Is it necessary to deal with employee tardiness?

For members of certain professions, arriving late for work is a regular occurrence; for others, it is highly undesirable or even unacceptable. The labor code states that a brief absence from work does not constitute absenteeism and that warnings and explanations are not always sufficient. However, with a little bit of math, you can see that, in a company with 1,000 employees, every employee's daily 15-minute delay equates to 52,000 hours of absence annually. Additionally, the business will lose roughly $300,000 annually even if employee costs are kept at the average level of $5–$6 per hour.It is at this point that it becomes evident how critical it is to combat tardiness and that the standard fine for being late is ineffective. Managers are searching for different approaches to address employee tardiness in these situations, such as providing incentives, imposing penalties, or both.

We discovered what the Yandex managers thought. Money, Aviasales, and the Odnoklassniki design department regarding their approaches to handling employee tardiness.

In our company, being late is not an issue. There are 650 of us at Yandex. Money, and most of us have flexible work schedules. The important thing is that a person performs his job effectively; it doesn't really matter what time he arrives and departs. Someone has to clear the evening at nine in order to be as productive as possible and to maintain a work-life balance. If an employee doesn't get enough sleep, he won't be productive; he can report at 11 if he and his manager have agreed. There is an unwritten rule that everyone must be available from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., regardless of their work schedule, as this is when the majority of meetings with partners and coworkers take place.

However, some departments have set hours; Yandex users are advised by their staff.funds or Yandex customers.Checkout, our business payment solution, and keep an eye on the effectiveness and continuity of internal systems. Because payments are made through Yandex, these departments operate on a set schedule—some even work nonstop.Money in various time zones across the globe, day and night.In all, about 150 individuals have regular jobs in Nizhny Novgorod, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. Managers in charge of each department oversee the caliber of the work produced as well as timeline compliance. Regardless of the circumstances, coworkers will always take up a latecomer's work or a client call. However, we don't have any employees who deliberately arrive late for work without a valid reason because we value and trust our workers' contributions, which inspires and raises engagement levels.

In my opinion, it is more important not to fight employees who are late, but to build a motivation system in such a way that the employee is passionate about his work and does it with satisfaction, and not under pressure.

Янис Дзенис PR-директор в Aviasales

The topic of how to handle employee tardiness has never come up at Aviasales. 🙂 In order to maintain time with central Russia, the working day on the island of Thailand starts at 12:00. This allows you to gather your thoughts and get to work on time. At the St. Petersburg office, the amount of work completed is tracked rather than attendance.

The team that developed our apps chose not to relocate because St. Petersburg has long been a hub for mobile development. The worker's monthly work plan is conditional, and their performance is evaluated based on the actual amount of work completed. However, it's crucial to realize that not everyone who doesn't have control over clocking in and out doesn't actually show up at work. Most people are gathered by 10 or 11 o'clock, but nobody is holding a stopwatch.

We experience delays all the time, but this is not an issue. They are totally fine; we have a dedicated chat where everyone can let us know when they plan to arrive or depart during business hours. All of them attempt to make up for lost time by staying late into the night, arriving early the next day, or even taking work home on the weekends. However, everyone is aware that the company pays for working time.

Health problems and family obligations are the most frequent excuses for tardiness. They typically request time off and give notice that they will return to work later. Discipline becomes a concern only when an employee's performance declines and they give an excuse such as "didn't have time." Generally speaking, everything hinges on how well he performs.

HR periodically audits attendance using passes; if it finds discrepancies in hours worked, it may be necessary to deduct a portion of the amount from the employee's pay. However, I never got to the point where I was disciplining staff members for being late. Most workers agree with the manager and are aware that paid time needs to be compensated.

These techniques seem to be very successful in my opinion. Workers are empathetic and cooperative toward them. However, they are obviously unsuitable for certain service structures, such as those in the medical field, where employment is not feasible. Instead, the profession places restrictions on this.

When an employee's tardiness has no negative impact on your company's operations and no one is held accountable, that is a good thing. Nonetheless, Workly (time tracking software) can assist you in monitoring the working hours of every employee in situations where the productivity of the entire business hinges on it. It's critical to realize that the Workly team opposes the notion of having complete control over workers. It provides managers with an easy-to-use tool that will help any size business—small, with 10–15 employees, medium, with 100–200 employees, or large, with 1000–5000 employees—optimize its work.

Workly is most helpful for businesses or divisions (retail, call centers, accounting departments, etc.) where employees carry out regular tasks or whose work directly depends on their presence. However, the Workly system is about more than just keeping track of arrivals and departures. This group of tools makes employee management easier and more automated.