JUST ANNOUNCED: Insight Management Consulting will be holding two free Fake Work Public Workshops. The first will be March 22 in Fairfax, VA and the second will be March 29 in Towson, MD. Click here for more details, including information on how to register for this free event.
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Crucial Skills Newsletter: Confronting Late Employees
Q: Dear Crucial Skills,
At our organization, we expect our employees to be ready to care for patients at the start of their shift. But I have several employees who are far in the disciplinary path because they consistently “clock-in” a minute or two late. Of course, they would have been on time if “the water main hadn’t broken,” or they “hadn’t been stuck behind a school bus.” These employees feel the policy is punitive, unfair, and intolerant; and they have the empathy of the early arrivers. Help!
Needing Discipline
A: Dear Needing,
First, let me congratulate you for confronting the problem early and consistently, so that the late arrivers are already “far in the disciplinary path.” The most common mistake we make is to let these kinds of problems slide, and as a result, give our tacit permission for bad behavior. Here are a few tips for confronting your late arrivers:
Crucial Skills Newsletter: Kerrying On: The Great Valentine's Day Debacle
This year I’ve decided to give you (kind readers) a Valentine’s Day gift. I know it’s a few days late, but since my present is neither candy nor flowers (and won’t decay) I think the gift I have in mind will do just fine. I’m giving you a nonperishable story of a Valentine’s Day I experienced some thirty-five years ago. It’s a tale that I believe might help lift your spirits some day when you’ve done something—how does one put it?—not all that clever. Plus the story provides a nice reminder of the importance of keeping focused on what you really want.
It all started one Saturday evening when I suddenly realized that I only had an hour to buy my wife a Valentine’s Day gift. Since Louise was working on a project across campus (I was a grad student at the time), I loaded our six- and four-year-old daughters into the back seat of our Volkswagen bug, strapped our six-month-old son into one of those plastic baby carriers, and headed off to the nearest shopping center I could find.
