Struggling with Late Arrivals: How Do You Handle Team Leads Ignoring Punctuality Rules?

Hi all, we are a software company. Every day, all the team leads and their friends are arriving 15-30 minutes late. I have informed them to arrive on time, as tardiness will result in a deduction from their salary. However, they continue to report late. The Operations Manager has mentioned that we rely on them due to ongoing projects, advising to overlook the lateness. On the contrary, the Managing Director has directly questioned me about the lack of control over the situation.

Kindly assist me with this matter.

Thank you.

Are they working late hours in the evening? If yes, then it is justified if they come late. In case they leave the office on time yet come late in the morning, then you can initiate appropriate action. Firstly, you should take the Ops Manager into confidence and explain to him why it is appropriate to impose discipline in reporting time. This will help in setting the right example for other employees and new joiners. If they still continue, it's better to give a written warning with a copy marked to the Ops Manager and MD.

Hope this information was useful.

Regards,
Gia

Can you tell us what your current attendance policy is? If employees are coming late regularly, then you need to make some changes in your attendance policy. You can mention the core hours and flexible hours in the policy, and whoever comes late during core hours should have their half day deducted. Here in my current company, our core hours are 09:00 am to 04:30 pm, and flexible hours are 08:00 am to 09:00 am and 04:30 pm to 06:30 pm. All employees should be in the office during the core hours for the smooth running of the business. Whoever comes after 09:00 am will have half a day deducted unless they are in a business meeting or for some official purpose (approval from the Manager will be required in this case). The weekly hours required are 48 hours, and they can adjust the remaining hours using the flexible hours, which is working perfectly in our company.

Please find below the clause for your reference.

Working Hours Policy

Each week will consist of 42.5 working hours (with an expected lunch break of 30 minutes).

Compulsory Working Time
- From 09:00 – 16:30 hours (with a 30-minute lunch break)

Flexi Working Time
- From 08:00 – 09:00 hours
- From 16:30 – 18:30 hours

The above timings will be applicable without any privileges attached for late coming, short leave, or leaving early. Absence from the office during compulsory working time cannot be compensated by additional working hours.

Inability to meet the "working hour week" will involve a loss of leave from P.L. ½ day for up to 4 hours and a full day beyond 4 hours.

Breakfast timings are not included in the working hours.

Regards,
Siju

Please be careful not to make this a complex affair. Maybe your organization never monitored attendance, particularly employees' clock-ins and clock-outs, so closely.

Now, the chief of the organization finds some employees misusing it, which in turn affects the overall performance and quality of work. They want to take corrective steps.

Steps to Address Attendance Issues

1. Call senior team members for a meeting with the MD to discuss and share concerns and arrive at attendance guidelines.

2. Probably, you could come up with two sets of guidelines - one for customer-facing/support and the other for design/development/quality/business support, etc.

3. To avoid inconvenience for customers, let the customer-facing team be compliant with a regular schedule (e.g., 9 - 6 with a 1-hour break and no flexibility).

4. For the rest, let it be a flexi-shift with a clock-in time of 10 AM and a daily threshold of 8 hours and a weekly threshold of 40 hours (if on a 5-day workweek).

5. Introduce a reward scheme (e.g., Silver Star - monthly threshold with xx hours and above, Gold Star - Half-Yearly threshold xxx hours and above, Platinum Star - Annual threshold xxxx and above with some financial incentive).

6. Run the scheme for 1 year, and if finding many defaulters, introduce forced discipline rules like posting Loss of Pay, deducting Leave, etc., on behalf of employees who account for more than 'x' days of late coming/early going.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you need further assistance.

Dear Vej,

Are your employees not delivering? Are they not working late when it requires them to? It's great that you are taking control of the situation and changing it for the better. However, discipline would work better if they incorporate it rather than you enforcing it.

Improving Employee Productivity

Look at the current workflow structure and identify where you can make the employees more productive. This could involve work allocation, cross-training, or even trying out interesting new pet projects that would interest the employees and benefit the project. Motivating someone to perform better will work far better than holding them accountable for what is not happening.

Looking forward to hearing from you.