This is a Contributed Post

HOW TO COPE WITH LATE EMPLOYEES

Lateness is a serious problem for every business. You have a starting time for a reason; this is when you expect your employees to begin working. In an office, if you start at 9, this means everyone should already be sat down getting along with their work. In a store or bar or restaurant, your starting time is often when you open your doors – so everyone needs to be there ready for this.

If you have shifts at work, people need to be on time for the start of their shift or it means that the other employees have to stay later, disrupting their day. Or, if they decide to leave when their shift ends – as is their right – you’re down a few employees until the new ones show up. 

All of this means that tracking work and employee hours is a big priority for your business. You need to know when your employees are showing up. As a consequence, you can quickly pinpoint which ones are constantly late. Lateness disrupts your business, ruins productivity, and can damage your reputation amongst clients/customers. So, when you discover late employees, how should you deal with them?

Speak to the Employees Directly

This is a pretty serious problem, so you need to take it seriously. Speak to your employees and figure out why they are always late. In some cases, there are perfectly valid reasons for being late. They could be a single parent that has to drop the kids off at school, so they’re stuck in bad traffic all morning. Or, they might be having some personal problems that are making it difficult for them to keep to their schedule.

Speaking to the employee lets you get to the root of the issue, and you can try to help them deal with anything that might be making them late. 

On the other hand, this can also showcase instances when employees have no valid reason for being late. They say they keep waking up late or keep missing the bus. These aren’t good enough reasons because they can simply get up earlier to avoid this problem. Let these employees know that they need to pull their fingers out and make more of an effort or there will be consequences. 

Implement a Strike System

Every employee has three strikes. If they are late three times in a month, that’s three strikes and they need to come and speak to you directly. This is where you have the chat with them, as mentioned above. 

But, if they continue to be late after the talk, they keep getting strikes. If they have another three strikes, you have to penalize them in some way. This could mean you start taking money from their wages because they’re not at work all the time.

If they’re late all the time, it could mean they miss a couple of hours of work per month. Dock that from their wages – it shouldn’t affect them too badly, but it’s a sign that you will take action against lateness. 

If they continue to get further strikes after this, then you need to review their position. Tell them that you can’t keep letting them come in late when everyone else is on time. This is their final warning; three more strikes and they are out of your business. 

Consider Offering Flexible Working Patterns

When lots of your employees are late quite frequently, it’s hard to implement the systems mentioned above. You can end up wasting even more time calling everyone into your office individually. Instead, frequent lateness across the board shows that the business itself could be a problem. Are you asking people to come to work too early? Is your office in a bad location that’s too hard to get to for everyone? 

Consider offering flexible working patterns where individuals can work from home. This should eliminate a lot of lateness issues as they don’t have to commute. The employees that prefer working from home can do so, while others can come to the office if they live locally. Obviously, this doesn’t work with every type of business, but it can help prevent lateness in a lot of office-based companies. 

Coping with late employees can be very challenging. You need to give them a chance to change their behavior, which is where your three-strike system comes in. Then, you need to learn why they’re late and if there’s anything you can do to help them. This might mean switching to a work-from-home approach for some of your employees. But, at the end of the day, if employees constantly turn up late with no effort to change their behavior, they have to go!

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

7 Things to Do Before Hiring Your First Employee

Work Perks – When Did you Last Check Your Employee Benefits?