How much Flexibility Employees should have at work?

Is it important to monitor and strictly adhere to Time and Attendance System in an Organization? If strict, then how much strict it should be? And if not then why?

In any Organization, small/medium or big, it is very important to monitor Time and Attendance. Not only it becomes a mere documentation for the Company with employee records, it also helps in keeping track of the productive hours of an employee/ team or working hours of the Company, which is then used in Analytics and Strategizing.

It is very important to identify how strict or flexible these policies can be in an Organization. My view on this system is to have a balanced policy where we give liberty and opportunity to employees to organize and plan their work.

The monitoring of Time in and Out is important and should be done on day to day basis. It is especially important for roles where employees are paid hourly wages. It is also important to accurately keep a track of this data as it affects any employee’s salary.

For the roles which are not hourly paid, I believe it should not be strict enough that the employees are penalized. As this results in de-motivation and create negative environment.

For the roles which have well defined KRAs, Team objectives and goals to perform, it is important to provide them flexibility at work. The time an individual reaches company should be based on the project or team he is working on. It should be decided based on dependency of his role on other business activities. It should be decided and evaluated by his Manager and not as a forced company policy.

Employee’s orientation should include topics on skills like managing, organizing and planning his work. Every employee should be capable enough of identifying his inputs and time for the company in order to deliver results.

It is not a good example where an individual is putting all his efforts and time to fulfill Company’s goal and his results are showing that, but is still penalized for coming late to the office.

It also goes contrary to Company’s commitment and culture towards providing work life balance to his employees. Every employee is different and should be given flexibility and opportunity to be able to fulfill his duties towards Company in-line with his team.

It is very important for us to understand that employees we hire are adults and not kindergarten kids who needs to learn Time Management. The employees should be motivated by Company’s culture and not strict measures to manage his time. It should be left to an individual’s self dignity and integrity.

Monitoring attendance is equally important as monitoring time but unlike time, it should be strictly controlled. If not documented accurately it can result in loss towards Company’s revenue system, as any company’s budgeting and revenue is also dependent on the Annual paid leaves and holidays provided to employees.

It is important to have a robust leave management system to plan the contingencies in an appropriate way, for example in a team of 4, if 2 employees plan to take leave at the same time and manager was not sent the leave request for approval, can result in a situation where the critical projects are on hold for absenteeism of its team members resulting in revenue / reputation loss.

Recording and documenting attendance is also important to identify absconding employees in the Company.