Arriving a few minutes late appears to be harmless, especially if the reason justifies it. Yet, a regular skipping a first quarter of morning work can bring harsh consequences for business, that reach beyond hours of a particular employee’s productivity. Chronic tardiness affects every organization on multiple levels.
According to the recent study published by the HRDive, up to 6% of American hourly workers arrive late to work. Moreover, up to 25% of employees are struggling to be on time, being late from time to time, indicates the CareerBuilder study. Considering that, tardiness is a common yet not a catastrophic problem in society.
But when it comes to business, little by little does the trick, whether it applies to good and bad things. So the effects of every little tardiness can build up to a large issue for a company and lower its productivity dramatically. And there are multiple reasons behind that.
Assuming that the employee is working eight hours a day, with a five-day workweek. Coming late to work for five minutes every day stacks up to 25 minutes a week – effectively more than an hour and a half in a four-week period. If the employee is going out from work later, to be fair – that is not a tragedy, assuming the nature of the work allows that.
But if not, the company loses this time of work, while still paying for it. Furthermore, the time from multiple employees is stacking up, so if the whole team is coming to the office late, there are hours lost due to “the little tardiness”. An employee who appears ten minutes later every day has an equivalent of a fully paid week of vacation yearly. In the case of the UK economy, the cost of hours lost due to employee tardiness stacks up to 9 billion pounds.
Finally, being regularly late hurts the mental discipline. If one gets used to being late to the work, the initial five minutes can transform into ten, later 15 or more – because why not? It is only a little tardiness, nothing to be ashamed of, right?
Actually, not.
Dealing with a teammate who is always late generates many tensions in the team. Depending on the company’s attitude toward the tardiness, it can produce several outcomes.
In the end, ignoring the problem is not a solution, and it can be as hurtful as overreacting.
No matter the approach, the tardiness undermines the respect of an employee toward the company and management. But not only the one who is notoriously late. If the manager ignores the matter, they position themselves as someone who avoids solving the issue. And when there is no discipline, employee engagement may disappear in a blink of an eye.
If the company is strict toward tardiness, yet the problem persists, it can be a clear sign, that it is helpless against even the slightest problem.
Regardless of the outcome, employee's tardiness is a lack of respect, and it’s hurting the business in multiple ways. The bad vibe coming from tardiness and tension from it can be disastrous eventually. Job dissatisfaction, mental health issues, manager, or administration problems... It is a headache for everyone.
Every company exists mainly to deliver some services or goods – and thus to earn money. If the employee comes late frequently, the customer gets not the service they expect and starts to wonder if the company is the right fit for them. It can be either prolonged waiting for an answer or getting his their order too late.
If the concern is not widespread in the company, the overall impact on the customer satisfaction can be limited. But if the tardiness is common among employees, the stacked amount of lost and unproductive time will eventually burst in a form of a catastrophe – and there is data for that. Up to 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience – this one, that is hampered by being late to work. Chronically late employees are lowering the customer satisfaction, and it eventually costs billions of dollars each year for many companies.
Being late is always a kind of “dark matter” in the production process that can appear as a surprise in the crucial moment. Be that an unexpected absence of a key employee, a work undone on time, or any other problem one can imagine.
Considering this huge amount of uncertainty in the company, management becomes more a crisis-avoiding than the real process-shaping. Furthermore, the management team needs to make many assumptions to secure the company’s smooth operation. Then leaders can focus on what really matters.
Tardiness shows a lack of respect, hurts morale, and undermines discipline. Thus, it is not a thing the company can tolerate. Occasionally, the way of written warnings for being late to work is enough.
On the other hand, thou, confrontation is not always what works best. From time to time, the employee needs soft touch or proper clock-in clock-out software, just to measure their own work hours. The modern business needs to look for more elastic and agile attendance policies and solutions, like:
The top of mind connotation can be the card-based system seen in factories, but that’s not the whole truth. Modern clock-in clock-out solutions are mobile and user-friendly. Calamari supports not only a manual clock-in, but also an automated way to check the time of arrival in the office based on beacons.
If the challenge is in getting early in the morning, the traffic jams or any other obstacle, not in a lack of respect from the employee toward the company. A gentleman's agreement on staying late to work the hours that would be lost with tardiness should be enough. After all, the company culture should not be punitive but encouraging. A habitually late person who arrives last but works late every day will not be perceived as someone for whom the rules don't apply.
The other side of the same coin. A flexible schedule enables the employee to better fit his daily life duties with his or her work schedule. Thus, more agility in managing the working time can be beneficial not only for the employee but also the employer. It builds mutual respect and understanding, as well as helps to deliver the work on time.
The lack of punctuality can be seen both as a challenge, but also a bit of an antiquated approach toward work ethics. The modern workforce is decreasingly based on hard manual labor, with an increasing share of creativity and analysis-based work. The upcoming robotization of the manual tasks will only support this trend.
Moreover, the employees who are late to work appear to be more productive and creative ones. So why not turn this foe into a friend and incorporate an elastic approach to work as the best way to tackle the tardiness? Please let us know what are your thoughts about the topic – write to us! And find out Calamari Leave to better manage your team!
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