How you manage an employee’s excessive tardiness can affect much more than just the employee in question. Allowing tardiness in the workplace to continue without action may increase turnover and decrease business efficiency and morale. Some simple solutions to target excessive tardiness at work include implementing time tracking, keeping thorough attendance records, and communicating a clear policy to your employees.
Your team should also be made to understand that habitual lateness has consequences, and even innocent or infrequent hiccups can affect other employees and the business’s bottom line. We’ve provided a free warning letter template that can be modified and used for employees who need to be disciplined for excessive tardiness.
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Written Warning for Excessive Tardiness Template
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For assistance with creating disciplinary policies and warning templates, consider BambooHR. It offers a suite of cloud-based solutions for managing day-to-day HR functions.
Select Download TypeWith all the negative consequences of employee tardiness—for the employee in question, their colleagues, and your business—it’s vital that you properly manage and prevent this behavior. Here are some solutions to tardiness in the workplace, whether you have an in-person or remote work environment.
Your company should have an attendance policy setting forth the company hours and when employees should be ready to work. Within this policy will be a section on tardiness that covers what’s acceptable and what’s not.
Communicating this policy to your team is key to alignment. When your employees know what’s expected of them, it’s easier to hold them accountable if there’s a pattern of poor behavior.
Your employee tardiness policy should clearly describe:
Need a Sample Attendance Policy? Check out our Employee Attendance Policy article, plus get our free downloadable sample attendance policy.
When communicating your policy, especially if it’s new, make it abundantly clear that tardiness disrupts everyone. One employee being late can snowball into other employees having to cover their work. Nearly 20% of employees admit to being late to work at least once per month—leading to reduced productivity and impacting your business’s bottom line.
For assistance with policy creation and management of day-to-day HR functions, consider BambooHR. Its cloud-based solutions offer time tracking, performance management, hiring and onboarding, payroll and benefits administration, and more. Plus you can take advantage of their free trial. Check out our BambooHR review to learn more about what it can do to help you manage your employees.
Include in your policy a brief discussion of consequences for employees who have repeated late arrivals. Before you can create that policy, however, determine exactly what those consequences are for your company. We recommend a progressive discipline policy with a three-strikes rule.
Progressive discipline is a manner of disciplining employees using graduated steps. A sample discipline progression for a tardy employee might look like this:
It might seem harsh to terminate an employee just for being late a few times—and that’s why we suggest you include a three-strikes rule and establish guidelines of what is appropriate in your business. In the sample above, if an employee progresses through these consequences once, they will face penalties but should not lose their job. It’s when they have progressed through these levels of discipline three times in a short period, say a rolling six-month period, that they would face termination.
For many employees who work remotely, what should matter most is that their work is done on time and correctly. However, remote workers who regularly interact with clients or colleagues should still be held accountable under this policy, especially if they don’t show up on time for meetings or other important gatherings where punctuality is expected.
To keep accurate records of when employees come and go, you need to have a good time-tracking system with detailed reporting. Running weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports on your employee’s tardiness will quickly highlight any problems that you need to address.
With an electronic timekeeping system, such as those found in our best time tracking software guide, your employees can punch in and out from their computers or phones. You can even restrict the app on their phone to only work within proximity to your building. This ensures the accuracy of the punches and lets you know which employees might have patterns of tardiness.
For additional cost-effective options, review our list of the best free time-tracking solutions.
With an electronic timekeeping system, records are automatically kept. These confidential records are visible to both you and the individual employee. Even if you’re not present every time the employee arrives, you still know if they’ve been tardy by looking at the system.
Maintaining these records is crucial to instill proper discipline. When you need to have a tough conversation with an employee about tardiness, you have data to back your position up. Without the data, you may appear to have an opinion or perception that the employee is late without providing any facts. This may leave employees feeling attacked instead of supported.
Warnings or other disciplinary actions, including notes on attendance and tardiness, should be stored in an employee’s personnel file.
Everyone is late occasionally. Sometimes traffic is backed up, public transportation is late, or an alarm doesn’t go off. A few times per year, these things are bound to happen. But when it becomes a pattern it can grow into a much bigger and costlier problem. By using a written warning system, you can document the behavior immediately.
When addressing tardiness in the workplace, you can’t simply tell a worker there’s a problem without offering support to correct it. Not only is this the right thing to do, but it also helps keep your business compliant.
While other employees must know tardiness is not taken lightly, you don’t want to reprimand an employee in a public setting. Any HR discussion like this should occur in private and remain confidential.
You want to make clear that a violation of your company policy is not appropriate. Make sure, however, that you don’t come off too harshly—your employee may be dealing with personal issues you don’t know about. It’s best to begin by simply asking questions from a place of genuine curiosity. Employees will be able to tell if you’re looking to help or for a reason to discipline them.
While we recommend asking questions and being supportive, you want to be careful about violating any employment laws. As it relates to an employee’s recent tardiness, you can ask if there’s a situation that might be causing them to show up late and affecting their ability to do their job but don’t ask them specifically if they have a medical condition that’s to blame. It’s best to ask open-ended questions and get the employee to talk.
For reference, here are some questions you want to avoid:
Addressing the employee with the right approach may depend on what causes the tardiness. If it’s burnout, then discipline alone won’t help. That may just make the employee more disengaged and late more often.
Burnout, an officially recognized medical diagnosis by the World Health Organization (WHO), can happen to any employee. According to a Work in America survey, 77% of employees experienced work-related stress in the last month.
To effectively address tardiness with a burned-out employee, you need to support them and help them figure out the root cause of their burnout. Not that you should avoid punishment for patterns of tardiness—it just shouldn’t be the only thing you do to correct the behavior.
Solving employee tardiness is more than just giving your employees a written warning. It is important to discuss ways you can help your employees and define corrective actions, including providing reasonable timelines and support. This might look like:
Corrective Action Consequences for Failure to Complete Reduce tardiness by 50% Final written warning Communicate with manager before tardiness occurs Progressive discipline No more than five late arrivals Final written warningCorrective action provides your employees with clear communication about what’s expected of them and how they can improve their behavior. By setting out the consequences for failure to meet your expectations, you make it clear what may come next for the employee, leaving no surprises for anyone.
Regardless of the outcome, document everything. If tardiness has been a problem with this employee, make sure that you document the specific dates and times the employee was late, as well as the corrective measures that you both agreed upon. Also, make sure you note a date to review their progress.
You should follow up with the employee at the 30-day and 60-day mark (as indicated on the corrective action plan) to review data. If they have reduced the frequency of their tardiness, recognize their improved behavior.
However, if the employee has not improved their behavior, it’s time to take the next step in your progressive discipline procedure. That may be a final warning or termination if this has been an ongoing pattern. If it’s the latter, make sure you have documented everything appropriately. Terminating an employee, especially one who may have a medical reason for showing up late, should be taken with great care and should involve a consultation with an employment attorney.
Learn more about employee management and how you can provide your team with the tools necessary to help them achieve their goals and stay on track.
Addressing employee tardiness is required to prevent further abuse. Regular communication and check-ins are key to making sure that your employees understand the expectations. Conversations with late employees can also help you uncover any struggles your team may have in their personal lives that are contributing to their tardiness.
If you do not address employee tardiness it can harm your business. For example:
Employees notice what other employees do. And that’s one of the biggest concerns with employee tardiness—the perception by other employees of favoritism or an unenforced policy. Either way, team morale can falter when even just one employee has a pattern of tardiness that goes unaddressed by management.
Example: If an office of 22 employees opens at 9 a.m., and Amanda arrives consistently between 9:10 and 9:30, then other employees will notice, and one of two situations will result:
In either situation, you have a problem on your hands that needs to be addressed. Ignoring this issue will not make it go away and may result in additional lost productivity and potentially higher turnover.
Related to team morale is a drop in productivity, as employees who are unhappy or disengaged are less productive. A dissatisfied, unhappy, and disengaged employee is more likely to grow bad habits, like showing up late.
Tardiness can reduce your company’s efficiency and, ultimately, your bottom line, in two ways:
Avoiding disciplining a tardy employee could rise to the level of employee discrimination. If you penalize some employees for being late and not others, it might violate anti-discrimination laws.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating against employees based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Even if you do this unintentionally, it’s still against the law and could result in employee lawsuits and fines from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
For helpful tips, check out our guide on managing employee attendance.
Any tardiness that affects your business is an issue. However, it becomes excessive when it is habitual. An employee who is late for work three or more times a month consistently would fall under the category of excessive tardiness.
What is acceptable lateness?Being fashionably late only works for parties. When it comes to the workplace, typically anything under five minutes late could be considered acceptable. However, be sure your policy clearly states the rules for lateness.
What causes habitual lateness?Some common causes of excessive tardiness include inattentiveness (not paying attention to what time it is), impulsivity (could include making non-scheduled stops on the way to work), and anxiety (unable to get ready in time).
Addressing employee tardiness can be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t have to be challenging. Speaking with employees the moment their late arrivals become an issue can prevent other employees from disengaging and avert the company from developing a culture of inefficiency. Without a quick response to tardiness, you risk losing revenue and quality employees. Taking swift action keeps everyone happy, productive, and profitable.
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Jennifer Soper has 25+ years of writing and content design experience, working with small businesses and Fortune 100 companies. For over a decade, Jennifer worked as an HR generalist, providing expertise in accounting, payroll, and HR by implementing payroll and benefits best practices and creating onboarding and employee-relations documentation.
