Reducing Counterproductive Work Behavior Using Automated Attendance System as Tool

Monday, May 11, 2015 TimeTec 1 Comments

There are mainly three kinds of productivity labeled in the office and two of those are NOT desirable by any sane employer. One is the unproductive bunch which refers to employees who wander around not doing what they are supposed to do, not engaged in any productive activities, more of seat-warmers but they not posed any threats to the company’s goals and objectives. It’s not very hard to spot these unproductive lots; all you have to do is to look for the people who know exactly what part of them needed change to be more productive but they just refuse to do so. 

Another undesirable group of employee is the counterproductive mix. This group of employee displays counterproductive work behavior, which refers to actions by employees that go against the goals and aims of their employer. There are numerous and broad driving forces to counterproductive work behavior such as environmental reason, training deficiency, harsh and harmful personality and many other external factors. The only group that a company wishes it had is the productive one.

Robinson and Bennett (1995), “A Typology of Deviant Workplace Behaviors: A Multidimensional Scaling Study”, they categorize workplace deviants into four categories, production deviance that involves tardiness or goldbricking, property deviance such as theft or sabotage of equipment, political deviance for example  gossiping or favouritism and personal aggression which includes physical aggression, sexual harassment and work bullying.

Counterproductive work behavior is not straight up corrupt or illegal behavior, but it exists in varying degree in many companies. If these behaviors are not being handled appropriately by the managers involved, a company might face a bigger problem that could potentially have negative impacts to their business. 

Attendance data could help a company deal with counterproductive work behavior 

If we look at the above category, production deviance can easily be identified by using attendance software; attendance data from the software can accurately point out who had been slacking in time management and with the same data, a company can identify the attendance pattern of each employee. Tardiness is not only limited to those who come late to the office. In the minds of many workers, as long as they don’t check in late, tardiness has nothing to do with them. But when using advanced automated time attendance software like TimeTec, the definition of tardiness is wider than manual attendance could ever cover. Coming in late from breaks, miss punches, leaving from work early, leaving the office to do errands, unnecessary overtime and etc are considered tardiness and these deviant behaviors can be accurately traced by modern attendance software.

Tardiness is not only limited to those who come in late for work.

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