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<\/figure>An employee can clock in every day for a year, contribute little, and still collect the prize, while a high performer who took three days of legitimate medical leave walks away with nothing. The award rewards the metric that is easiest to count, not the one that matters. As the argument in WFH and the Trust Problem Your Attendance Data Cannot Solve<\/a> already established, attendance was never designed to measure productivity, only presence. A bonus built on it inherits that blind spot and then pays money for it.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Now the damage. When there is a reward for never being absent, the employee with a fever does the maths and comes in anyway. They are not being diligent. They are protecting a bonus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So they sit at their desk half-functioning, spreading whatever they have to the people around them, and the company that offered the reward has effectively paid to turn one sick employee into five. Presenteeism costs more than absence ever did, because absence takes out one person while presenteeism takes out a team, and none of it shows up on the attendance record that triggered the payout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there is the part most employers never consider. Sick leave, hospitalisation leave, and maternity leave are statutory entitlements, not discretionary favours. An employee who uses them is exercising a legal right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A reward scheme that pays employees for not taking that leave is, in effect, a financial penalty for using it. Apply that to a pregnant employee on maternity leave, or a worker managing a chronic condition, and a well-meaning morale exercise starts to look like discrimination against the very people the law is designed to protect. The bonus was meant to encourage reliability. What it does is put a price on staying silent about being unwell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of this means attendance does not matter. Unauthorised absence, chronic lateness, and genuine unreliability are real problems worth managing. The mistake is using a blunt bonus to chase them, because it cannot tell the difference between an employee gaming the system and one exercising a right.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Sick Employee You Paid to Come In<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Legal Line You Did Not Mean to Cross<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Reward the Right Thing, and Measure It Properly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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