Employee tardiness can be more than a punctuality issue. In one family business, late arrivals regularly left coworkers scrambling to prepare the store and serve waiting customers. The experience prompted a broader question: could the behavior reflect a leadership problem, rather than simply employees’ lack of accountability?

On one Tuesday morning, eight employees were expected to be clocked in by 8:30 a.m., but only four had arrived. The team worked to count register drawers, open the dock door for a large delivery, and answer the phones before the store opened. The business’s motto was that no customer should wait longer than 20 minutes for service, and the staffing shortage threatened that standard.

By 8:45 a.m., three more employees had arrived, apologizing that they had been caught in traffic or overslept. The final morning-shift employee walked in at 9 a.m. as if nothing were wrong. This was not an isolated incident; tardiness had become a regular occurrence.

The author came to see the pattern as a possible symptom of leadership and workplace culture. A Gallup survey conducted in May 2026 found that only 20% of U.S. employees said they trusted their organization’s leaders. In a separate Gallup survey from August 2025, 16% of U.S. employees said their organization’s leadership communicated effectively.

How Jack Stack used games to shape behavior

While working at the family business during graduate school, the author read “The Great Game of Business” by Jack Stack. In 1983, Stack spearheaded an employee buyout of the International Harvester plant in Springfield, Missouri, using $100,000 in cash and taking on $8.9 million in debt. According to the Springfield Business Journal, the company’s annual revenue is now over $600 million.

Stack’s first step was to teach employees to read financial statements so they could understand how their work affected the company’s numbers. In an April 2026 interview with the Springfield Business Journal, he said, “Our people understand margins, cash flow, income statements, balance sheets. Those are their specs to create a great product, and that great product is the company.”

Stack also used small workplace games to build teamwork and change behavior. When the plant had safety problems, he set a target of 100,000 hours without an accident and tracked progress on a scoreboard each day. Once employees reached the goal, the plant closed so they could celebrate.

A punctuality game at the family business

Inspired by Stack’s approach, the author introduced a game to address tardiness. At a company meeting, employees learned that a scoreboard would track daily tardies and be updated weekly. Employees who stayed within the attendance guidelines for a quarter would receive an extra day off.

The author’s family doubted the problem could be solved and questioned whether the book’s method would work. Because tardiness was widespread, the first quarter used gradually stricter monthly goals: employees could be up to 15 minutes late in Month One, up to 10 minutes late in Month Two, and up to 5 minutes late in Month Three.

After the quarter, the company celebrated employees who earned an extra day off. At the 80-person company, tardiness dropped to a handful of people. Unlike repeated verbal reminders, the scoreboard and reward provided accountability and follow-through. The author also noticed improved morale and a greater willingness to arrive on time.

At 24, the author judged the game successful because employees began arriving promptly. Later, however, the author recognized a limitation: the game did not teach employees how punctuality affected customer satisfaction, operational performance, or company finances. It mainly showed how lateness pushed coworkers’ lunches or breaks later because someone had to cover the work. As Stack put it, “If you want to change behaviors, you have to change the culture.”

Why financial education needs context

The author was drawn to Stack’s open-book financial approach but did not feel qualified to implement it, and the family was not interested in moving in that direction. Sharing financial statements requires a clear plan and context that connects employees’ actions with financial outcomes. As Bill Fotsch, founder of Open-Book Coaching, and John Case, author of “Open-Book Management,” wrote, “There may be no greater misconception about open-book management than this: all you have to do is hand out the financials.”

Financial statements can be difficult to understand without instruction. Showing employees numbers they cannot interpret may leave them confused or lead them to draw inaccurate conclusions. With proper teaching, though, employees can learn to think more like businesspeople and understand how their decisions relate to results.

The author cannot say exactly how on-time attendance would have affected the business. Better-staffed shifts might have helped employees keep shelves stocked or suggest additional products to customers, and a bonus might have been possible. Too many other variables make the precise outcome uncertain.

The larger lesson is that a quick incentive can improve a visible behavior, but lasting change may require employees to understand why the behavior matters. Looking back at that Tuesday morning, the author wonders whether a fully punctual team would have revealed another problem—or made it clearer that leadership was the root cause and tardiness only a symptom.