> It's obvious. Of course one should be on time. It's not at all obvious. People respond to incentives, look at the incentives given by switching them around:

> It's obvious. Of course one should be on time. It's not at all obvious. People respond to incentives, look at the incentives given by switching them around: - "When you are on time for meetings, you have to spend more time in the meeting". The attendee likely didn't have any say in the agenda items, and isn't interested in many/all of them. Because the meetings apparently still finish on time (as they have less time for the agenda items), they neither overrun nor get rescheduled, this could be Parkinson's Law of work expands to fit the time available. It's not clear "less time to spend on agenda items" is a problem, it is clear that "less time in meetings" is desirable. - "When you are on time, the team will trust you to be on time". That isn't any incentive for anything; "the team will expect you to be on time proportionally to how often you are on time" is no statement at all. - "It inconveniences the team". Allegedly; they all still spend the same amount of time in the meeting either way. The lateness means there is less time for the items, not that the meeting overruns or is rescheduled. Perhaps, scheduling too long for the meeting is inconveniencing the team more, but being late for a meeting which can still do what it planned, is no inconvenience. - "The team will trust you more". This may incentivize people, but it a) isn't obviously true; the team may respect you more for being busy, or b) wish they could do the same. If it is true, it's not obvious that it's bad - it may be that it means they won't invite you to more meetings (hooray), or they won't dump work on you trusting you to get it done (hooray). It apparently doesn't mean the employee is being fired, which is an odd way to respond to an employee you don't trust. Paraphrasing a tweet I can't find now from a fictional manager perspective: "It's difficult to find a time for a meeting which suits every attendee. Easier to choose a time myself. Please make every effort to attend". Is the employee late because meetings are scheduled at a particularly bad time for them? It isn't obvious that the meeting is, or should be, the employee's top priority. "When you are late, nothing happens except you hear an earful of status signalling by people who were on time"; that's not going to change anything, is it?