Even being late by as little as 10 minutes will cascade into considerable losses of productivity. When someone who is to be leading a meeting appears 10 minutes late, 10 minutes were wasted. Usually an extra 10 minutes will be needed to finish the meeting, which leads to a doubling effect. Even if the meeting wraps up on time, then it technically should have ended 10 minutes earlier if the colleague hadn't been late, claims the business2community.com website.
Impact on other attendees
Other people will have to postpone their next meetings. That is how third parties feel the impact caused by the initial delay. People will also have no time to prepare for the next meeting, so productivity of the following meetings can also be diminished. By showing up 10 minutes late, there are many more minutes of productive work wasted.
On time policy
There’s a simple way to solve this. Instill following rules:
- Every time an individual shows up late, have him or her pay a small monetary fine. It can be for charity or a beer account. Keep it light-hearted, since people will show up late. It’s less about the cost and more about the culture.
- Meetings are to end on time. Anyone can leave when the meeting is scheduled to finish. If you didn’t allocate enough time to the meeting, that’s your bad luck.
- Meetings should not be longer than an hour. After an hour people start to drift and lose interest. Anything over an hour is not a meeting, it’s a working session. These are necessary when you need to coin great strategies or ideas. That requires space and time to think – but these are not meetings.
Dramatic changes in company culture can be expected. Gradually, as people get used to being punctual, they will request the same from others, even without mandatory penalties.
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