I will admit that throughout my life I have not always been on time for work 100% of the time.  Everyone is late now and again.  Heck, sometimes it just feels nice to be late once in a while.  But it is extremely important for employees or members of any organization to be on time every day.  There are two main reasons.  One is a functional necessity for the organization.  The other is psychological.

First and foremost, having accepted start times for the workday is important for any company. It is nearly impossible for co-workers to plan their day if they do not know when their partners are going to be there to support them.  When the entire staff is punctual, every single person who has to depend on someone else for any portion of their job can proceed without haste.When one must plan their daily duties around the unknown start time of their co-workers, this starts to make the punctual employees less effective. They start putting off things until they are sure they can get the assistance they need. This slowly starts leading to a culture of procrastination.  Also, while it is extremely unfair to the employees that show up on time if the tardiness is not disciplined, it also will create the expectation within the company that rules do not need to be followed.  It is very important to have a predictable structure that any organization or business works from. Without structure it is hard to have a group of people working towards a common goal with any amount of efficiency.  If there are special instructions for the day or something that must be discussed before work starts, the same message has to be given several times as the tardy members show up. This wastes valuable time and makes everyone’s day longer.

The second part is psychological.  When you make it to work on time in the morning you have successfully completed your first task of the work day.This is huge!  Think of a day when you were running late, rushing to get to work.  Nothing seems to go right. You forget things.  Every last delay on your drive in is a major annoyance. Once you get to work, even if you weren’t disciplined or fired, nothing seems to go right.  Everything seems out of its groove.  You just can’t seem to catch up.  Getting to work on time requires planning ahead to ensure you arrive at the proper time. You will subconsciously be able plan out the rest of your day if that start time is concrete.  When there is no set starting time the rest of the day has no set schedule. It’s like knowing you have to take a cross country trip but not knowing if you are starting in New York City or St. Louis. It would be impossible for you to mentally prepare for that trip without that information.  Every person needs a solid start and end time to be productive on a daily basis.  If your mind knows exactly what time you will be starting the next day, you will subconsciously prepare for your day and be better set up for success.  If the start time is a loose range of time, the same lack of detail will creep into the rest of your work.  When solid expectations are met then the organization begins to suffer.  It is crucially important for a person to have the first success of the day by arriving on time.You have completed the first required task of the day.  This will snowball into completing more tasks.  It is very powerful.

So just be on time from now on.It’s good for you, it’s good for the company,and it feels good.