SURVEY SAYS: How Do You Deal With Late Meeting Attendees?

Realizing that there are some people that the organization chart provides with special “dispensations”, this week, I asked readers what they did when people are late to their meetings?  

As one reader noted – “My mother always told me, “When you’re late, you are telling people that your time is more valuable than their time.”   And for most – 55.7% – the meetings start on time and the tardees have to catch up on their own time.   A distant 17% opted for “other”, generally a combination of the alternatives presented, or what I like to term a situational ethics approach – the boss gets a pass, everybody else is on their own (as one reader noted, “It depends who is late. If it’s the boss, then we wait patiently (the “full professor” treatment). If it’s one (or more) of my staff, then I start without them” ), while 13% start on time, but stop to catch up those who are late.  

Roughly 7% “grin and bear it” (generally because the tardees outrank them), and the rest spread about evenly between subjecting the “latelies” to public humiliation, and bringing something else to the meeting to do while waiting for them.

Verbatims

Among my favorites from this week’s verbatims

The late fee sounds nice but they would probably be late paying it.

Employees here have so many back-to-back meetings on different topics that it’s almost assured somebody will be late….quite a few times it’s the meeting organizer themselves. When the meeting starts always depends on who’s at the table who can “play”…if the right players are there the meetings start, if the right players aren’t there the start waits until they arrive.

But “start on time” means ~5 mins late at my company.

We have to grin and bear it because the person who is chronically late to the meetings is the boss. It doesn’t matter how many times we explain the staggering of hours in the office to provide assistance to our clients all across the country, she still operates in her own time zone.

Most of the time we grin and bear it (unless it’s the boss, in which case we start on time, but catch him up), but just yesterday the boss told everyone to say on the count of 3 “you’re late!” when a chronic latecomer walked in — which we all did. We’ll see if it has any impact…

It’s mostly “grin and bear it” but we’ve started to change that to pointing out when someone is late. Not yet public humiliation, but it could get there.

I ask them to please sing a song for the group–usually along the lines of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Guaranteed they won’t be late again.

As for the "best" solutions:  

My former boss used to shut the door and you had to knock to be let in. Then she'd publicly humiliate you. If you decided not to show at all rather than be late, she'd stop by your desk afterwards and publicly humiliate you. Interestingly, she was quite often late to her own meetings, which was okay because she had important things to do. ???

Assign them to do the work that comes out of the meeting.

When the meeting was scheduled to begin, the group moved to a different location. The late folks were never redirected. Suckers.

Is drawing and quartering legal?

Locking the meeting room door and not letting them in. (Learned it from Mr Hand in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High")

If there was a great solution -- don't you think everyone would use it?

A past client of mine has large orientation meetings each week. If anyone is late or comes back from a break late, they have to stand up in front of everyone and sing "I'm a little teapot".

1. Changed the chronically tardy attendee's clocks to 10 minutes fast. 2. Move the meeting to the tardy attendee...even in the restroom. 3. Late attendees are "volunteered" for the bulk of the work assignments from the meeting.

Serve food.

Get them a mommy - after the rest of the team hustle's them they learn to get moving on their own 🙂

Announcing in advance that late arrivers will have to sing a song seems to be effective.

At least one reader reminded us that there's "being there", and then there's really being there; More annoying, however, are those who are in meetings but who are not fully engaged -- those using their blackberries, having side conversations, doodling with vacant expressions, etc.

But this week's Editor's Choice goes to the reader who shared, "I hold weekly status meetings for a project I am managing. One week, I had something come up at the very last minute and needed to cancel the status meeting. There was not enough time to send an email to everyone to tell them it was cancelled so I went to the conference room and just told them face to face. The only exception was the person who consistently was 10 minutes late every week. I learned later that he was annoyed that he sat in the conference room waiting for everyone for 10 minutes (which would have been 20 minutes into our regular meeting). I later told him that if he had shown up on time he would have received the message and not "wasted" his time. The following week he was the first one in the conference room."

Thanks to everyone who participated in our survey!

ABOUT 2 PEOPLE WHO WORK HERE SHOW UP ON TIME.   WE ARE PHILOSOPHICAL ABOUT IT.

Good morning!!     I hope you're doing great.    I couldn't resist answering this question - "What do you do when people are late to YOUR meetings?"

Our company's culture is contrary to many.    Arriving late is the norm.    Anyway arriving early has the potential to be 'tortured' with verbal jabs.     Arriving on-time is certainly acceptable, but not expected.     Arrival anytime in the first ten minutes is ok.     Bizarre, huh?    

Large meeting or presentation/seminar - c - if you're late, it's your loss.  Small department meeting - b - very quickly hitting key items that were missed by the late arriver.