Why You Should Manage Lateness In The Workplace

Why you should manage lateness in the workplace

A lot of employers, and unfortunately employees, can have a lax attitude to lateness. If an employee is two or three minutes late then it is not the end of the world. However, lateness in the workplace is also viewed as a major problem for many Irish businesses. We all know that sometimes lateness can be unavoidable. An employee cannot control the traffic, road accidents etc. Lateness like this is bound to happen on occasion and therefore should not be a major worry to business owners and employers. While this type of lateness is unavoidable, the employer can rest assured that it is unlikely to affect all of your employees so you will not be severely understaffed should this occur.

Persistent Lateness

As a business owner, what is likely to be a real worry to you is persistent lateness. The problem with persistent lateness is, by definition, its regularity and its tendency to get progressively worse. Lateness may start with an employee being two minutes late. If this is not addressed, the likelihood is that the employee will continue to take advantage of your apparent leniency. That employee may then start to turn up five minutes late before ultimately more employees see that they can also take advantage of this. If even ten employees turn up to work five minutes late then you are at the loss of an hour’s paid work. Another concern is the feeling of resentment that a punctual employee may begin to hold against a tardy employee. What you don’t want to happen is for employees to become demotivated when they feel certain employees are not pulling their weight. This is one of the main reasons why problems such as this should be corrected early. If it is corrected early it will stop patterns emerging with the rest of your employees and also help to ensure that your entire workforce is committed and going in the same direction.

So What Can Be Done?

Robust Lateness Policy

First and foremost an employer should have a robust policy to deal with employee lateness. It is recommended that this policy outlines what procedure an employee must adopt if they believe they are going to be late and how their lateness should be communicated to the employer. Such a policy may include that the employee will be at the loss of pay if they pass a certain threshold of lateness and it could even go as far as stating that if the employee is more than an hour late, without notifying the employer, then alternative arrangements will have been made to cover their shift and the employee will no longer be required to work. These two policies will ensure that lateness will be kept to a minimum so that the employee will not be losing pay and it will also ensure that employers are properly notified as otherwise the employee may lose their shift entirely.

Disciplinary Process

The aforementioned lateness policy should also outline that persistent lateness is a disciplinary matter which may result in disciplinary action being taken. As an employer you must ensure that if an employee arrives late they should be asked first of all why they are not on time and the instance should be recorded. By keeping records of not only how often an employee is late but also what excuses they use, you can either ensure that you correct the problem or, in more serious cases, take disciplinary action. If disciplinary action is taken then it is an effective method of correcting the employee’s poor punctuality record and ensure more effective timekeeping going forward. As an employer the management of your workforce is key. You need to ensure that everyone is in the workplace and committed to the work they do. Allowing an employee to be persistently late could have major repercussions in terms of the commitment of the rest of your workforce. Cases such as this aren’t always immediately noticeable to some employers but you can be sure that they are noticeable to the rest of your workforce and you should therefore try to spot these problems as early as possible.

Conclusion

Five areas to consider when dealing with lateness in the workplace:

1. Try to deal with this problem as early as possible to stop repeat instances.
2. Ensure that you record not only when but what excuses an employee uses when they are late.
3. Be seen to be recording which employees are late to set your stall to the rest of your workforce.
4. Ensure that you differentiate between persistent lateness and unavoidable lateness but reiterate that both are a problem.
5. Don’t forget the bigger picture – persistent lateness will affect the rest of your workforce