Assign Grades to Attendance Policies

In each attendance policy, you need to describe how employee records are assigned to the different grades, or levels of severity, that your organization tracks.

For example, an employee’s attendance record can progress from Fine, to three different levels of severity: Low, Medium, or High. For each of these progressions, you describe how many points an employee’s attendance record must incur within the period.

To assign grades to an attendance policy:

1. Go to Pay Setup > Attendance. Dayforce shows the Attendance Policy tab, by default.
2. Select the attendance policy that you want to add grades to.
3. Click the Grade subtab.
4. Click Add and configure the following settings:

5. Grade subtab settings

   Setting	Description
   Grade	The grade that you want to assign.
   Grade Track	The grade track for the grade that you selected.
   Initial Grade	If this is the grade that employees start on, select this checkbox. The initial grade is the lowest grade an employee’s record can be on. Clear the checkbox if the grade represents a level that an employee’s record reaches by accumulating points.
   Downgrade	If this grade represents a level an employee’s record can be lowered to, select this checkbox. This represents an employee’s attendance record improving, typically by incurring no more points during the period. Consider an example where an organization wants three grades, Low, Medium, and Severe, to be reduced to the Fine grade if the employee doesn’t have any attendance incidents within four weeks. To support this requirement, they’d configure a Fine grade with the Downgrade checkbox selected. Clear the checkbox if the grade represents a level an employee’s record reaches by having more points recorded against their attendance record.
   Next Grade	The grade an employee can reach next by accumulating more points. The next grade that you select can also be the level an employee’s record drops to by not accumulating points. You can dictate how employee attendance records get worse (by accumulating points) and improve (typically by not accumulating points or by accumulating fewer points).
   Effective From Effective To	The grade’s effective start and end dates. If you leave Effective To blank, the grade doesn’t expire. Dayforce continues to track when employee attendance records reach the grade.
   Required Points	The amount of points that triggers Dayforce to move an employee’s attendance record to the grade specified in the Next Grade setting. If an employee accumulates the Required Points within the period configured with the Period Type and Lookback Period fields, their attendance record moves to the next grade. This can represent the record becoming worse, by accumulating points, or improving, by not accumulating points. For example, when configuring how the Medium grade, which represents a medium level of severity on an employee’s attendance record, can become worse, select the Severe grade in the Next Grade drop-down list and enter 5 in the Required Points field. This represents the number of additional points the employee must accumulate for their record to become severe. Because employees’ records can improve from the Medium grade, you also need to configure how this occurs by repeating these steps to add another row, selecting the Medium grade in the Current Grade drop-down list and Fine in the Next Grade drop-down list, and then entering 0 in the Required Points field. With this example configuration, the policy describes how an employee’s record can improve (by accumulating 0 points) or worsen (by accumulating an additional 5 points).
   Period Type	The time range within which the grade’s required points must occur. The following options are available: Indefinite Lookback: Dayforce examines all past incidents, including decrements. It then uses the employee’s total number of points to determine which grade to assign to the employee. Note: The Indefinite Lookback option should be used only if you have configured decrements, otherwise after an employee reaches a particular grade, there’s no way for them to go back to a lower grade. Rolling Day: Dayforce measures the time range in days. Rolling Month: Dayforce measures the time range in months. Rolling Week: Dayforce measures the time range in weeks. The Period Type setting works with the Number of period value to determine during what date range points must be recorded against an employee’s attendance record to move the record to the grade selected in the Next Grade setting. For example, with the Rolling Week option selected here, 3 in the Number of period field, and 4 in the Required Points field, if an employee accumulates 4 more points within 3 weeks, their attendance record moves to the next grade.
   Number of period	The number of periods Dayforce examines at one time when determining if an employee has reached the required points threshold.
   Include Period Start	Include the period start date when validating the grade.
   Count Points Prior To Grade Start	Use this drop-down list to configure the policy to look back past the start of the current grade when determining if an employee is eligible for an upgrade or a downgrade. The drop-down list contains the following options: Downgrades Only: Dayforce counts attendance points prior to a grade’s start only if the grade is a downgrade. No: Dayforce doesn’t count attendance points prior to a grade’s start, regardless of whether the grade is an upgrade or downgrade. Yes: Dayforce counts attendance points prior to a grade’s start, regardless of whether the grade is an upgrade or downgrade. For example, say that you select No for an attendance policy that’s configured so that employees are downgraded after they achieve 365 days with only three points. By default, Dayforce starts counting as of the date the employee was assigned their current grade. If an employee reaches the next grade today, they aren’t eligible for a downgrade until 365 days from today, provided that they have accumulated only three points or less over those days. Alternatively, if you select Yes, Dayforce looks back 365 days from the current day. After there are only three points in that time (older points “drop off” and are no longer counted after they’re more than 365 days in the past), the employee is eligible for a downgrade. Important: This setting isn’t compatible with the Indefinite Lookback period type and shouldn’t be used in attendance policies that also have decrements configured.
   Send Notification	Employees receive notifications when they reach the grade you selected in the Grade drop-down list.
   Notification Message	If the Send Notification checkbox is selected, enter a customized message in this field that can be sent to employees when they reach the grade you selected in the Grade drop-down list. Note: Before employees can receive customized attendance notifications in Dayforce, you must: Subscribe the appropriate roles to the Incident Violation Notification in System Admin > System Notifications. See Workforce Management - Time and Attendance Notifications. Schedule the Incident Violation Notification Alert background job. Further, in the job’s settings dialog box, make sure that Customized is selected in the Alert Type drop-down list. See Incident Violation Notification Alert. For more information about customized attendance management notifications, see Configure Customized Notifications. For a list of supported tokens for customized attendance management notifications, see Supported Tokens for Attendance Management Notifications.

5. Click Save.