Tardiness In The Workplace Report Example

Letter of Transmittal

Dear XXX,
Enclosed is the report you asked on tardiness in the workplace. The main findings of the report are:
Tardiness is a common problem for many enterprises and there is no single solution to the problem.
There are different reasons for lateness, which should be taken into account when deciding on the measures of dealing with this problem.
There is a set of traditional punishment measures, such as fines and depriving of bonuses, which should be used with care, as there is a chance they will not motivate the staff in the right way.
Management by objectives is one of the effective measures in dealing with tardiness, although it may not be applicable to all the job positions.
I would like to thank you for the opportunity this report gave me to get familiarized with the problem of tardiness and the measures and approaches that could solve it. I also had a chance to develop my research skills, which will also be very valuable for the future research.

Regards,

Informative Abstract
This report was written to research the problem of tardiness in the workplace, its causes and ways of solution. It is necessary to state that the problem has been already topical for a long time and the management will have to deal with it in the case of each particular firm in the future. There is no unified solution to the problem, as a lot depends on the kind of business and the job position of people. There are different traditional ways of dealing with the problem, such as imposing fines, or making people stay after work to complete the tasks that are required of them. Another way of dealing with the problem is managing by objectives, when people have a certain amount of work to do and are not tied by the necessity to come on time or leave at a specific time. All they have to do is achieve the goals they set within the deadline that is required of them. It is a good idea for many professions, but will not be useful for certain positions that rely on time. Every manager should understand his/her priorities in managing the personnel and choose the way of dealing with the problem of tardiness that suits him/her most.
1. Introduction
Recently, people have been arriving at workplace late. This is not a good trend and should be addressed. Many people think that tardiness is a consequence of problems with time management in an organization. However, this is only an illusion. Because punctuality is the problem of motivation. From time to time, employees of any company, even with the most rigid discipline, lose punctuality. In times of crisis, it is especially important, as many workers are not motivated enough. The management, in turn, does not consider it necessary to encourage them to come on time.
In a crisis, there are often decreasing wages, reduced bonuses. It deprives people of an incentive to come to the office on time. How can managers punish subordinate who is not punctual? It is necessary not to forget that there are different kinds of work. There are jobs that require coming to work on time. Call center operators, factory workers, employees of retailers, bankers and many others. That is, all those who work in the pipeline mode or are in direct contact with customers, from whom depends the company's revenue, of course, should come on time. At the same time, coming to the office 25-30 minutes later does not affect the quality and quantity of work of representatives of a whole set of occupations. Whether to require people engaged in such activities, punctuality? This research seeks to evaluate why people arrive at work late and what can be done to ensure that this behavior is eliminated.
2. Causes of Lateness in the Workplace

First of all, it should be noted that tardiness at work can be different in nature and divided into groups.

1. Delays of individual character. They are typical of certain people who are not able to organize their time. In addition, there are people, for whom it is very difficult to be on time, especially in the morning. Here can help folk remedy - to reset the clock for 10 minutes or more in advance. Yet in both cases, there is the problem of self-management, so there is a need to influence from the outside. It is necessary to help people learn how to manage themselves.
2. Delays related to the lack of incentive to come to work on time. They are observed in people who have problems with discipline, for whom works better method of carrot and stick than a simple desire to keep to the work schedule.
3. Delays which are due to the remoteness of the place of work and problems with transport. In large cities, there is always topical the problem of traffic jams. It really is a serious problem that is unlikely to be resolved soon. It is therefore necessary to look for a way out, if the delays are chronic. Workers can, for example, transfer to other vehicles. If you need it to work, you should think about change from a personal car on the subway. At least on some days, the busiest are Monday and Friday.
4. And the final group - a delay caused by extraordinary circumstances - a traffic accident, an accident in the apartment (lock on the door broke, etc.) and others. But this can happen to anyone, so we will not focus on it.
It is necessary to understand that there is no universal remedy against the delays. However, there are ways to solve individual problems. But first, it is necessary to understand what consequences tardiness can lead to in the company.
3. Possible Ways of Solution of Tardiness Problem
3.1. Financial Punishment
Money deduction or leaving employee without a bonus remains the most popular among the managers and the most unloved among employees form of punishment. On the one hand, the punishment of the financial character is an efficient measure. Still, when using this method, it is necessary to be very careful. It is a good idea to create an internal document in the company, where there will be written strict regulations on tardiness with fines and respective bonuses. It must clearly and in detail fix on what basis, how often the employee is entitled to the premium or fine. And most importantly - under what circumstances (Kato et al., 2012).
For example, when every minute of delay costs 10 dollars, everyone begins to come to the office on time, and most of all - even for a few minutes before the start of the working day. On the other hand, there will operate a strict rule: your employees will do exactly for which they are paid. That is, if a good employee in your company is the one who comes in time, if you give him/her a bonus or deprive of it, the staff certainly will not be late. But do not expect them to reach stunning results, because you define priority: come on time. And it is what they do.
So before you fine, you need to define the concept of a good worker - someone who gets results, or the one who sits in the office from 9:00 am until lights go out. In addition, as soon as the staff will come to the top of the day, they will leave immediately afterwards. They will have an iron argument: "I work from 9 until 18:00." And there will be nothing to argue about. Therefore, if business involves overtime, there is no reason to require compliance with the schedule.
3.2. Forcing to Work Late
There is another measure of fighting with tardiness – forcing to work in the evening late, or earlier in the morning on another day. It is rather effective, but employees can complain for non-payment of overtime. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully write work rules, particularly with regard to the description of penalties for their violation (Rana & Punia, 2014). Thus, every delay can follow official sanction with an entry in a personal file. Another penalty - and the employee is dismissed by the article.
Compliance with internal regulations has to be one of the indicators used to calculate the amount of the bonus. If the employee completes his work, but he/she has more than three delays, the premium is applicable to the reduction factor. But the system must be balanced in such a way that for punctuality did not pay more than the basic results of work.
3.3. Personal Example of Leader
Personal example of the leader can also be a good measure of fighting against tardiness. Most of the leaders of the enterprises of small and medium-sized businesses can be divided into two groups (Beamer & Varner, 2008). The first group includes those who regularly appear in the office only to give certain instructions to implement the minimum necessary control function. The second group includes senior managers who literally live at work, come early and leave late. In a sense, such a desire to keep everything under the personal supervision is commendable. After all, if the head on his own example shows when it is necessary to come to work and when to leave, subordinates begin to follow this schedule. Come and go from his job at a particular time becomes a measure of personal loyalty. This approach is a good way to achieve that all employees come on time. But with the effectiveness of work this measure has nothing to do.
There are also extreme measures. Personal impact of leader through advocacy conversation with delinquent subordinates is effective only when an employee respects or fears the chief. Otherwise, intimate talk does not lead to the desired results. With words, it is seldom possible to reach the worst violators of labor regulations. They nod understandingly, show sincere repentance, and then are again late. As practice shows, for many performing companies, sometimes it is enough to enter the rule of three delays in the quarter and dismiss the worst truants. Then others will come to the office on time.
3.4. Management by Objectives
Another effective measure is management by objectives. Before assigning a drug, you should always make a diagnosis. It is a good idea to open to person the secondary benefits of his/her actions, to find a safer and more socially acceptable way to implement a subconscious desire in another, more suitable style of behavior - we are talking about the subjective reasons. The solution to the problem in many cases is ceasing to give priority to the delay. Some of the staff were allowed to work in the "home office" by contacting the company on the Internet, or to make flexible working hours. Benefit from it everyone, as they receive the opportunity to adjust the schedule according to their rhythm of life. This practice is convenient for the leader as well, as it is visible in Figure 1, managers are comfortable with lateness of up to 35 minutes in some cases and often have a priority of having the work done properly.
Figure 1. Answers to the question in a study of 1,000 U.S., British, German, French and Irish employees and employers (Mozy, 2012).
Since coming to the fore of such indicators as a result, speed and innovation, for the head it is more important than what his underlings were doing, how he was successful and how great his potential was. Recently, one of the main principles of the organization of work becomes management by objectives. The main thing - the time within which and how well the person is doing the job and not how many hours he/she works.
However, this style masks corporate rituals. How should organizations act, where coming to work in exactly the designated time is a matter of principle for the manager, corporate culture and business need? In practice, the most common strategy of "tit for tat": the one who is late gets reprimanded and/or deprived of the award; he/she may also be offered to stay after work. Sometimes the names of the guilty and/or explanatory letters are posted on the stands. In other words, in one way or another there is used negative motivation.
The employer has both moral and legal grounds to punish the violator of labor discipline. By signing an employment contract, future employee undertakes to perform not only the proper working function, but also to comply with internal regulations. However, stopping your choice on any strategy, directing corporate policy, we cannot begin to translate it, not predicting the possible outcomes and side effects.
First, the delay should be fixed, that is any of the employees who, as a rule, have no enthusiasm to participate in the punitive measures, should be obliged to do it. As a result, we:
reduce the number of delays for three to four months (and then everything will return to normal);
have conflicts between employees at all levels;
develop negative attitude to the necessary delays at work;
receive offence of punished for a random delay if they are usually disciplined employees.
Of course, with certain categories of workers and certain enterprises the "hard" method is the only possible one, but most others can choose more effective strategy (Rahman et al., 2014). The problem can be solved by buying a computer system that automatically records the time of arrival at the employee's work and leaving it. But before doing anything, it is better to conduct a preliminary investigation and consider the options. By analyzing the statistics for being late for the last year and having direct communication with those who are regularly late can be identified patterns that prompt the optimal solution.
The second strategy - the creation of conditions, but better - a kind of "bait", so that for the employees it was convenient, comfortable, and most importantly, interesting to carry out their obligations to the company. Let the staff perform feats on the job rather than tries to get there in time to the beginning of the working day. Recall that the employer by signing an employment contract agrees to not only paying for the labor of person, but also to creating conditions for this. For example, if the company is located a few kilometers from the nearest public transport, employees who do not have their own cars will be late regularly. In this case, it is easier to hire or buy a bus service than conduct endless search for undisciplined employees.
The third option - positive motivation for the timely arrival to work. One must understand that he/she will not only be punished for violation of labor discipline, but also benefit for its observance. In the end, disciplined workers save the company money and time, and set the tone for others. To reward employees for their conscientious attitude to work and labor discipline - is the least that can be done in this case by the employer, but it is desirable to develop a system of incentives. By analyzing the statistics for lateness, there can be identified patterns that prompt the optimal solution to the problem.
Strategy number four - the impact through collective. If its backbone are senior officials, professionals, the problems with delays should not arise. However, it is also necessary to combine the negative motivation with positive. For example, if from the total of the payroll at delay there is withdrawn any amount, commensurate premium should be appointed in the event that all employees comply with labor discipline. The employer's decision to distribute the punishment, not only on the offender labor discipline, but also to his mentor, manager or even the whole team, as a rule, leads to the fact that the delay will be hidden from the leadership (Henle & Gross, 2013).
4. Conclusions
Thus, it is necessary to understand that it is necessary to fight with tardiness itself, and not with the staff who is late, otherwise, there is a high risk to overreact. It is necessary to communicate to the staff that the observance of labor discipline is a common problem and it must be solved together. Work on eliminating delays should be systematic. Periodic or one-off measures, whatever they may be, do not give consistent results. There can be no exceptions: if the director allows himself to be late for the meeting, the punctuality achieved by his subordinates would be very difficult.
The company's role in the formation of discipline in the workplace is difficult to overestimate. However, if the corporate policy does work, and is not a formality, if the employees are aware of their responsibilities, including the disciplinary order, they will comply with them. Employer should always denote his position to candidates in the recruitment process, talk about the existing internal rules, values, culture, what is considered good, and what – bad, what is encouraged, and what - no. To what extent the worker must be responsible, whether it is necessary to stop tardiness or move to the free schedule - everyone decides for themselves. In any case, at stake is your professional reputation, because everyone around - partners, colleagues, bosses - especially appreciate the respect for themselves, their company and business. No one wants to deal with the ones who are in a constant hurry and, nevertheless, are always late.

References

Beamer, L., & Varner, I. I. (2008). Intercultural communication in the global workplace. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
Henle, C. A., & Gross, M. A. (2013). An Examination of the Relationship between Workplace Deviance and Employee Personality. Deviant and criminal behavior in the workplace, 50.
Kato, L., Carré, F., Johnson, L. E., & Schwartz, D. (2012). An Alternative to Temporary Staffing: Considerations for Workforce Practitioners. Center for Social Policy Publications. Paper 65.
Mozy, EMC. (2012). Cloud and mobile apps free us from 9-to-5 working. Retrieved from http://mozy.com/about/news/reports/9-5.
Rahman, A. N., Yusoff, Z. M., Omar, D., & Aziz, I. S. (2014). Travel to Work Patterns of Low-income People in Urban Area. Jurnal Teknologi, 71(5), 63-66.
Rana, H., & Punia, B. K. (2014). Management Mechanisms and Implications of Workplace Deviance for Green Organisational Behaviour. International Journal of Advance Research in Computer Science and Management Studies, 2(8), 1-8.