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I know this is management 101, but I just thought I'd share this...........

For 20 years I had struggled with employees arriving late. It used to start my day off on a bad note - especially if I had to line out a job twice because an employee wasn't there to hear it the first time. It all came to a head one day when our entire staff of 12 was late....believe me - @#$% hit the fan!

On January 1st we changed our policy. Instead of empty threats, we transferred the accountability to the employee.

It works like this:

If they are late or have unscheduled time off, they make minumum wage for the next day.

They get 3 "mulligans" per month. These include the days they are late as well as any time off that they don't schedule or use their vacation time (sick days, car trouble, picking up kids, etc). This prevents them from deciding not to come in at all if they are running late.

The fourth day they make minimum wage for the day.

This has changed everything. Very rarely is anyone late now, and I think we have only paid minimum wage once. I even had a guy sprinting into the shop holding his shoes in his hands so he wouldn't be late. It was an awesome sight! They aren't required to give us an excuse because, frankly, we couldn't care less, as it only hurts them. They either act like an adult and get here on time or they make the same wage a teenager makes. they have nobody to blame but themselves.

We did have to buy a couple of $50 atomic clocks so there was no dispute on the time and we already had a computerized time clock software which makes it easy to track. PM me and I will let you know where we got the software - it was $75 at the time and has saved us $$$$$$ over the years.

Anyway....the next project we are undertaking is how to handle mistakes and "go-backs". We already have a profit sharing program, but our employees don't feel the immediate consequenses of the mistakes, so they still don't make the direct link of how mistakes cut into our profits.

Any ideas on that one?

Thanks.