The smooth running of any business depends largely on the efficiency of employees. If they do not respect the work schedule, arrive late, or they are unduly missing work, the organization will suffer the consequences, could lose customers or money, due to lower productivity. Starting from employees who are daily late for a few minutes and reaching to those who are always late tens of minutes, all these situations are unpleasant including for the general atmosphere at work.
The company management or team leaders should document the situation first, before deciding to take action regarding the employees who are late. In the first place, they should consider the impact that lateness has s on the organization, through the function occupied by the person who uses to come late. If we are talking, for example, about the employees from the reception, the impact can be quite large, though some visitors of the company are not greeted by anybody when they come to the headquarters.
Monitoring lateness
It is also necessary to know whether the problem is one that is constantly repeating for certain employees. Increasingly more organizations with a large number of employees have begun to implement key card access in the office. Each card has a unique serial number assigned to the employee who owns it, and thus the delays are easier to monitor.
This way, the seriousness of the situation can be established and, if the conclusion is that an employee has multiple instances of lateness, tens of minutes in a month, the individual will need to have a talk with the supervisor or team leader. It would be good to organize an individual meeting with the employee that is always late and to try to identify the cause of delay.
The frequent causes of lateness – How to combat them
For example, if the employee invokes traffic at peak hours and the distance that he has to travel to reach the office as the reason for the delays, the schedule of the employee could be modified, to begin work with one hour earlier or later, if possible. Equally, if you notice that many employees complain that they can’t arrive on time for a schedule that starts at 9:00 am because of traffic you could organize a poll among employees regarding the change of the starting hours for all team members.
In conclusion, the responsibility of arriving on time for work must be understood as being a common practice that all employees must adhere to. If the problem is identified on a small number of employees, then it should be discussed in private with them. If it is identified to most employees, it is advisable to hold some common meetings with the team during which to impose some rules or to reach a consensus regarding a possible change for work hours.
BIA HR TEAM