I have had a similar situation.
Employee A was so good at what she did she could get her work done that she could take a half hour coffee break and still accomplish twice as much as anyone else in a given day.
But then Employee B saw A taking a half hour coffee break, so he figure he was entitled to go that long too. Even though he was slacking off and I had to beat him over the head with a keyboard to get him to stop playing Hearts when he was supposed to be working.
-=-=-=-=-=-
The difficulty with the "If you are getting paid for working 8 hours, you should work 8 hours" is that Employee A is a VERY valued employee as she is carrying the load. We were dependent upon her doing a fair percentage of the work. If I told her that she wasn't doing as much work as she possibly could given her extra-long break, I don't think my head would still be attached to my torso. At the very least, we'd be looking for another resource.
-=-=-=-=-
In the end, I let sleeping dogs lie and let A continue to take her breaks. B on the other hand, even though I was under no allusions that he could ever become as productive as A, I put his nose to the grindstone until he met HIS peak performance. I guess it comes to expectations. I have a minimum level of performance that I expect and an idea of maximum. If some lackadaisically exceeds the maximum I'm not going to fight that battle. I've got enough fires to fight to go start another one. If someone is struggling with all their might to be just over the minimum I'm not going to fight that one either. But if I have someone being lazy that is under the maximum THAT's when I get the keyboard out and start swinging.
|