Do you know how many times I fantasized saying that to my movers who were tardy? I thought about saying it a lot.
Early on in my moving career I focused on a recurring problem that lowered the morale of the employees who always showed up on time. We typically dispatched at 7:30 in the morning. Several of my mover/helpers took a bus, a subway, and then another bus to get to our place of business while our drivers and supervisors drove their own cars. To be on time, most of our employees arrived 15 to 30 minutes early. The late ones, though, “strolled in” up to 45 minutes later which forced us to hold their crews until they arrived. That angered the ones who got up extra early to get to work on time so they would not be late.
To solve this problem, I instituted a “late” policy. If an employee were more than 10 minutes late, he was fined a transportation fee. With the adoption of this policy, crews were not held back more than 15 minutes from the dispatch time. A late employee was fined $10 and was driven in a separate company vehicle to the job to join his crew. If an employee were late more than three times in a month, he was put on probation for 30 days. If he violated any company policy including being late during the probation period, he was fired.
The late fee policy and probation weeded out the employees who had habitual attendance problems. Since none of our employees were at minimum wage, fining them didn’t take them below the minimum hourly rate. Once a year, we used the fines towards a party that we held for all our movers.
For more information on our online office moving training, please visit www.officemoves.com/training/index.html or call Ed Katz at 404.358.2172.
