Back when I was in the Lab (fire had just been discovered at the time. Very
exciting Good Old Days!)... we, in our specific lab, were considered "exempt
employees" (considered salaried professionals) so did not have ot go on a clock,
nor did we get paid extra for any "overtime".  We were paid the same whether we
were tardy or if we worked overtime.  When we were held past our quitting time
during heavy work days, we would record "comp time" that could accumulate and
allow us to use this to take a day off occasionally.  However this did not
eliminate tardiness problems with specific individuals.  Two of my techs in
particular were always chronically 10 minutes late, almost every day.  Always 10
min., no more, no less.  My logic was that if they can be consistent with the
time of their tardiness, it would take no effort at all to be on time
constantly.  The solution was to keep track of the tardiness time along with the
"comp time", and subtract the former from the latter.  Miraculously, the
frequency of "tardy time" almost disappeared.

~ Ford
----
Ford M. Royer, MT(ASCP)
Analytical Instruments, Inc.
Minneapolis, MN
(800) 565-1895, ext. 17

MEller@stpetes.org wrote:

> We all swipe in with time cards.  It used to be an honor system, but of
> course then you have the occasional employee who will take advantage of a
> lax system.  I f a tech was consistently late - even by a few minutes, but
> often, I would address it with them, explaining that they need to be at
> their work station at the designanted time.  If it continued I would report
> it to the lab director and be sure it was addressed during the employee's
> evaluation.  We don't worry about lateness due to weather, traffic, car
> problems, etc.  One thing to keep in mind about swipe-in systems:  With our
> kronos system if you swipe in at 6:05, you are counted as being there at
> 6:00.  If you swipe in at (I believe) 6:07 you are counted as having
> checked in at 6:15.  It rounds to the quarter hour.  The people who are
> prone to fudging may actually wait around at the end of the shift for that
> extra minute to tick by so they get an extra 15 minutes on their time card.