Csdrhrt

I work for a small firm of which I am a shareholder, there is one majority shareholder and one non-majority shareholder (me).

We operate a flexi-time system whereby an employee can start between 8am and 10am and finish between 4pm and 6pm after staying for 8 hours (with breaks included of course).

I myself am always in the office at 7am and don't leave until usually 7pm (I have too many tasks to complete in a day, we are in the process of hiring additional staff to alleviate this but this is the case for now. I do this because I am interested in the success of the company and also I don't want to let customers down by not delivering work on time) but the other employees often don't arrive until 10am (and on several occasions my direct report has arrived 10-15 minutes late). I am yet to discipline my direct report because he has stayed over several hours late on several occasions, but I still think arriving on time is important as it sets a tone of professionalism that is lost when people wander in when they see fit.

The majority shareholder doesn't arrive until well after 11am, oftentimes arriving after 12pm and often leaves at 5pm.

While I know it's (mostly) his company and he has nobody to answer to, I'm finding myself telling customers on the phone "Oh he's not available right now" much too frequently and not being able to release work to clients without his sign off. He also does not do basic business administration tasks frequently enough and I have had complaints from customers for things such as automated invoice reminder emails for invoices that had been paid. He doesn't seem interested in these complaints.

Short of me threatening to leave and really putting the frighteners on him, what can I do to improve the punctuality and overall image of the firm, especially the majority shareholder, not only to clients and other companies in our buildings, but the staff members too?

There's two distinct areas to look at here, the majority shareholder and the employees.

The Employees

Well other than the occasions of your direct report arriving 10-15 minutes late it sounds like they aren't doing anything you haven't explicitly allowed them to do.

You could change the flexi-time policy, either by removing it or by requiring certain coverage at certain times - but be aware that doing so would likely engender significant resentment in your staff. And in fact it wouldn't surprise me in the least if some just plain left.

Likewise you could discipline your direct report for arriving late - after all he technically has broken the rules. I wouldn't recommend it though - from "he has stayed over several hours late on several occasions" it sounds like you are currently up on the deal. And I'd fully expect such overstays to cease as soon as you make an issue of the 10-15mins of lateness.

I don't believe in pandering to employees over much but treating good workers badly is pretty much a one-way ticket to failure for most businesses. I worked in a company once that went on a similar campaign of focusing heavily on punctuality and similar issues very similar to how you describe. Flexi time was clamped down on/removed as was WFH flexibility. Not surprisingly many of the really key employees - the ones who might come in 10 minutes later here and there but would work hours of unpaid overtime to get things done got annoyed and left. A few years later and revenue was down ~66% and the company got sold off for pocket change (about a tenth of it's value from about 8 years ago) to a competitor who bought it for the historical client base.

The Majority Shareholder

This is a different situation - I fully sympathise with your frustrations. However, you aren't going to get very far trying to change him. Instead I would advocate trying to work within his current lifestyle/schedule and propose solutions for the business issues you're facing (the real ones, not what other companies in your building might thing of you), if it's a problem that he's not there to sign-off on work for clients then propose a mechanism for sign-offs when he's not there.

Hey [majority owner], it's causing real hold ups when we can't get work signed off - can we put a procedure in place so we don't have to bother you when you're not here? Perhaps I could do sign-offs in your absence?

For the business admin tasks:

Hey [majority owner], we've had a few admin cock-ups lately and I'm concerned that we might be letting stuff slip through the cracks. I think we should hire an admin assistant who can take care of things like the invoicing and payment chasing that way you and me don't need to be spending time trying to keep on top of every nuance and detail.

And so on.. the key thing is to keep the language about the issues non-personal - you want to avoid any suggestion that he is the problem. Instead the business - and in a very real sense the two of you as owners have a practical issue and it needs a practical solution.

You cannot change from haphazard unprofessionalism to punctuality and professionalism without one of two things.

Direct input and example from the top.

Discipline.

There are a couple of common strategies I have seen which work effectively and quickly. The first is obvious and is a relatively soft choice. Which is for the boss to be visibly interested in the issue and enforcing it.

The other choice is pretty common in bigger outfits where the culture has become ingrained.

You bring in an outsider, give them a position of authority and their agenda is solely to restructure procedures and checks and balances with no hesitation on discipline. They actually actively look for people to make examples of.

This person focus's all the negative kickbacks against themselves and becomes widely disliked. But they get things in shape, after which, mission accomplished, you replace them. In worse case scenarios the boss can take a holiday for a month while the restructuring is taking place if he doesn't want to deal with the complaints this person is going to have rolling in.

Apart from those, there isn't much that can be done except by small increments. And they will have somewhere around zero effect if you won't discipline.