Lateness/tardiness policies...

[GreenFrog]

Great TED talk that's somewhat relevant to this topic: 'Why work doesn't happen at work' http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_fried...n_at_work.html

 

[epb]

Originally Posted by Robert Evans

If employees are late and still do a bad job - fire them. If the employees do an amazing job for you, but are frequently late, leave them the **** alone and be grateful that you have these people working for you, because they could easily leave your ass and do that amazing job for your competitor.

You can't be late all the time and do a good job - it's a contradiction in terms.

 

[Robert Evans]

Originally Posted by epb

You can't be late all the time and do a good job - it's a contradiction in terms.

Not all jobs require you to be answering the phone the second it's 9:00 AM. In my experience, people don't even really start working until 9:30 or so, because everyone makes their morning coffee/eats breakfast at their desk and they shoot the **** with other employees and maybe check their email and the boss doesn't come into the office until 10:30. Sp if your star employee comes in at 9:30 or so and is making you mad money, just accept that he comes in at 9:30.

 

[epb]

Originally Posted by Robert Evans

...if your star employee comes in at 9:30 or so and is making you mad money, just accept that he comes in at 9:30.

If Mr. Star Moneymoaker's start time is changed to 9:30, you really think he's going to never be late again? You really think he plops down and gets to work, instead of costing you more lost time as he disrupts everyone else that just settled following the same routine? Do you also think the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale?

A star employee isn't someone that shines in one area and fails in others. Punctuality is an area of competence. I can't understand the persistent attitude in this thread that tardy people are otherwise great workers. If they can't get something this simple right - figuring out what time to leave home to arrive at work at 9 - what's the reasoning for assuming they're great in other areas, which pretty much have to be more complex unless there's an office job called "breathing"?

 

[cross22]

This thread has become very interesting. It seems service workers and their middle managers are on one side while knowledge workers are on the other side. Both sides are right about importance of tardiness in their respective professions.

Originally Posted by epb

A star employee isn't someone that shines in one area and fails in others. Punctuality is an area of competence. I can't understand the persistent attitude in this thread that tardy people are otherwise great workers. If they can't get something this simple right - figuring out what time to leave home to arrive at work at 9 - what's the reasoning for assuming they're great in other areas, which pretty much have to be more complex unless there's an office job called "breathing"?

 

[DerekS]

At my office, if anyone is even a minute late...(seriously) they lose 1/3 of their monthly bonus. People here are rarely late.

i WISH i could get away with coming in 10-20 minutes late every so often. no can do though. thats grounds for termination everywhere ive worked since high school.

 

[GQgeek]

That TED video was interesting. I totally agree about the point he made about meetings. Often, they exist to create the appearance of (a manager's) work being done, but a lot of the time they are totally unnecessary, or their scope is too large, and they waste a lot of people's time for nothing. I wouldn't say all meetings are useless, but a big chunk of them are. Thankfully frequent meetings aren't part of the culture at my current job.

The point about frequent distractions is totally true as well. When I was doing a lot of coding, there was nothing worse than someone coming into my office and deciding to talk when i was in the middle of working through an algorithm or debugging a piece of code. It was a total productivity killer because i'd essentially have to start all over again when they left. I got way more work done on weekends and off-hours.

 

[Archivist]

This thread stinks of fail from all sides.