CASE STUDY-1

The Late Finance Officer

Managers Role Brief

You are the Finance Manager.
You have noticed that one of the Finance Officers who reports to you seems to have been late
regularly over the past few months. You have checked the records and found that this individual
has been over 10 minutes late on six occasions in the past three months, and on one of these
occasions was more than an hour late. This is beginning to present a problem as the finance
department is not 'covered' first thing in the morning, which is always a busy time. On a couple
of occasions you have had a passing word with this employee about their lateness and received
various excuses and a promise that it wouldnt happen again. The employee is a hard worker,
who has worked for you for three years and has an excellent disciplinary record.
Because of this you had been reluctant to take matters further until now, but you feel that it is
time to address the issue in a more formal way.
Employees Role Brief
You are a Finance Officer.
The Finance Manager has asked to see you about your lateness. You are rather surprised and
indignant. For a start you havent been late for three weeks. Admittedly you have had problems
in the past, particularly when youve had to drop your child at the nursery before work. In any
case you cant remember being more than five minutes late, except on one occasion when your
partner had to use the car and the bus was late. Lots of people in the department are late from
time to time and theyve not been counselled by the Finance Manager.Besides, if you could start
ten minutes later every day you could guarantee being on time each day and you would leave ten
minutes later to make up the time. This would fit in much better with your child care
arrangements. You are very upset about this and angry that you are going to get a disciplinary
record for something so trivial, particularly as you have been such a good worker since you
joined the department three years ago.