Dealing With Tardy In-plant Employees

If you have an employee who is habitually late or absent from work, resist the urge to globally address the problem. In other words, don’t gather the whole department and say, “It is important for everyone to get here on time.”

According to Rick Wise, director of Printing Services at the University of Missouri-Columbia, this tactic will work against you.

“It hurts the morale of the majority of employees who are, in fact, getting to work on time,” he says. “Their thinking is why should they have to listen to discussion on this issue? And they are right.”

It also erodes the supervisor’s credibility, Wise says.

“They all know who is actually tardy. And they lose a little respect for their supervisor for not discussing it directly with this individual, one-on-one.”

Meanwhile, the one person you are actually talking to gets to hide in the crowd and probably continue to live in denial that you are even talking to him or her. So in the end, this tactic most likely doesn’t even accomplish your purpose.