Is an employee required to come to work early? How to get people to come to work on time

“Have you ever eaten dumplings in the shower? So you’ve simply never been late for a meeting!” – says Ekaterina Koroleva, INOSTUDIO project manager. But you can, but the employees don’t. Below, Ekaterina gives 5 tips, after which the team will definitely get together on time.

Are you often late? Have you ever rushed to a meeting and violated traffic rules? Do you remember the feeling of trying to catch your breath in front of the meeting room door before entering? I think each of us can answer positively to any of these questions.

But it’s one thing when you are late, and quite another when they are late for you. This point becomes especially important when you act as a meeting organizer. At such moments, you become responsible not only for your timely arrival, but also for ensuring that the meeting participants also arrive on time.

If the first part is easy to understand (everyone can independently determine the reason for their lateness and correct the situation), then the question “How to teach people not to be late?” things are more complicated. I bring to your attention several working techniques that I use in practice.

First of all, I propose to decide what it is meeting.

We often hear the following statements: “If you don’t want to work, have a meeting,” or: “There are only rallies around, when to work?” - and so on. Employees don't like meetings. Various meetings and meetings are perceived by them as a mandatory but unnecessary action.

But participation in such events helps many:

Reduce time to resolve issues;

Convey information to several colleagues at the same time;

Maintain the relevance of the information received;

Increase team cohesion;

Determine the importance of each participant;

Provide an opportunity to express yourself.

And the list goes on.

Hence the conclusion: meetings are a useful tool which must be used correctly.

Now I propose to understand what it is late.

It happens that a person was late, but at the same time did everything possible to reduce the time of his delay. It happens that late arrival to a meeting is justified and all responsible persons are warned. Rare cases of being late are quite normal, we are still people, not robots, and no one is immune from force majeure.

But regular lateness is a serious problem. Constantly disrupting the start of a meeting can lead to an unfavorable course of both the meeting itself and the work of the team as a whole. Your team may become infected with a simple disrespect for each other and for management and cease to understand the importance of the event. In the atmosphere of regular lateness, negativity accumulates, which one way or another will begin to spill out.

Regular tardiness is a symptom, which helps identify problems in the organization and in the team.

As with any disease, it is necessary to identify the symptoms in time and begin treatment, since an ill team member will soon begin to infect all colleagues. But it is better to take action before symptoms appear. So to speak, carry out prevention and vaccination.

I think each manager has secrets and rules by which they schedule and hold regular meetings. Below I will tell you my tricks.

Choose the most convenient time for all meeting participants. This is the simplest and at the same time important advice.

There are always a few things to consider:

Time zones of meeting participants;

Lunch time;

Personal plans;

Features of work activity.

Let me give you a simple example.

Our team consists of 10 people, everyone has approximately the same position in the staff and approximately the same scope of work. We have two general meetings a week.

First – 10:00 – Thursday;

Second – 17:30 – Tuesday.

For six months, not a single person was late for meetings on Thursdays. But on Tuesdays they are late almost every other time. What is the reason?

10:00 is the morning working hours, you have not yet been absorbed by the work cycle, and you calmly arrive at the appointed time for the meeting.

17:30 – at this time there are many reasons for being late. And these reasons are valid. Someone is calling from a foreign client, someone is trying to complete work duties before the end of the working day, someone has plans for the evening and would like to leave at 18:00.

Observing this picture, I concluded that choosing the right meeting time is one of the ways to combat tardiness.

For being late, the participant must necessarily suffer the inevitable punishment. It is important to choose the correct form of fine. A form that will not irritate, but will encourage you to come to the meeting on time. It should be something useful for those gathered, but not very pleasant for the performer.

For example, a latecomer must:

Bring delicious sweets for tea for the whole team;

Write a report on the results of the meeting;

Give fellow pedestrians a lift from work;

Arrive early for your next meeting and prepare the room.

However, I would like to immediately replace that financial fines alone, in my opinion, do not work at all. Your conscience will not allow you to impose a large fine, and a small amount will not motivate you.

In order for people to strive to be in time for the start of the meeting, this very beginning needs to be made unusual.

I discovered this method of dealing with delays quite recently. At one of our weekly meetings, our team has to write a letter with the results of the meeting. No one wanted to do this, since this is additional work that takes a lot of time.

There are several ways to solve this issue. For example, you can choose a permanent responsible stenographer, or take turns carrying this burden. However, both options were unanimously considered boring. That’s why we roll the dice at the beginning of each meeting: whoever has the smaller amount gets to take notes on the meeting today.

This form of determining the stenographer introduces an element of game into the beginning of the meeting, allows you to honestly (by the will of fate) appoint the “extreme” and please all the winners. And now you’ve only just begun the meeting, and the participants are already warmed up and smiling :)

Moreover, if someone is late for a meeting, he automatically becomes a stenographer (here we resort to the punishment from tip No. 2). Therefore, waiting for a latecomer gives a moment of cheerful malice to everyone who arrived on time.

Surprised by the question? It would seem, how could it be otherwise, because you:

• always come to work on time;
• prepare for planning meetings, attend conferences;
• planning business meetings and conversations with clients...

But there is one “but”. Most likely, your work schedule is missing one small detail. This detail is the time of leaving work. But it is very important if you do not want to turn into a workaholic and soon “burn out” due to excessive loads.

7 simple rules for managing working time

The solution is simple - decide on the time when you want to leave the office. But in this case, another problem may arise - the risk of not finishing important things. How can you learn to go home on time and still cope with your responsibilities?

There are 7 simple rules that will allow you to manage your time:

1. Come to work early. This is obvious - if you want to go home on time, come to work a little earlier than usual. At this time, no one will distract you. You will be able to calmly complete those tasks that require concentration.
2. Close the door to the office. A closed door is not at all a sign of your unsociability or hostility. The door will simply serve as an obstacle for your colleagues. They will think twice about interrupting you.
3. Solve questions by phone without leaving your office.
4. Find yourself a deputy. Often people waste a lot of extra time because they don't have an assistant. Then, before their vacation, they have to work late and seven days a week in order to get everything done on time.
5. Reduce time for routine tasks. Often people don't realize that they are already much more experienced and can do regular work much faster. They continue to habitually spend too much time on routine.
6. You should work at work! Many office workers are extremely disorganized. They are constantly distracted by other things. And then there is simply no time left for the work itself.
7. Assess your capabilities before taking on a new job. Decide whether you can complete new tasks in the allotted time. Learn to identify dead-end projects and abandon them.

Follow these simple rules and you will soon be able to complete your tasks faster. After this, proceed to 7 tips for leaving your workplace on time:

1. Answer questions by phone or email immediately. While you are deciding to answer, this information may no longer be relevant.
2. You need to call back on the same day, and after that, focus all your energy on completing another task.
3. Don't delay the telephone conversation. Limit your conversation to just five minutes or less. This will speed up the pace of your work.
4. Learn to say no confidently. Trouble-free workers are considered the most disorganized. Learn to say “No.”
5. Shorten meetings. If you can cut down on a phone call or lunch, you can do the same with a meeting.
6. Get started without delay.
7. 90% is enough. Most tasks are considered complete when they are 90% complete.

Automate your time management

Today it has become much easier and more convenient to keep time under control. The reason is the development of technologies in the field of business process automation. As an example, the Yaware.TimeTracker service will allow you to:

• control working hours;
• keep “time wasters” in check;
• determine for today, week, month.

Increase your personal effectiveness and the productivity of your company today. To do this, just install Yaware.TimeTracker on your company's work computers. Test the service for the first 2 weeks for free.

Common situation? Out of breath, we run up to the door and mentally write an explanation why we showed up again - we weren’t dusty 5 (or even 35!) minutes later. But what we need to do is stop being late once and for all. How to arrive during to work, today's article.

The article was written based on an interview with a business coach and time management specialist.

Being late for work is neither good nor nice. In business, people who neglect punctuality are considered untrustworthy. Moreover, even a slight delay of 5 minutes can change the course of negotiations not in your favor. After all, the one who waited may subconsciously experience negative emotions. Or quite consciously manipulate you. Like, you made me wait - please sign the necessary papers.

And even more so, it’s not good to come to the office later than the allotted time. Yes, other creative teams turn a blind eye to this. But in most companies, such “delays” are grounds for dismissal. How to stop being late? To do this, we need to understand what prevents us from coming to work on time.

Error in counting. The first reason is simple - often we cannot calculate the time. For example, to get to the office, we need 40 minutes, and we leave the house 35 minutes before the start of the “business start”...

How to arriveduringto work? It’s worth tracking: how much we spend on the trip from home to the stop, how long our minibus and metro train travel. Yes, add some more time for possible traffic jams! And leave the house with a little extra. Don't have enough minutes to get ready? Perhaps you should wake up not half an hour earlier, but an hour earlier. And then no one will accuse you of “delays”.

How to become punctual? Remember when we definitely couldn’t afford to be late. This is a train ride, an air flight. Or meeting a person whom we will never see again if we miss each other. Imagine that you are not going to work, “which won’t run into the forest,” but you want to catch the last train. And then, for sure, teach yourself to be on time.

Sabotage. But there is another explanation. We subconsciously procrastinate because we don’t want to go to that business meeting or work. For example, we experience chronic fatigue and are afraid: if we open the office door, a bunch of things will pile on us again. Or conflicts have arisen in the team with the boss or colleagues. Or – we no longer see prospects for ourselves in this place. But delaying the moment is not the answer. Your business problems will not be solved at the behest of a pike and confrontations within your team will not disappear. Moreover: you can incur quite justified dissatisfaction regarding unpunctuality.

Big ego. People with high self-esteem are often late. They don't want to admit that they are unpunctuality as a bad trait. And they demand from others to be accepted as they are.

Most often, these are family favorites who got away with almost any tricks in childhood. It is difficult for them to understand and accept that life does not spoil them. And the boss is not a kind grandmother. He definitely won’t pat you on the head for being late and may fire you. These people should come closer to reality and realize: we are not always and not everywhere accepted “with all our shortcomings.” The rule (including arriving on time) is a rule that must be taken into account.

Photo from the Internet under license from CCO Public Domain.

Have you ever felt frustrated because you were late for work? It would seem that nothing unexpected happened - and yet you came later than usual. Not only do you show your low level of self-discipline, but you also feel unpleasant when you are late. You set a bad example for your colleagues, you don’t know where to go from their views. You feel guilty.

Of course, I'm exaggerating 🙂 - you may have other reasons for being on time. Well, for example, when you arrive on time, your work is much easier and you have time to do much more - because no one distracts you. And most importantly, you feel good.

Do you want to come to work on time, but you are not able to do this every day? Or maybe you work from home, but you start work at different times and it doesn’t suit you? Here are 10 ways to show up to work on time.

1. Realize the benefits

First of all, understand the benefits you will get if you show up to work on time. This could be feeling good or a desire to do more important things, improve relationships with your boss or subordinates, increase your level of self-discipline, or set an example for others. In principle, it doesn’t matter what the reasons are, the main thing is that you understand for yourself why you need to come to work on time. This knowledge will ignite you for further actions.

2. Start tracking time

Physicists say that observing a particle stabilizes it. Start recording the time you arrive at your workplace on a piece of paper. Do this daily for a week.

3. Decide on a time

It is very important to define what “on time” means. This must be a specific number. For example, for me “on time” is 9:00. You are allowed to arrive before 10:00. If you are already late after 10, you need to call and inform your boss that you will be late. Other people's "on time" might be 9:30, it might be 11:30. The main thing is that you set this time for yourself and the people you work with know what time they can expect you at work.

4. Set a deadline for leaving the house.

If you got a job earlier than a week ago, then you know how long it takes to get to work. Based on this knowledge, as well as from the knowledge of what “being at work on time” means to you, determine what time you need to leave the house. Consider a pessimistic scenario - you will have to wait a long time for the trolleybus, there will be traffic jams in front of the roundabout, and the traffic lights will be red. For example, I know that getting to work by trolleybus takes from 40 to 50 minutes. 15 minutes for “unforeseen” circumstances (which happen every other day :)). “On time” = 9:00, so the deadline for leaving the house is 8:00. I try to adapt to this time. If I get to work by car, the travel time is 20-40 minutes. The deadline for leaving the house could be set at 8:15, but for convenience I focus on 8, so as not to rearrange myself, and coming to work before everyone else is even more pleasant than arriving on time :).

The deadline should be treated not as a rigid rule, but as a guideline. It's okay if you leave 10 minutes late. It's okay if you leave 10 minutes early. This guide will help you:

• to come on time
  or
• come earlier.

Which is much better than:

• to come on time
  or
• be late.

5. Get up on time

Knowing the deadline for going to work, you can easily determine what time you need to get up in order to do all your morning chores, wash, shave, do exercises, cook breakfast and eat it, etc. If you call at 10:30 and say “I overslept,” that means you got up 3.5 hours later than you intended. Could this be? In very rare cases. Most likely you were planning to oversleep in the evening. 8,7,6,5,4 - no matter how much it is, you must know this time. And if it doesn’t suit you, negotiate with others, move your “on time”.

6. Imagine your perfect morning.

In the evening, during the day, or right now, imagine how your morning goes - you get up at #:##, go to the bathroom, ..., have breakfast, get dressed, leave the house at #:##, ... and at #:## you are already at workplace. Imagine this with bright, joyful emotions, in all details. This will help you turn your ideal picture into a great reality. You can imagine your ideal morning or even your ideal day every day before going to bed.

7. Go to bed on time

This is simple - to get up on time, you need to go to bed on time. What time do you plan to go to bed today?

8. Track your progress with a friend

This will motivate you to try harder. You can help each other, come to decisions that you would not have thought of on your own. If you wish, you can arrange competitions with prizes for the winner. And in general, doing something with a friend is more interesting than doing it alone :).

9. If you're late, be late once

If you happen to be late at home or in the city in the morning, call and warn about this before the time comes. At the same time, tell the time at which you will EXACTLY be at work. It’s sad if you are late for work several times in one day: you called after you were already late, said that you were late and would be back in an hour - and even an hour later you were not at work.

10. Come up with your own 10 ways to come to work on time

The best ways are the ones that suit you. Come up with them! Make up your own unique 10 ways and follow them. And then come here again and share your experience. Good luck!

“The heel broke”, “stood in traffic for a long time” - you hear all this as an excuse for being late from your subordinates every morning. But due to the absence of one or another employee at the right time, an important task again fell through. The time has come to teach discipline to your subordinates.

Getting some people to come to work on time is extremely difficult, and even the most rigorous methods may not help you with this. Here it is appropriate to set a personal example. Start coming to the office a little earlier. It will simply be inconvenient for people to be late when the boss is already in the office.

Control your arrival to work

Initially, you must make your employees understand how important it is that everyone is in their place at the appointed time. At any moment, circumstances may arise that require the presence of one or another employee. And its absence can cause significant problems in the workflow. You shouldn’t talk about this with each person individually - gather the whole team. And remind us once again that you must come to the office at the appointed time, the same for everyone. It is worth saying that the employee’s presence at the workplace will be strictly controlled. For example, the guard at the checkpoint will record the arrival time of everyone, or your subordinates will have to send a message template via internal corporate mail as soon as they take their workplace at the computer. At the entrance you can install a controller with a magnetic reader. All this is necessary to point out to the employee his violations. Not everyone wants to get scolded every day.

The law does not provide for the collection of fines from employees for being late. But every employer has the right to introduce certain rules into the company’s internal regulations that everyone must follow. Coming to work on time is one of them. In case of non-compliance with disciplinary standards, the employee risks incurring material costs. But this is an extreme measure, and it is better to avoid it. Try to encourage people to be on time with material benefits. Divide the salary of each subordinate into salary and bonus. An employee will be able to receive a bonus only if he follows the rules adopted by the company, including the time of coming to work. Everyone is definitely interested in receiving a monthly or quarterly bonus.

Give an alarm clock

If you don’t want to keep your subordinates in fear, you can, for example, give alarm clocks to those who are late. Most likely, next time the person will go to work an hour earlier, just to be in the office at the right time. Try to motivate your employees not only with money. Let's say organize a competition among them - the one who comes to work on time for a month will become the winner. Place his photo as the most disciplined employee on the honor board. Give him a gift - for example, a travel card. Also select the offender. Post his picture as a person who is always late, too, but on the board of shame.

It’s also a good idea to hold five-minute planning meetings with the entire team in the morning. Moreover, in advance, each time, instruct one of the employees to give a short message about what particularly worries the company today, accustoming people to team spirit. The responsibility that such meetings are designed to instill will force a person to try not to be late. Gradually, employees will get used to this routine, and nothing will stop them from coming to work on time.