A reader writes:
My group operates in a very conventional workplace setting: enterprise skilled gown code, strict lunch hours, and a strict 9-5 day. In principle, that is for effectivity and to permit employees to really feel extra separation between their work and private life. However, new employees have a tendency to wrestle with it after they first arrive since many different locations they’ve labored for are extra versatile about arrival occasions, making up time, PTO, and so forth.
We have a tendency to undergo a cycle: an e mail reminder that we work 9-5 so please be right here prepared to work by 9 a.m. goes out, it helps for about a month, after which of us start to slide again into being 5, 10, quarter-hour late. For instance, two weeks in the past I addressed this drawback in particular person and requested employees to plan their commutes accordingly. This morning, two-thirds of the employees have been lacking when work began at 9 a.m.
On the one hand, commuting in our space can be unpredictable; site visitors, mass transit, and climate all play their half in turning a typical 30-minute commute into an hour and a half battle. On the opposite hand, the people who find themselves late are chronically late, and at all times for a similar causes (subway, site visitors, climate). Among senior administration there’s now a dialogue about organising a new system to punish individuals for being late.
I don’t need to go down that route. We’ve had some staffing points just lately and I know that our rigid workplace insurance policies are immediately associated to individuals leaving. What options can we contemplate that can each implement our coverage however not punish the employees, particularly when different members of senior administration can’t appear to observe the coverage themselves?
I reply this query over at Inc. as we speak, the place I’m revisiting letters which were buried within the archives right here from years in the past (and typically updating/increasing my solutions to them). You can learn it right here.