Late comings after employees stay up late because of work dependencies

Hi,
First of all, any organisation should have a policy on timings, including permission to come late for 3-5 days in a month - say upto 15 minutes on each occassion or so. If the employee comes late beyond the permitted time, half a day leave or half a day salary should be deducted form the employee's account. As a HR person, it is your responsibility to implement this and also to explain to the employees that while coming to work on time is discipline, staying back late to complete work is committment. Explain that both aspects are equally important and staying back late will be rewarded/taken into account during the appraisal by the respective boss and this does not give the employee an automatic right to come late to work which shows lack of discipline.
All the best,
Krishnan

Hi All,
Thank you all for your responses.....
This discussion is turning out to be real fruitful one. So many opinions have been provided and it definitely makes me more clear on my stand on situation like this.
Also, I feel such varied opinions have been shared, that I am sure that our fellow CiteHRites with varied the working style, culture etc will find solution to this problem that is specifically relevant to their organization.
Regards,
Pooja

Hi,
Understanding the scenario the same was been faced in our office where the MD had annouced that as per policy all need to be in time to office and leaving depends upon the work priority , however later there were late penalty charges as three late grace and then Rs. 10 for per late .

I also face the same prob.of emp.and thr timing.
But tried one solution:
I have asked the managers to give me the flexi timing of thr team and the team should follow the same,before that I check with the emp also that if they are ok with that.
Then only i have considered it as final and not emp shd follow the same.
This has solved my prob. a lot.
But as we all know "rules are ment to be broken" few still come late and do not follow the fliex timing.

coz what I think is the HR should go hand in hand with emp.
we cant take hunter's and be behind thr life.
we should keep that for manager's