You could run a restaurant business, a real estate business, or any other type of business. One thing will always be an issue: lateness.
Employees can’t keep turning up late every morning or when they’re due to work a shift. It can ruin productivity and lead to a whole host of administrative problems. If you’re struggling with tardiness in your business, here are three possible tactics to help manage it:
Flexible Work Schedules
Instead of incorporating strict work schedules, why don’t you take a more flexible approach? Many companies are trying this after the pandemic showed them that working from home was more than viable. Employees can either permanently work from home, or chose to work there for a few days a week.
It’s a smart idea to tackle tardiness as people can stay at home on days when traffic is really bad or a busy morning schedule makes them late for work. Of course, this doesn’t work for every business. If you run a restaurant business, you can’t get people to work from home. That’s fine, you’ll just have to consider one of the other two ideas instead.
Time Tracking Apps
Sometimes, people are late to work because there’s no real structure in place to stop them from being late. This can easily be reworked by using time-tracking apps. It’s very popular with staffing agencies as they use agency tracking software to keep track of all the employees they provide. You can take a similar approach, offering an app for all employees to download.
Every day, they have to open the app and clock in when they start their shift. It encourages them to be on time as they literally have to make a note of when they start. It’s no longer possible for employees to sneak into work late and claim that they were on time.
Meetings
The third tactic to combat tardiness is to have meetings with your employees. If everyone is late in the morning, you need to have a discussion with your staff. Figure out why they’re late – are you asking too much about getting them in the office at 9 am? Is traffic always an issue? Do they have childcare concerns? You might uncover some common themes that help you come up with a solution. For instance, if the morning traffic is an issue, you could push back your start time to accommodate this and then maybe leave half an hour later in the evening.
The same should be done if individuals are late, but the rest of the workplace isn’t. Pull these people aside for a private one-on-one meeting. Ask if they’re having trouble getting to work on time. If they have genuine concerns, work with them to make life easier. They’ll be able to make it on time with less stress in the future.
Tardiness can affect your bottom line, so it shouldn’t be ignored. If someone is late by 10 minutes every day, they’re losing 50 minutes of work time each week! Who knows what could’ve been accomplished with this extra time!? Implement these tactics in your workplace to combat lateness.
