I’m listening to The Current on CBC about using biometrics to have employees check in.
I’m off on disability now, and dealing with the strange combo of being unaccountable and unneeded ( for work), which is a mixed blessing at times. But I used to manage people, and deal with staff who weren’t accountable for time.
It was a challenge. What do you do with staff who slide in late and take hour-long coffee breaks, yet charge you overtime for every fifteen minutes they “stay late”?
How do you deal with professional staff who routinely show up late or not at all?
And all of this without being disrespectful or making them feel like factory workers?
It’s a fine line. I know I often didn’t handle it well. I tried. I told the fifteen minute billers that I’d not ask them to check in if they didn’t bill me for tiny increments of time.
I told the professional staff who were routinely late by over half an hour with no explanation that I’d have to start cutting their pay.
I tried to view people by “getting the job done” as vs “working hours” but this is prejudicial to different levels of workers. Our interdisciplinary team were to be viewed as equals. How to treat them the same when their power was so different?
I truly disliked managing people. It’s not a career for someone who wants to be liked, generally, and it’s lonely. I hated being the vice-principal of the workplace, given the task of enforcement and not leadership. I tried to demonstrate hard work by example but merely made myself exhausted and appear overly demanding.
I should have listened to my dad. He’d told me that I wouldn’t like pure science as a career as it was too lonely. He also personally decided to not take a management role, since he knew it wasn’t for him. I wish I’d heard him about the need for me to be social and the challenges of management. I might have been able to work longer.
Even if I did have to swipe in and out.