Return-to-office rules are being written everywhere. Most of them fail at the same point: nobody can say, without an argument, how many days someone was in.
Hybrid attendance is tracked fairly when every working day has one of four statuses — office, approved work-from-home, remote (by role), or leave — recorded by the employee at the time, with location captured only at the check-in for office days. The policy then states what mix is expected (anchor days, a minimum office-day count per week or month), and the record shows whether it was met. What it does not need is continuous tracking, screenshot tools or badge-swipe forensics: those measure surveillance tolerance, not work. Pay is unaffected by which of the three working statuses a day carries; only leave changes it.
| Office | Checked in at a company location. Location captured at the punch confirms it. |
|---|---|
| WFH (approved) | Requested in advance, approved by the manager, recorded on the day. A working day for payroll. |
| Remote (by role) | The employee's default is not the office — a field role, a fully remote hire. Check-in still happens; the location is wherever they are. |
| Leave | Paid or unpaid, from the leave record. The only status that changes pay. |
An unrecorded day is not "probably WFH". It is unrecorded, and the correction process applies. That rule alone removes most hybrid disputes, because it makes the employee's own record the source.
Three patterns work; pick one and write the number:
Whichever you choose, add: how WFH is requested and how far in advance; whether a public holiday or leave day counts toward the quota (usually it reduces it pro rata); and what happens when the quota is missed — a conversation first, not a deduction. The WFH policy template covers the request side; the attendance policy covers the rest.
The only question location needs to answer in a hybrid team is "was this an office day?". A reverse-geocoded place name at check-in answers it — "Koramangala" versus "Whitefield" — without tracking movement, without a geofence that rejects someone at the pavement café, and without any capture between punches. That is also the defensible line under data-protection principles: collect the minimum, at the moment it is needed, and say so in the policy. How location capture works and where accuracy fails.
What not to do: screenshot monitoring, keystroke counting, webcam checks, or requiring continuous location for WFH days. They do not measure work, they measure tolerance, and the people with the most options leave first.
Office, WFH and remote are all working days. Payroll sees "present" for all three; only leave — and unrecorded, uncorrected days — reduce paid days. The office-day count is reported separately, to the manager, as a policy metric. Mixing the two — docking pay for a missed anchor day — turns a policy conversation into a wage dispute and is almost never what the policy intended. How attendance reaches payroll without a manual step.
A manager needs two views: today — who is in the office, who is home, who is on leave — and the month — office days per person against the rule. Both come from the four statuses and the punch location; neither needs anything captured during the day. For what people actually did, the daily task log is the honest signal, and it is the same for office and home days — which is rather the point of hybrid.
| Statuses | Office · WFH (approved) · Remote (by role) · Leave |
|---|---|
| WFH | Requested in advance, approved, recorded; a paid working day |
| Location | Captured at check-in only, reverse-geocoded to a place name |
| Office-day rule | Anchor days, weekly minimum, or monthly quota — as a number |
| Payroll impact | None between office/WFH/remote; only leave and unrecorded days change pay |
| Not needed | Continuous tracking, screenshots, geofence enforcement |
Give every working day one of four statuses — office, approved work-from-home, remote by role, or leave — recorded by the employee through a check-in at the time. Capture location only at the check-in so office days are distinguishable from home days, treat WFH as a request approved in advance, and report office-day counts against the written rule separately from payroll.
The status is different; the treatment is not. A WFH day is requested and approved in advance and recorded on the day, like leave, but it is a full working day for payroll. The employee still checks in; the location simply shows home rather than the office.
From the punch location on each recorded day. A reverse-geocoded place name at check-in shows whether the day was at a company location, and a monthly count per employee compares that against the rule. No tracking between punches is needed.
You should not conflate the two. Office, WFH and remote are all working days, and the employee was paid to work, not to sit in a place. A missed anchor day is a policy matter for a conversation with the manager; making it a wage deduction turns a flexibility rule into a dispute and may breach wage rules.
Capturing location at the moment of check-in, with the employee's device permission, for the stated purpose of distinguishing office from home days, is generally proportionate where the policy discloses it. Continuous background tracking, or tracking on WFH days, is a different matter and is hard to justify.
One that states the office-day expectation as a number, explains how WFH is requested and approved, records every day with a clear status, captures location only at the punch, reports the office-day count separately from pay, and treats a missed quota as a conversation before anything else.
Merik records the four statuses as they happen. Employees check in from their own dashboard — the location is captured at the punch and reverse-geocoded to a place name, so an office day and a home day look different in the record without anything tracked in between. Work-from-home is a request type alongside leave: raised in advance, approved by the manager, and applied to the day automatically. Admins see who is in, who is home and who is off in one live view.
Payroll treats office, WFH and remote days identically; only approved leave and unrecorded days change paid days. The daily task log gives managers the output view for every kind of day. See the attendance and leave modules.
A simple WFH policy template that's easy to enforce.
Every clause a working attendance policy needs, in plain language.
How to make "present" verifiable without a biometric device per site.