Inherited a team from a different department, small and efficient – however one came with baggage.
She received two warnings last year for being consistently late – from the previous manager who had issue with her. I saw descriptions of the warnings and the employee would respond ‘it’s just who I am’, ‘I need a pay rise to turn up on time’ etc
The previous manager was axed, and I came in within a few months of this. I got along well with this person after not long, whilst knowing her reputation of attitude / late history. After a few months of managing her I’ve reduced the attitude to almost zero, have her engaging with ideas and she is putting out good work.
However, she still comes in late, mostly 5-10 mins and occasionally 20-30. I addressed this and let her know I needed her to be on time, she didn’t give me any attitude and let me know that yes, she needed to do better.
After initially addressing this, I left it two weeks and monitored arrival times and noticed she was still coming in 5 to 10 minutes after her start time. I let her know being late was still not good enough and that I needed her to take an extra step to clock in and out, so I can see the exact start and finish times (it’s not mandatory for salary staff). this was just yesterday and today she was late 10 minutes again.
I normally don’t concern myself with things like this if output and attitude is good. However, my manager is pushing me to discipline her, and doesn’t want me to let up until she’s fixed it. He already wanted me to give her a warning the first time, instead I said let me handle it and we’ll see if it improves (honey over vinegar I guess).
It doesn’t feel great to have to sack someone over something like this, but if my manager is gonna come down hard on me about it, I likely have no choice. She’s been employed with the company 12 years.
