Comments on: Attendance & Punctuality

By: A Career Development Trifecta – Part I – Terminations | HRM Today

A Career Development Trifecta – Part I – Terminations | HRM Today — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 04:36:05 +0000

[...] didn’t tell them to do whatever they did to get themselves terminated. I didn’t tell them to show up late for work. I didn’t tell them to surf porn sites on company time. The employee made the decision to do [...]

By: Employee Terminations | the employee plays an active role — hr bartender

Employee Terminations | the employee plays an active role — hr bartender — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:34:27 +0000

By: Wally Bock

Wally Bock — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:47:53 +0000

I think Robin hit a key point with “Of course, this becomes a matter of the manager “managing” appropriately.” It’s part of the manager’s job, working within whatever guidelines the company provide, BUT

Flexibility should attach to the position, not the person. It’s not a good conduct award, the position either can be scheduled flexibly or not. If it can be, do so.

In my previous life as a working manager I had a team that scheduled their own flex time. We needed to have phone coverage (pre-email) from 7 to 7 and we had a core day that ran from 10 to 4. We expected everyone to be in place for the core. That’s what our customers expected. But we only needed one scheduled person and a designated emergency backup for 7 to 10 and 4 to 7.

The team worked this out every week for the next week. In theory I was the designated decider, but they always got the job done.

By: hr bartender

hr bartender — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:25:26 +0000

A lot of great replies to this post…thank you everyone!

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on Robin’s comment. It’s definitely a challenge to explain how one position can have flexible hours and another cannot.

Is it possible that flexible scheduling is a perquisite (and should be explained that way)? I’ve worked for several companies where you worked a 4-day week if you had the overnight shift (and a 5-day week if you worked the day shift). Getting the reduced workweek was a perk of working the overnight shift.

By: Robin S

Robin S — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:40:55 +0000

The piece that everyone is missing in this discussion is the perception of fairness or equal treatment between different employees in either a work group, a department or company. When a manager “allows” Sally to have a flexible start time/end time, while Billy has to be there on-the-dot from 8 to 5, it breeeds distrust and animosity. Of course, this becomes a matter of the manager “managing” appropriately, but the reality is… I have seen this backfire more than have a positive effect. We have flex hours at my organization; it has gotten so out of hand, that we have had to reset the bar and expectations. Our business hours are 8 to 5, but when 3/4 of the building is empy by 4 PM, it becomes VERY hard to manage handle customer needs.

By: Wally Bock

Wally Bock — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:17:37 +0000

Let’s start by taking ROWE off the table. Scheduling flexibility is part of many systems including ROWE. But ROWE itself is a system which is said (but not proven) to work in one part of a large corporation.

If we leave ROWE out of it we can look at the workplaces we toil in. There are some where having people all show up at the same time simply makes no sense. Change the policy.

There are others where groups need to be able to work at the same time, but not in the same location. And there are others where having everyone show up at the same time and in the same place is a good idea.

In those situations the reason that showing up on time matters is more about courtesy to your team and carrying your share of the load. If you’re in that sort of situation you need a clear policy and reasonable enforcement.

For me that means that most of your lateness will be one-offs that won’t even rate comment. But if you have a pattern, then it’s time to have the conversation where you remind a person of the policy and tell them that their lateness will be documented from that point on. In my experience that’s enough for most reasonable people, you won’t have to write a shred of documentation.

Your other cases will divide into two groups. One group will have a temporary problem that needs fixing or needs an allowance made. The other group will not. If you can, you’ll make accommodation for the first group. You will write paper on the second group.

That second group usually will present more than lateness problems. There are usually other behavior and performance issues. They will suck up supervisor time. But they’re a small portion of the team and you can treat them like the exception they are.

By: Elliot Ross

Elliot Ross — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 18:37:51 +0000

OK, I can buy the argument for the staffer having to unlock the Starbucks store in the AM, and maybe a few others

But how many businesses that have 7 freaking minutes & doc your pay – gladly have mandatory 6 PM Friday meetings?

Mandatory “lunch & learns”?

Docked for 7 minutes while the boss is on 2.5 hr lunch or the golf course?

Knowledge workers are one of the largest demographics now, and even to many organizations do the same thing there.

12 hours on the weekend getting that presentation pulled together for you and you chastise me for arriving at 08:07?

Sorry – I say bullshit

I am not a huge fan of ROWE, you can never generalize – there will always be a bad apple – but I would blame “significant” time & attendance problems as a Management problem – not an employee one

That is a work environment that has zero trust, zero team work and zero respect.

And sorry – that is usually learned from the Boss