Reflection on Lok's story

Thanks to Lok for sharing his unpleasant experience and feeling regarding the practice of electronic check-in every day not only for students, but also teachers. As a long-serving staff of the Education Bureau, I have not come across the same kind of experience so far. It doesn’t mean that I am not required to be punctual but our staff are expected to be self-disciplined. This self-disciplined system seems to work quite well though I realize that some people may abuse the practice. Overall speaking, the issue is minor and tolerable as a whole in my organization. The governing regulations and established office practice, together with the staff management mechanism and appraisal system, may have also played an important role.

Nevertheless, I know that some other offices require part of their their staff, mostly junior-grade staff, to sign in and mark the arrival time on a record book or file. This practice may improve the punctuality of some staff to a certain extent, but there are some loopholes and drawback. The manual system needs some kind of manual monitoring on the spot if accuracy is to be ensured. Omission and then requesting for re-entry, marking an earlier time than the actual one and other disputes are also possible. Accusing the seniors of being late themselves is another source of conflict. It is important for the seniors and supervisors to be puntual themselves and become a role model and mentor for other staff. Providing them with helpful and friendly advice from time to time and clearly telling them their expectations will definitely help. Prior to providing them the advice, building up good staff relationship seems to be a pre-requisite for a success, and the advice should always be positive and non-judgmental. Otherwise, people tend to be more defensive which affects the effectiveness of our advice and guidance to them. Back to the basic, the organization culture should be nurtured and punctuality is just a undisputed natural practice.

I am neutral to the electronic checking-in system and the main consideration is the objective to be achieved by implementing the system. If a check-in system is to be put in place, an electronic one is definitely the more powerful system. Apart from the accuracy and thus the monitoring power, the data collected can further be used for different kinds of analysis, by group as well as by individual. With a powerful system in place, the protection of personal data is another concern. The school can easily list the students and even staff breaching the rules but the feeling of those being listed should be considered and balanced. In fact, whatever the objective is, the leader of an organization should always be concerned about the feeling of the staff. Numerous studies have demonstrated that people, as human being, tend to be more motivated and perform better if they work happily, with positive reinforcement like recognition. Whereas, the unpleasant experience and feeling for teachers in Lok’s school are considered negative feedback for teachers, and I cannot find any positive reinforcement for them. Perhaps, appreciating those who are always punctual is a better way. Moreover, timetables of a school are well planned and set, I trust that it should be rare for a teacher being unpunctual as it may lead to a class being unattended, thus requiring a sudden redeployment of another teacher to take care of the class.