Should I fire a good employee that is always 10 minutes late to work?
What would happen to you if suddenly you are the one been fire? How does that will affect your income, your mortgage, your lease car, your relationship with your spouse or wife, the education and feeding of your children? How in jeopardy will be your future and your family future?
What would you feel if you are a good and productive and hard worker, loyal to the company for several years but it that won’t matter? still you will get fire.
Like uncle Ben says: With great power comes great responsibility. Being the boss, the manager, or the person in charge is way more complicated than you think.
First, from the company point of view it is very hard to find good employees. Recruiting, hire and make an employee to adapt to the company cost a lot of money. During the first year the company is investing money on that employee. You fire the people that do not produce income to the company and part of your job as a manager is create a budged and close follow it to see if the work of the employees are providing profit to the company. You almost never ever will fire a good employee that bring to the company profit, is just insane and nonsense. You are not in a social club, you work in a company to make money.
Second, from the employee point of view there can be a lot of reason why he is late 10 minutes. Is his wife or her husband sick? Did he need to drop his children at school? Is he struggling with time? Did he need help? Being a manager is not just caring what the employees at your responsibility does during the work hours, but also you need to ensure they are ok outside of the working hours. It is untrue that you must leave your personal problems at the office entrance door, it just cannot be possible. At least try that work is not stressing people unnecessary.
Once I had a great employee that went to the university, he was 1 hour late all days. He needs to get up early in the morning to go to the school, without any time free after the school he go directly to work, and after work he go directly to his home to rest. He easily gets at home passing 10:00 PM. He was like this for about 3 years, but he was an excellent employee and a great person, I am honor that he is my friend. The company knew about the situation and decide to help him. He responded by doing great work and been responsible because he needs that hour. After he finish the university and not having schedule problems any more, he works several years at the company doing a great job.
Third, from your point of view as a manager. You are on a position where any decision that you make affects the company and the employees, you are what joins the two of them. I will never allow an employee to had bad attitude, be rude, be irresponsible, be lazy, and all that sort of things, I address them and sometimes I need to proceed with disciplinary consequences and sometimes I needed to fire a couple of employees.
The rules exist for a reason, to prevent employees to be abusive. You can apply the rule as it is written, but not always the actions reflect the motives and the spirit of the rule. Anybody have the right to a fair trial so you need to know why he is been late, what are the reasons. Is he really acting on bad faith or he really needs help?
Being a manager in a company it is also been an employee performing a role, a position. You are not entitled with powers to be a dictator, an executioner, the one that does the dirty jobs on the company. Your job is to ensure your employees has everything they need to do their jobs, solve any problems that arises and ensuring that everything is working properly. The last thing you want to do is fire people by blind following a rule.
Just remember, in your hands are the life of a lot of people, your decisions will affect them positively or negatively. Some think that if you are a good manager for the company then you are the bad guy for the employees and vice versa, but that is not true. You must do a job where you need to be a good manager for the company and a good manager for the people. How do you want to be remembered? like the good guy or the bad guy?
