punishes January; under a rolling window each event is forgotten exactly twelve months after it happened, which is the fairer arithmetic and the harder one to do by hand.
What the year shows about the numbers themselves
Over the year the employee produced eleven events, one of them excused, and never reached 8. That is the system working: three warnings, each earlier than the last would have been under a looser policy, and a total that fell as behaviour changed. It also shows what each weight means. The single no-call cost as much as two absences or four tardies, which is the policy saying that not calling is the worst thing a crew member can do to a shift. An employer setting their own numbers can run the same year through the attendance points calculator with different weights and watch where the warnings move; that is a better way to choose a threshold than copying another company's.
Questions people ask about employee attendance point system
How does an employee attendance point system work over a year?
Each unexcused absence, tardy and no-call scores its weight on the day it happens, the total is the sum of events still inside the rolling window, warnings are given when the total crosses the steps the policy names, and each event stops counting exactly one window after it happened.
What is the difference between a rolling window and a calendar year?
A calendar year resets everyone to zero on the same day, so a December event is forgotten in weeks and a January one lasts all year. A rolling window forgets each event twelve months after its own date. The rolling window is fairer and needs software or a careful sheet to keep.
Does an excused absence add points?
No. An excused event is recorded with its reason and scores zero, so the record shows the policy was applied and the exception honoured. Whether the absence is excused is decided under the policy and the law, not by the software.