08/28/2025

Being Old-fashioned about Employee Lateness

Here are three other tricky workplace dilemmas

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor.

Here is a roundup of answers to four questions from readers.

1. Am I old-fashioned about employee lateness?

I feel it is non-negotiable that—except for cases of emergency, sick kids or traffic jams—employees should be at work on time the vast majority of days. This means getting to work about 10 minutes early in time to hang up a coat, use the bathroom, etc. and be at one’s desk when the hour begins. I feel like most employees and many managers do not so much care about this or, if they do, they don’t say anything to late employees. I have worked with colleagues who regularly show up 10-20 minutes late and no one seems to care. I’m not talking about flex-time jobs. Are my standards old-fashioned?

Green responds: Not just old-fashioned, but genuinely out-of-date! In lots of jobs, it just doesn't matter if you are at your desk at 9:00 or 9:10 because it has zero impact on the results you get. There are other jobs where it does matter—for example, if an employee covers the phones or has client appointments starting right at 9 a.m.—but increasingly jobs that can move away from that (which, again, isn’t all of them) are doing so.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.