We have a small business with only four employees. We need our employees to be on time because our clients come to us. If our staff doesn’t arrive at the designated time, we often have clients waiting for them out in the parking lot.
We introduced a vacation policy for the first time, and employees can now earn paid time off by clocking in on time. Each pay period of timeliness gets them half a paid day, which means they can earn 12 paid days off each year, just by clocking in on time. But we heard someone say, ‘Well, if I’m late once during a pay cycle, I won’t earn paid time off , so why should I show up on time for the rest of the period?’ I’m at a loss as to what to do next.
To read the answer, click here: How Can I Get My Employees to Be On Time?
If you’re not currently offering any vacation at all except as a reward for being on time, I’m not that surprised you only managed to attract employees that don’t care about their work.
I gather from the article that business has only been around for a short period of time that vacation was not in discussion at startup, but now that it appears to be successful, vacation is on the table. It is good that there is a time period over which vacation is earned (I am assuming a year). It also appears that certain performance issues ( like being on time) are effecting the long term profit ability of company.
None of us like to be confined to rules of time keeping especially if you have been doing the job without having to “be on time to work”. I have to chuckle on that term as most people don’t agree to what that means. In this case , I will go with the assumption, that these workers need to be ready to go before the customers arrive, whatever that time is. I agree that the policy should be presented as policy with consequences for failure to perform. There should be room for adaptations to schedule, which may be reason for not being “on time” as that 9-5 schedule doesn’t always work well with all personal situations. Even small business don’t have everyone arriving at the same time.
If after giving the employees notice doesn’t change the “on time” performance, then appropriate discipline will have to be done to efforce rule, no matter how distasteful.
I am concerned if the policy is implemented whether you lose flexibility for parents of sick children. Do you really want to write up an otherwise good worker because he had to spend some time caring for his family?
Even if none of the current employees fall into this situation, what about down the road? It is easy to talk about raising salaries but this may not be an option in this client’s industry.
I guess in that case the owner would have to admit the world has changed and the business is no longer viable. I am curious about other solutions but concede the firm enforcement of policy may be the only game in town.
Where I work, employees have the opportunity to earn 8 hours of PTO at their annual review, if their tardies are below 2%. If they are over 5%, they are placed on probation and re-assessed in 90 days. Employees can ultimately lose their job over to many tardies.
And, tardies don’t have to be reviewed just at annual review. Supervisors can review them at any time they are having trouble with people coming in late
Whatever you do decide to do, you ABSOLUTELY MUST make good on the threat because someone will likely test it thinking you are a pushover.
Is this really serious what I’m reading?
Firstly there’s clearly lack of respect for the employer/s. So there’s an underlying problem here which needs to be unravelled.
Secondly the employees are confident enough to think they are indespencible or/and they’ve no value for their employment (kinda easy come, easy go, and as if jobs are extremely easy to get)
I’d be interested to know what industry you are in and the responsibilities expected from your employees.
If self employed or commission only, the then I’ll tell you its a losing battle. So do they have contracts?