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Punctuality
Feb 13The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.
–Franklin P. Jones
I’m on time. Always have been. In fact, I’m early. Being late just isn’t something that I can do.
Which leads me to a question: Would you hire someone if you knew they were always late? I’m not talking about being an hour late. I’m talking about just a few minutes each day. And that number of minutes wasn’t predictable?
I’ve told you this before, but my dad ran on Lombardi Time. When the Green Bay Packers coach told his players that a meeting started at 8am, he meant that players would be in their seats 10 minutes before that. My dad used to say, “We’re leaving at 8. Lombardi time.” We didn’t make any mistakes. We didn’t make him wait. I value that.
My take: I value people I can count on. Being on time is a big part of that. Is being on time part of your HR orientation? I’ll bet it matters to others, too.
About the Author
Frank Roche
Frank started IFRACTAL over 7 years ago with Sarah Chambers. Together, they've created HR communications and HR software for some of the world's leading companies. Frank is also studying Flamenco guitar and origami.
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The personal and the professional for me require different responses.
Working in a professional services firm I tend to take a flexible view of what being on-time means. For meetings where a client is involved, I agree with the be 10 minutes early, VL sense of time. For meetings with others from my own company I believe in be on time though not necessarily early. Nothing is worse than having several busy people waiting for the one who could not keep to a schedule. In terms of showing up each day, I do not specify a start time for the professionals that report to me. I expect that they get all of their work done and some prefer early while others work late. That flexibility helps me retain good people.
For person stuff such as family gatherings or parties I prefer flexibility unless the host has a need for everyone to be there at a set time or if you have reservations. We all lead busy lives and often things come up that if handled immediately would be better than left for the future just to ensure promptness. I do not belkieve in rules for rules sake. However, have noted to never be late to something you invite me to should I be lucky enough to receive an invitation.
I feel the lost productivity from late starting meetings can’t be ignored. At the company I work for the vast majority of our engineering meetings run late or don’t finish the agenda causing us to hold additional meetings. Over my many years at this employer I have never seen anyone held to the fire for being chronically late. From my experience I would not hire someone that constantly arrives late.
Rich
Ubermench, you’ll live longer than me. Your calibration is better about. Me, I worry about time. You are too funny…if I ever have time to have a party, you can come anytime. I would be delighted no matter what time you turned up.
Tuna, it’s about meetings and people wandering in just anytime that drives me crazy. It’s so disruptive. And people don’t even feel bad about it. I wonder how much time is lost each year with that kind of “just 10 minutes”?
I’m in healthcare (teaching hospital), and our orientation session includes a presentation on the necessity of punctuality. In this environment, it’s important, but the presenter went rather overboard to the point where it was difficult to take him seriously. Every example of late arrival somehow resulted in a medical or legal crisis! So if you’re in environmental services and you’re ten minutes late, the staff on the preceding shift will have already left for the day and someone will spill some water in a corridor during those crucial ten minutes and an ambulatory patient will slip and be injured and the hospital will be sued for a kajillion dollars and IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT FOR BEING TEN MINUTES LATE.
Yeah. That part of the presentation was less effective than one might want.
Anyway, I think it depends on the specific job. If the position involves shift work (everything from environmental services to nursing), unpredictable arrivals are a big negative. If our outpatient clinic opens at 7am, we need our registration assistants, billing team, and medical staff to be ready to go at 7am. For other positions, it’s not a big deal. If I were hiring an accountant or programmer, on-the-dot punctuality (or lack thereof) would be a minor factor.
I may be a little more tolerant than others, though, as I’m married to a chronically few-minutes-late network administrator.
My husband and I have had some rather interesting discussions regarding this very topic. Him being an engineer and ex-military, he is a stickler for people being on time for anything no matter what, no excuses. (Let it to HR to use those stereotypes.)
As an HR professional, there has to be a bit of flexibility. I agree, if a teacher isn’t in the classroom when the bell rings, ready to teach, it has a strong impact. If I’m not at my desk exactly at 8 am, it has a different impact. While we all should try to be on-time out of respect, there also has to be some lee-way for the unexpected things that happen in life and keep you from arriving on the dot, but you arrive nonetheless.
The best practice has to be in the middle with some common sense applied.
LvW