Attendance incentives

Attendance incentives are often negotiated as an add-on to a pay deal, or part of an agreed pay structure. They can take the form of an attendance bonus (machinery manufacturer Case New Holland has an annual attendance bonus of £200); be one factor in a wider bonus scheme (as at bus and coach manufacturer Optare); affect pay progression (as at Jaguar Land Rover and Oxford City Council); or entitle workers to extra leave.

However, motor manufacturer Honda is phasing out its Excellent Attendance Holidays, and in the civil service experience has shown that badly designed schemes can discriminate against groups of staff with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

The Land Registry had a bonus scheme that excluded members of staff given a formal warning for sickness absence. In a case backed by the PCS union, the tribunal found that the time off was all attributed to disability and that the staff had been discriminated against. The EAT confirmed that they were denied the award because of their disability-related absence (Land Registry v Houghton (EAT) 2015 UKEAT/0149/14/BA).