Behaviour aspects
Employee attendance monitoring in the company had been ineffective due to the outdated system of punching time cards. At times some employees were punched in by their friends or coworkers even if they had not yet arrived. Thus, management could not trace how many times an employee was tardy or absent. The problem on employee tardiness had reached tremendous proportions that an employee had missed 200 minutes of work in a month. Considering that the company relies on their employees to provide the services that they market to their customers, tardy employees negatively impact the operations of the company.
However, the company was worried that the employees would resist a new attendance monitoring system. From the workforce point of view, the old system is easier and much more employee-friendly in the sense that there are really times when they do not intend to be tardy but circumstance out of their control would cause them to be tardy. Moreover, the system was easy to manipulate and employees justify that they maintain the same productivity and output even if they were tardy a number of times. The company justified that chronic tardiness is a problem that has reached epidemic proportions because employees abuse the old system.
Employees are paid in full per hour and if they come in 20 minutes late would mean a huge lost for the company. In order to improve the attendance monitoring of the company, the management invested on a biometric system, wherein employees have to press their thumbs on a scanner and the system logs the employee in or out. The time noted is also more accurate as it includes seconds. However, before the biometric attendance system could be implemented it has to be set-up and will be a major change for the employees.
To aid in the implementation of the change in the attendance monitoring system, a plan was devised wherein employees will be made to become aware of the problem, the implications of the problem to the overall productivity of the company and the best possible solution to the problem would be the changing of the system (Cameron & Quinn, 2006) . To make the transition to the biometrics attendance system, a general assembly was called for and the attendance report for the whole company was presented to the body.
The presentation contained only the percentage of work hours, the number of hours lost due to tardiness and the frequency of tardiness for the past year. The session served as the unfreezing of the status quo since employees are made to confront the issue and that change is inevitable. After the presentation, the biometrics was then presented to the employees and what the new system would be (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin, 2009). The employees were asked to go to the HR department for the entering of their thumbprints and personal data. The employees were given a specific period of time to comply with the required information.
The HR then informed the workforce that a trial period for the new system will be set wherein employees would get used to the new system. This corresponds to the implementation of the actual change. After the 2 months in which the biometrics had been implemented, another general assembly was called, this time it was to present the noticeable improvement of employee attendance and punctuality. This would be the refreezing stage wherein the employees are made to accept the change and that the new system is better than the previous system.
Hopefully, the new system will continue to improve the attendance and tardiness in the company to the point when it would cease to be a problem. In order to motivate employees, the management will award those who have perfect attendance. References Cameron, K. S. , & Quinn, R. E. (2006). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture. (2nd edition) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Palmer, I. , Dunford, R. , & Akin, G. (2009). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach. (2nd ed. ) Boston: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
