IS ALWAYS BEING LATE A DISABILITY?

The working population probably falls into three categories when it comes to being late for work. 60% to 70% fall into the category of mostly being on time and having a good reason for the few occasions that they are late. 10% are never late (ok "never" is an absolute term so let's say you cannot remember the last time they were late). That leaves a significant minority - some 20% or more who are mostly late - possibly only by a few minutes or they just scrape in on time but are not at their work on time. Let's do some maths - say someone is an average of 5 minutes late each morning and returning from lunch. This amounts to 50 minutes per week which is over 3 hours per month and that is over 36 hours a year - the equivalent of a working week!

Is it too much to expect someone to be at their work at the appointed time? Lateness and unnecessary absence are major costs and they are not tackled as they should be by managers. Some people are late as a way of life; in fact some research has identified that even though they may not intend to be late and may even dislike being late they do not seem to have the means to plan and organise well enough to avoid it and this has been traced to the prefrontal lobes in the brain.

So - before someone reads this and claims that they just cannot help it and they have a disability - forget it!

If managers use the right techniques to motivate and give feedback and if necessary use sanctions appropriately (e.g. disciplinary procedures) staff behaviour based on reasonable expectations can be improved and maybe you can stop losing a week a year for 20% of your staff.

We can train your managers so that the cost of lateness and absenteeism can be reduced. We can train your managers to reduce it significantly - say managers have 10 staff each reporting to them and 2 are always late- someone earning £15000 a year equates to over £300 a week, that's £600 a year being lost per manager; we can train 10 managers for £1200 so for that amount it is possible to save £6000 - a 5:1 return on investment!