Discipline for chronically late EE

HRCathy

I work in a manufacturing facility. I have a couple of employees who are in danger of losing their jobs, because they are chronically late. These employees are great when they are here, and I would rather find another way to discipline than have to find new employees. It is not easy to find good employees in this field. One suggestion is to lower their raises in accordance with the the amount of tardies in one year. I need some suggestions. The lateness is not a chronic problem throughout the facility. Thank you.

POPEYE

What does your attendance / tardy policy state? That should be the first place you turn to. If policy states that they are at termination stage then that's what should happen irregardless of length of service or quality of work. Consistency is the name of the game.

Don D

Cathy: As tough as it may sound, the answer may be to go with a couple of terminations in hopes that it will impact the problem. I can tell you that for quite some time, this company dilly dallied around with a variety of weak disciplinary measures with lateness. The policy calls for termination after a certain level of negative points is reached. And tardiness impacts those points negatively. Not too long ago, we took a hard line and enforced the policy to the letter. It only took two terminations, company-wide, to turn the situation around. Two terminations in one month and now, 15 months later, not a single one for that reason. Bite the bullet.

cebudragonlady

Perhaps your policy states "up to and including" termination, so you first may want to suspend them for a certain # of days without pay ,with a written warning that more severe measures in accordance with policy will be taken for future violations. Each step should be documented. Has the past tardiness
been documented ?

Since you say it is so hard to find replacements, that is why I hesitate to recommend termination ~ you don't want to bite the bullet too hard now, or you may end up choking on it...chew on it steadily.

Chari

POPEYE

Don - Glad to see dilly dallied used. I threw out that term a couple of weeks ago to some of our supervisors concerning documentation and they just looked at me blankly wondering what in the world are you saying. Guess they thought it was a new HR word.

Don D

Well, I hesitated to use "farted around", but, that's technically what we did.