"Andy Hall" wrote in message news:477ca5e1@qaanaaq...
On 2008-01-03 08:04:25 +0000, "Bob Mannix" said:

"Roland Perry" wrote in message
...
In message e.net, at
08:07:22 on Wed, 2 Jan 2008, Mark Goodge
remarked:
It never failed to amzae me how often one got pulled up for being ten
minutes late, and never rewarded by staying 2 hours after time.

Maybe you should have stopped being amazed, then.

Explained to me as "everyone sees you come in ten minutes late, no-one
sees you leave two hours late".

Flexitime has several downsides but a huge upsize is that no-one bothers
to
notice what time people come in as they know the hours are all recorded
and
that it's all fair. They stop worrying about it and get on with the job!
I'm
a convert and fan.

Even better would be not to measure hours at all but outcomes - i.e. has X
met the objectives agreed by date D?


In an ideal world and with ideal, highly motivating tasks where the person
performing them feels ownership of them, yes. In the real world one has,
unfortunately, to distinguish between attendance and performance and deal
with them separately. Opponents of flexitime often say "they may be here,
but are they working?". My response to this is "how do you know they are
working if they are not on flexitime?". Flexitime does not and cannot
address problems of competence and laziness on the job and doesn't pretend
to. It can (and does) ensure that no one shirks on attendance and that those
who put in extra hours are credited for it and staff don't waste time
moaning or feeling bitter about other's slapdash approach to timekeeping
(and getting it wrong sometimes). It does not cure the ills of the world but
is a practical improvement nonetheless (IMHO).

Setting SMART objectives over a year (say) is hard enough if one is in an
environment where everyone's job is different. Using this to deal with
attendance issues is (or can be) asking for trouble. If one goes the whole
hog and makes (say in an IT environment) all the workers contractors who
then are offered so much to do a task, fine, they can do it when they like.
Not all work environments are like that though!


--
Bob Mannix
(anti-spam is as easy as 1-2-3 - not)