how can I get our employees to arrive on time?

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager .
A reader writes:
My organization operates in a very traditional office setting: business professional dress code, strict lunch hours, and a strict 9-5 day. In theory, this is for efficiency and to allow employees to feel more separation between their work and personal life. However, new staff tend to struggle with it when they first arrive since many other places they have worked for are more flexible about arrival times, making up time, PTO, etc.
We tend to go through a cycle: an email reminder that we work 9-5 so please be here ready to work by 9 a.m. goes out, it helps for about a month, and then folks begin to slide back into being 5, 10, 15 minutes late. For example, two weeks ago I addressed this problem in person and asked staff to plan their commutes accordingly. This morning, two-thirds of the staff were missing when work started at 9 a.m.
On the one hand, commuting in our area can be unpredictable; traffic, mass transit, and weather all play their part in turning a typical 30-minute commute into an hour and a half battle. On the other hand, the people who are late are chronically late, and always for the same reasons (subway, traffic, weather). Among senior management there’s now a discussion about setting up a new system to punish people for being late.
I do not want to go down that route. We’ve had some staffing issues recently and I know that our inflexible office policies are directly related to people leaving. What alternatives can we consider that will both enforce our policy but not punish the staff, especially when other members of senior management can’t seem to follow the policy themselves?
I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here .
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