My Employee Just... Arrived Late For Their 4th Meeting
As HR Guy, my team and I get asked all types of HR questions. These conversations usually start with the phrase "my employee just..." and then the business owner dives into whatever issue is weighing them down. From serious legal concerns to bizarre never-before-seen scenarios, we handle it all!
Today we'll tackle the topic My employee just... arrived late for their 4th meeting in a row.
This simple question revolves around the business realities of:
“What is permitted becomes permissible!”
“You get what you tolerate.”
Employee willingness to be professional with coworkers/management is JUST as important as their ability to be professional in front of customers. This goes for manager, CSRs in the office, and of course technicians/salespeople working in the field. When an employee walks into a meeting late, especially a team meeting, it is not just unprofessional, it is disrespectful to everyone who did show up on time.
That said, you should always investigate the WHY behind even something as low level as habitual tardiness because there are legitimate scenarios where it is understandable or even unavoidable. For example, let's say the employee's spouse is out of town for a couple weeks helping her aging parents move, so for a while the employee is responsible for dropping off the kids at school and the morning timeline has shifted. This would be a temporary situation you could probably work around if you knew the details.
However, in my experience, the VAST majority of the time, tardiness happens for no better reason than the employee simply does not care about the meeting. When something doesn't hold value to a person, they are more likely to abuse or ignore it.
So, when faced with this routine situation or any other repeated behavioral problem, you only have two viable choices to fix the issue:
Address the issue in a way to “sell” why the behavior is a problem and provide the opportunity to course correct before taking escalating disciplinary action, up to termination. The first time you end up having to fire someone for refusing to show up for meetings on time, the rest of the team tends to get the picture.
Change something else to minimize the burden on the team (real or perceived) to result in better engagement. In the case of habitual tardiness, especially if more than one employee suffers from it, this may be making meetings less frequent, shorter, more organized to provide better value, etc.
Last thing: before you get to the point of 4 tardies (which requires a bigger conversation), consider creative ways to discipline people who show up late just once or twice. I am in full support of a little public humiliation, like making them sing "I'm a Little Teapot" in the front of the room, including the hand gestures. The employee wasted everyone else's time by showing up late, so you are going to waste a bit of their time to be allowed to reengage with the team. Or, you can simply lock the doors to the room when the meeting starts so late-comers can't join (or clock in for the day) until it's done. Don't wait to start addressing tardiness until it has already become a chronic issue.
