Data Analysis of Taming Tardiness in a Hospital Company (Group Project)
Tools used: Excel, SQL, and Power BI | Data Cleaning, Analysis, and Visualization
Group Project Assignment 2 at Refocus Digital Academy
Interact with the dashboard here: Clockster Client
Technical Documentation (Data Cleaning and Transformation)
Background
Employee tardiness is common in many organizations, and this has been a persistent problem for many companies. This has a big impact on the employee’s productivity, performance, and cash flow of the company, as well as on the organization as a whole and our company is not immune to such.
Problem
Our primary goal is to assist our CEO in resolving employee tardiness and how to manage it. The following concerns were asked to pinpoint by our CEO:
- Identify the most disciplined and undisciplined employees and divisions.
- At what point in time when employees were tardy either for vacation or sick leave?
- Which department heads tend to forgive employees for lack of discipline? Are there any favorites?
- Other insights that can be identified with the given data will help the organization to be more productive and compliant.
There are possible solutions to the problems like improving time management, setting rules for resolution, proper communication, better Human Resource Information System or HRIS, and strict Human Resource Department policies. These will be monitored and tracked by the business analyst through data reports.
The proposed solutions will greatly help the different departments and the company in decreasing tardiness, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of each and every one in the organization while preserving an employer-employee relationship.
Methodology
The acquired data was examined and studied by all the members as our company collects most of the data in a structured format with 10–15 parameters per day per year (arrival/departure time, vacations, sick days, time off, etc) on 1000+ employees of the company. Data cleaning, data transformation using MS Excel, SQL, and Power BI, and creating a dashboard in it were accomplished to provide the information requested by the stakeholder. The coding queries focused on the following:
- Attendance and tardiness
- Time of employee tardiness
- Schedule
- Leave status
These results were focused on as these would reveal the tardiness of the employees and the department heads’ favoritism.
Collaboration and trial and error were also observed among the members to have more quality data which leads to quality visualization and recommendation as well before exporting it to Power BI and visualizations to come up with a reliable report.
Findings
- Most disciplined and undisciplined employees and divisions.
2. Analysis of weekdays and months when most employees were late/absent (either for vacation or sick leave)
3. Which heads of departments tend to forgive employees for lack of discipline? Are there any favorites for any heads of departments (perhaps some employees are always forgiven for being late, given time off, etc.)?
Pharmacy and Support Centre have a 100% leave acceptance rate.
Written Insights
Employee tardiness can cost thousands of money each year in lost productivity and it shows a lack of respect, hurts morale, and undermines authority and discipline. It may also mean employee dissatisfaction with their work or the workplace itself.
If one or two employees are consistently tardy for no reason and with no repercussions, others may begin to be late or absent from work as well like in the data above where the leave acceptance rate is 100%. Others may also start to resent the unfairness of the situation. This bad habit may go viral and this lack of discipline may even spill over to other divisions(Pharmacy and Support Centre).
Employees may view management’s inaction as a lack of concern and may begin to pay less attention to details, work quality or even health safety which should not be the case in the medical field. Chronic employee tardiness shows blatant disrespect and once respect is lost, it takes a lot of time, energy, and damage control to get it back.
Customer service also may suffer as employee tardiness persists and related attention to detail declines, customer service may soon follow. Response times and backlogs will become longer and longer. Eventually, those customers will simply find better service elsewhere.
Missed work means missed productivity. Whether it’s tardiness or absenteeism, chronic attendance problems cost the business money and reputation. Employees who are not engaged may be more likely to miss work, which happens to everyone at some point or another. When it becomes a habit, however, it’s a warning sign that something else is going on.
Dealing with habitual tardiness is not an easy task but decisive action is the key to taming tardiness.
On favoritism in the workplace, it is always a possibility however, it can increase resentment, conflict, tension, and turnover while decreasing motivation, productivity, and respect for company leadership. Handling favoritism in the workplace can be tricky, but there are some steps one can take to avoid or minimize its negative effects of it.
Recommendations
On Tardiness
It is vital for any company to have reliable attendance from its employees. Absenteeism and late can negatively impact the ability to provide a company’s services effectively for it represents a lack of respect, initiative, diligence, and discipline which is a serious offense and negligence of duty and may result in dismissal. Sometimes, written warnings for being tardy are not enough, but direct confrontation may not also work out for the best of the employer-employee relationship as it is always a two-way process.
For the employee:
- Be punctual. Being on time for work is an essential quality that many employers desire in us. Being punctual can help us appear professional, lower our stress, and result in several other benefits.
- Good time management is still the key. Time management isn’t about working harder, it’s about being smarter, so we don’t overwhelm ourselves and put ourselves under unnecessary pressure. By managing our time well, we will meet deadlines, improve our efficiency, we are more productive, and deliver better work.
Habitual absenteeism and tardiness may typically be a lifelong bad habit and difficult to overcome as employees tend to have difficulty with time management. If we have poor time-management skills and are often late for work and are absent, we should take steps to change our habits so we don’t negatively impact others and the company.
For the management:
- Review and improve the HRIS system that will closely monitor the attendance data of the employees from filing up to approval as it may also be subjected to abuse.
- Revisit existing programs and establish concrete policies, rules, and regulations pertaining to the attendance of the employees.
- Follow the company’s guidelines for dealing with problem employees. If necessary, be sure that the policies are enforced. Require team members to notify the immediate supervisor or manager if they’ll be late and follow up to ensure their reasons were legitimate.
- Supervisors should be observant and identify pattern tardiness. Employees will be subject to immediate corrective action for a pattern of unscheduled and unauthorized absences.
- Incentivize those employees that exhibit punctuality and compliance at work in order to boost the morale of others as well. Managers need to take an active interest in their employees, rewarding good performance with advancement, bonuses, or thanks. At the same time, lateness should be addressed professionally, with an emphasis on helping the employee improve.
The company can handle excessive tardiness at work through training, prevention, penalties, and rewards. Revising their tardiness policies can help them to improve their employee’s behavior and performances.
Habitual tardiness can be seen both as a challenge and an opportunity but the approach towards this issue may be a bit outdated. The workforce based on hard manual labor is slowly decreasing while automation, creativity, and analysis-based work are increasingly demanding.
Moreover, some employees who are late at work seem to be more productive and creative. So why not turn this foe into a friend and incorporate an elastic approach to work as the best way to tackle tardiness? Modern businesses need to look for more elastic and agile solutions, like enabling the employee to better fit his daily life duties with his or her work schedule. Thus, more agility in managing the working time can be beneficial not only for the employee but also for the employer. It builds mutual respect and understanding, as well as helps to deliver the work on time, and significantly reduces tardiness, stress, and costs.
On Favoritism
Favoritism at work occurs when someone in a position of power favors or shows preferential treatment to certain individuals or groups. This can take many forms, from granting privileges to awarding special assignments, swift approval of leave forms, and allowing tardiness with no repercussions. In the dashboard, it can be seen that two departments, Pharmacy and Support Centre have 100% leave acceptance rates despite having a combined total of 394 late, 358 under time, 99 missing time ins, and 83 missing time outs.
Favoritism at work can create a feeling of unfairness and can lead to low morale and decreased productivity and quality of work. With these possible damages that it can do to employees and the company, the next step is to recognize it and deal with it when it occurs by:
- Fostering professionalism is unprofessional behavior. Be an example. The first step to avoiding it is to foster and promote professionalism. Creating a professional environment, it actively discourages any kind of unfair treatment.
- Offer training. Educating and informing managers and employees alike is another way to help avoid favoritism and discrimination in the workplace. Offer a training session on what favoritism is, why it’s detrimental, and what employees should do if they spot it in the office. If your employees are clear on what to look for, they’ll be more likely to report it if they see it.
- Facilitate communication. Along the same lines as training, it’s important that employees know they have an open avenue for reporting favoritism confidentially. Unchecked favoritism is harmful, but employees won’t risk reporting it if they’re not sure how to go about it, or if they fear it will come back to negatively affect them.
- Get to the bottom of it. If you discover that favoritism is taking place in your company, the most important thing is to make sure it stops. It can be a very delicate situation, to be sure, but the damage it poses is much too great to be ignored. If someone comes forth with an accusation of discrimination in the workplace, don’t ignore it. Gather the facts and get to the bottom of it.
That being said, avoiding favoritism in the workplace is important because doing so will benefit the employees, the team, and the company as a whole.
