Even though a majority of jobs are understanding if you’re a couple minutes late (only if you call them before the start of your shift and let them know) there are some jobs that are more strict when it comes to attendance, where you have to clock in on time (not a minute late) or you get verbal warnings & write ups, which may eventually lead to termination (after a certain amount of tardies)
Furthermore, even though I wish some jobs were more understanding about 5 minute grace periods for clocking in, it would make employees feel less stressed if they knew that they had 5 minutes to clock in after the start of their scheduled shift if they’re running a couple minutes late (depending on if it’s their fault or not)
On an extra note, I think that if an employee clocks in late (within 5 minutes) then they should stay anytime between 1-5 minutes after their scheduled time (to make up their time, so it equals a full day’s worth of work and pay)
For example, if an employee clocks in after 9:00 am, then they have to clock out at the same time they clocked in:
(9:01 am clock in = 5:01 pm clock out)
(9:05 am clock in = 5:05 pm clock out)
If your shift starts at 9:00 but you have a 5 minute grace period, that just means that your shift actually starts at 9:05. If you want a margin to allow for bad traffic etc., then aim to be there at 8:55.
The idea is flawed because it doesn’t account for human nature. I’ve seen two companies try to do just this, and you still wind up with the same issue because the issue is the tardy person’s time management, not the time. I’ve adjusted people’s start times before, and this only works for the people that have an actual scheduling issue like their kid’s school or a 2nd job. The chronically late are going to be late no matter what.
While I’m a cranky old man and can shake my fist for “Get there on time!” with the rest of 'em, the truth is that my longest retail stint was at a job where you had an 11 minute grace period before being “late” and it had no negative impact on performance that I could see. People still aimed to be there on time and, if shit DID happen, you weren’t cuffed on the ear for being five minutes after the hour.
The sort of people likely to abuse the system were the same sort you wouldn’t want working there for other reasons anyway and usually found their own way out. You didn’t really have people who would be chronically 8 minutes late then put in a solid shift’s work (and, if they DID put in a solid shift’s work, the few minutes at the start didn’t overall matter anyway). The rest tried to be on time both out of general work ethic and because your coworkers were waiting on you.
I get to open the time clock web site on Friday towards the end of the day and put in what time I started work Monday, when I ended Monday, and so on for the rest of the days of the week. They trust me to input times that reflect what I actually worked.
Which they’re pretty much dependent on me to do, since I get to work from home.
And they have no issue with me working 10-6 instead of 9-5.
They never call me at home. I’m not even sure they have a phone number for me. If they need anything, they email me about it.
I once worked with a guy who would always show up 6 minutes late, because according to the union contract, you weren’t officially late until 7 minutes after your shift started. On the one hand I hated that attitude, but on the other I never sweated getting to work exactly on time because of it.
The one job I had to clock in, paid people in 15 minutes increments. You were allowed to be 7 minutes late to get full credit for the 15 minutes. This gave leeway if you were delayed.
The U.S. Department of Labor has promulgated regulations concerning this issue for employees subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, i.e. hourly employees:
29 CFR § 785.48 Use of time clocks.
(a) Differences between clock records and actual hours worked. Time clocks are not required. In those cases where time clocks are used, employees who voluntarily come in before their regular starting time or remain after their closing time, do not have to be paid for such periods provided, of course, that they do not engage in any work. Their early or late clock punching may be disregarded. Minor differences between the clock records and actual hours worked cannot ordinarily be avoided, but major discrepancies should be discouraged since they raise a doubt as to the accuracy of the records of the hours actually worked.
(b) “Rounding” practices. It has been found that in some industries, particularly where time clocks are used, there has been the practice for many years of recording the employees’ starting time and stopping time to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest one-tenth or quarter of an hour. Presumably, this arrangement averages out so that the employees are fully compensated for all the time they actually work. For enforcement purposes this practice of computing working time will be accepted, provided that it is used in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate the employees properly for all the time they have actually worked.
Exactly. But there seem to be two ways human brains get wired, one group of folks finds a single time reference clear and unambiguous, and the other group are inconsiderate .
Man, the reasons retirement is great just keep on coming!
I haven’t worked at a job with a time clock since the early 80’s, and I didn’t like it. I did get in on time, but I kept getting in trouble because I’d forget to clock out. I worked for another place where my manager would clock everyone out at our scheduled ending time, even if he was having us work longer to finish up. Yes, we all knew that was illegal, but oddly enough I couldn’t get anyone in our state Labor Department to do anything about it.
At my last, and I do mean last, job, I was nominally due in at 7:30 am. This is earlier than ideal for me, and I had a hard time getting there promptly. My boss, a wise woman, saw that I routinely worked past my scheduled end time, so she had no problem with it. Of course, no one else depended on my being there right at 7:30 or I’d have made a real effort to get there on time. As it was, I generally rolled in around 7:45.
I was in the workforce for 35 years or so, and never had a job where I had to clock in, or be at work exactly at (any specific time). There were days when I had a morning meeting and had to be there in time to get to it. But it was typically considered rude to schedule meetings immediately after people were expected to arrive. So it was pretty rare that I had any time pressure at the start of my day.
And that was great for me, as I am one of those “chronically late people” (although if something is important enough, like an early morning meeting that actually has to be early morning, to include the guy from the London office) I can manage. And when I’ve done volunteer work that had more precise time requirements, I met them.
(and yes, I worked plenty of hours. No one ever complained about my work ethic, as far as I know.)
That being said, if there’s a time clock, it’s usually because there’s a shift that needs to be manned. And it’s really awkward to not have people covering a shift. If your shift starts at 9:00, plan to get there at 8:50, or whatever margin you need to punch in at 9.
A corollary to the “Why are you always late?” thread. If your work requires you to be at work at 9:00 you’ll show up at 9:05. If they give you a 5 minute grace period, you’ll show up at 9:10.
If you’re late because of some unexpected emergency, like your car doesn’t start, or you need to take the kids to school because your wife woke up sick, or there’s a traffic jam due to an accident, an extra 5 minutes isn’t going to help.
Eh, depends on the “emergency”. I’ve had times when I got to work late because of a train crossing (that normally was open) or a piece of farm equipment in front of me trundles along at 15mph for two miles or some other event that is uncommon enough to be unexpected but disruptive enough to add 5-10min to my commute. Luckily, I was salaried and the work place was one where “Gets their stuff done” was more important than “Is here at 7:30 sharp”. These days I work from home so getting to work late is a lot more rare.
Exactly, it depends on the job. An interpreter cannot arrive after the speech has been made, a janitor will have to open the gates on time, pilots and pursers should be there before take off, and I believe the military is quite strict regarding shooting times too.
Beans can be counted at leisure, of course.
I think there should be a 5 minute grace-grace period following the 5 minute grace period, for people who miss the first grace period. It may also be necessary to implement a further 5 minute grace-grace-grace period for anyone who can’t quite deal with that.
But seriously, yeah, if you have a job that doesn’t have some critical starting time where everyone has to be on board the rocket, it’s probably not a bad idea to have a system where you can clock in at any point within a time window, and just get paid for however many minutes that was. If I ran a company I wouldn’t particularly care about the reasons and I wouldn’t want to get into discussions about whether or not it was really their fault they were a couple of minutes late.
People who are chronically late are always going to try to game the tail end of the window of acceptable arrival though, and extending that window only creates a new boundary for them to try to edge up to, then step over.