AboutPankaj Bhargava Expertise Questions related to choice of career, inter-personal issues at the workplace, performance management issues, structure issues, compensation structuring issues, culture building issues, linking HR with org. strategy
Experience 17 years in HR and Org. Development, designing & facilitating interventions, leading an HR team of an Indian multinational
Publications HR magazine of TISS (an HR institute of repute - Tata Institute of Social Sciences)
Education/Credentials B. Tech (Chemical Engineering) from IIT Mumbai (one of the most reputed engineering school in India) and PGDM (MBA) from IIM Kolkata (one of the most reputed management institutes in India).
Awards and Honors Was awarded the Gold Medal for excellence in HR by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce at IIM
Question Our employees have been with us for a very long time and they are used to coming late. Our office timings are 9.30 to 5.30. Earlier, timings were 9 to 5, but due to this late coming problem, we had to change it to 9.30 to 5.30.
But, still employees come late by half an hour. We tried many things like deducting salaries etc. But nothing worked.
There was no HR and I have been, recently, hired to solve these issues. I advised my CEO that we should design a proper performance appraisal system and target employees on monthly basis. Before I joined the organization, the CEO set saturday as a full working day from half. Do you think it will work?
I think, it will force employees to come still late.
It is a shipping company and there are some employees from operations department who need to do late sitting, so they come late next day.
Some employees need to go to port in morning and they get back to office very late with the reason that it was too busy time at the port. How can we track them?
Please suggest.
Regards,
Ahmed
Answer Dear Ahmed
Perennial late coming is a symptom of something else. More often than not it reflects a culture of the organization where people do not actually enjoy coming to work. Or where people genuinely have late sitting and thus make up for it by reaching late in the morning.
The situation seems more pronounced in your case given the fact that behaviors have not changed despite negative consequences like salary cutting.
Here are a few questions that you need to ask before you take any decision:
a. What is the impact of this late coming - is work suffering or is it just a desired discipline issue?
b. When you speak with people across the organization, what is their view about what brings them to the organization every day & what is it that they enjoy about working here? Also, what are their concerns about working here?
If you can find the answers to those questions by talking with people, chances are you will see a pattern that suggests why this is happening in the first place.
Please think about these questions and revert after you have some answers to them. I will be happy to add some thoughts to the situation post that. Look forward to your response. All the best.
