Timekeeping Policies

At our callcentre we have a policy for lateness under which, over a nine month rolling period, an agent can be late twice before any action is taken.

After that, for the 3rd instance over nine months, they receive an Performance Development Plan. For the 4th instance they receive a Zero Tolerance letter, and after that it is the various stages of the disciplinary process.

Since the introduction of this policy, a lot of agents are being caught out and we are debating whether our policy is realistic.

Technically, under the current proposal, six minutes lateness could get the agent to the end of the disciplinary process if they were only late one minute on each occasion.

I would appreciate input here and also knowledge of what other call centres use for their timekeeping policies and what is effective and what isn't?

I look forward to your comments,

Thank you.

I completely agree with Jason. Rewards are always better than punishments!

I understand your point ERAC, if the majority of contact centre agents thought like you I guess there wouldn’t be a problem.

It really does depend how you dress the bonus. In this instance the agents were agency staff. They were paid c£6.50 an hour which was increased to c£7.00 an hour if they had 100% attendance.

If at the next pay review rather than giving a pay rise you added in this bonus it would be cost the business nothing and increase contact centre efficiency.

I can see merits in all intitivies that are designed to make the job of avoiding absense when it isn't necessary.

Surely though as with Nick's plan of tracking absense its better to find out why agents take time off and recognizing trends that is the key.

I would just be worried that an agent might be encourged to come to work to get that bonus and possibly spread the ilness around rather than take a day or two to recover and feel able to do their job.

Again not knocking the idea and certianly not overlooking reality just expressing an opinion