[Closed] Contracted hours

The last place I worked that had flexi, you could be up to 11hrs in debit at the end of the month or 18 hrs in credit. Any credit over 18 hrs was lost.

Not totally sure I understand the question... Is this someone who's struggling with their work and is doing extra free hours to compensate?

Is this someone who's struggling with their work and is doing extra free hours to compensate?

yes. but the employer wants them to do the work in the 7.5 hours, rather than the 9-9.5

this isn't flexi, you have to do 8.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, they just let you alter your start and finish times within a 3 hour window

Depends what the office rules say, but can't see a problem with it.

Our flexi hours have to be between 7am and 7pm. Stupidly did away with core hours 10-3, so we have a few people rock up at 11 or later on a regular basis.

depends what the warning is for ?

too many hours worked or not good at doing the work in allocated time ?

How the work is apportioned doesn't help either, in that it isn't. all the customer requests come in to one central email inbox, then the team pick out a request to deal with on a partly first come first served basis, so one job might take 2 mins, another might take 2 hours, but for the grace of god but they all count equally in the reporting (think changing a tyre versus a full strip down and service). Sadly, our hero's skills on certain products mean he is pretty sure he does a lot of the ones that are nearer to 2 hour end of the spectrum. The employer says that it averages out over periods of time. It doesn't.

in the interests of full...sh disclosure, there are other (very petty) things that contribute to this (potentially final) warning that the protagonist in this story thinks may point to victimisation. But this is the main one. and our hero wants to deal with one thing at a time.

It's breach of contract if the contract is very specific on the hours. If not, then it's not.

If it's a job that doesn't depend on being there at specific times and the work isn't time based, then often companies apply "professional working hours". A vague term that means you work all day to get a days worth of work done, and if it takes longer, you don't get paid any more.

This kind of work though, personally I wouldn't care if they're working 10 to 8 while others are working 6 to 4. Big deal. I know a lot who get very wound up by people not turning up and leaving the same time as them, even though it makes crap all difference to getting the work done. Some are early birds, some are night owls.

As a contractor now I'm paid to do the work, not the hours. Though still have to bill on a daily rate, but I go by billing a day if I feel I've put a days worth of work in. If client is happy they pay. If deadlines are met, then their budget is met. Actual hours, who cares.

Obviously different if it's a service job that depends on specific hours.

If it makes a difference, most people at the companies job description says their working hours are 9-530 (the flexible working thing is fairly new, like a 18 months to 2 years), as thats the business' opening hours (hours you can expect someone other than a security guard to answer the phone)

I'm not sure I understand the question either!

Employees A, B, C, D and E do 15-20 items of reported work a day between the hours of 9 and 530
Employee F does the same, but between the hours of 10 and 730-8ish

Employee F has been given a written warning for this

you can do what you like. as long as its approved by you manager in advance,

appears to imply that that flexible hours are at the managers discretion.

It doesn't sound fair, but I suspect that there is more to the story than the information we have here.

Has the work been done on time? Yes, no problem.

Unless the work is dependent on being done in contracted hours. Not that the contract says so, but someone is depending on it. e.g, must be done by 5.30 deadline, but he works later, then yes that's an issue.

As a night owl myself, I come across negative attitudes towards hours a lot, though see it the other way round with resentment towards people who come in very early and leave very early.

Never really get why people are so hung up on hours, so long as the job is done and it doesn't interfere with other people's work or deadlines.

Is this not easy to sort?
Hero works normal hours and does exactly the same tasks as everyone else.
Sometimes you have to let things fall apart to make your point.

Your OP says it has to be approved by a manager, so is it approved or not? If the protagonist hasn't obtained approval then surely it puts them in a less favourable position?

It doesn't sound fair, but I suspect that there is more to the story than the information we have here.

the employees manager has pulled stats of when the jobs were completed and there is not an even spread of the workload throughout the day, meaning there are periods where the manager thinks the employee is sat there doing nothing. The employee isn't sat doing nothing, he is doing work that will not always result in a job stat. the employee thinks the manager wants him out so is using these stats to fire them. because the employee thinks this, he is staying late to up his stats

The employee isn't sat doing nothing, he is doing work that will not always result in a job stat.

Do others do the same? If not, why not?

If our hero is going to fight this, he needs the evidence.

Your OP says it has to be approved by a manager, so is it approved or not? If the protagonist hasn't obtained approval then surely it puts them in a less favourable position?

if it were approved by the manager, the manager would expect 2 hours extra work they're doing the same work, just taking a bit longer

If our hero is going to fight this, he needs the evidence

alas yes, our hero's downfall

Right, I'm knackered, too tired to write about heroes and villains now, off to sleep, feel free to talk amongst yourselves, ill be back to answer any questions you have about this totally made up tale tomorrow.

I may be wrong, but this sounds like a performance/work rate issue rather than hours worked one. If an employee is inefficient in their work rate relative to others, they rightly should be pulled up on it.

You realise that 9.5 hours a day is very close to the 48 hours a week maximum and the company is required to make sure you don't cross that regularly?

tomhoward - Member

the employees manager has pulled stats of when the jobs were completed and there is not an even spread of the workload throughout the day, meaning there are periods where the manager thinks the employee is sat there doing nothing. The employee isn't sat doing nothing, he is doing work that will not always result in a job stat.

Ah, this sort of crap. I had something likethis in a previous job- we handled incoming customer problems via phone and emails; the least experienced staff got put on the phones the most because it was the easiest job, the most experienced staff did the more complex behind the scenes stuff and spent less time answering phones, and tended to be passed more complicated calls and pick up more troublesome emails... End of the year, suddenly everyone gets told performance is to be graded based on the number of calls and emails you answered and nothing else. Because performance had to be measured, and that was the only thing we measured, therefore it was the only thing that counted.

Sounds like 2 connected problems here basically. If the work is getting done, grand. But if it takes this person so much longer, then clearly there is a problem. It's not leading to a shortfall in work done but that's not the only way performance can be judged. (out of curiosity, are there any direct impacts; like, if it takes person F longer to do a piece of work than person A-E, does that mean slower delivery etc? Other people- customers, internal- kept waiting, kpis missed or worse perceptions of turnarounds?

It's a reasonable workplace concern in other ways- this person's likely to be more stressed and more likely to get demoralised. And it can have weird unintended effects- I had a sort of similiar situation with a colleague who always worked extra hours and refused to claim overtime, for much the same reason, she took longer to do the work. Good worker, skilled, but very very slow. But, problem was, she was in the office for 8, 9 hours a day, and over time people who were there for their contracted 7 started to get a bit looked down on. "Bridget (*) was here early" "Bridget never complains about working through lunch". It created a lever basically and our **** of a manager was on the end waggling it. Not her fault, exactly, but her action and our problem...

(* I haven't changed the name, **** it)

From an employers point of view, I would suggest that the get out clause here would be duty of care and the health and safety of my employee - if other people are working 7.5 hours a day and one employee is working 9.5 hours a day to complete his workload, then (regardless of any concerns I might have over his competence) I would have to be concerned for his wellbeing and work life balance, I might also be opening the company to potential claims for stress and victimisation if I was giving him an inappropriate workload that he could not handle, thus meaning he was staying an extra 2 hours per day to complete it.

You could easily argue that an employer would be failing in his duty of care if he did not intervene to prevent this employee working 9.5 hour days.

Sounds like a training requirement. If the employee is spending too long too often on completing tasks. I get that some queries take longer than others and I also get that they will average out.

The biggest issue here is that work is cherry picked by the operatives and not assigned by a supervisor/team leader. The cherry picking culture negates any average reasonable expectancy of time required by management. Probably also renders any issues they have with pace of work meaningless as they are unable to substantiate who does what if it's just reported as a simple unit of measure as item done. No need for it to be anything else either, work comes in, work gets done, so long as the historical data takes into account the proportion of long and short tasks and that applied to the time required, then you can achieve a realistic productivity target.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, but in general terms and as always, management have been promoted to levels of incompetence and has some sort of 'problem' with the employee but not savvy enough to deal with it appropriately.

Sounds like the employee's cards are marked, fighting incompetent management is a fools game.

Employees A, B, C, D and E do 15-20 items of reported work a day between the hours of 9 and 530
Employee F does the same, but between the hours of 10 and 730-8ish

Employee F has been given a written warning for this

To my mind if at the end of the week employee F has done the same amount of work as the others -and cost the same (hasn't claimed either overtime or time in lieu) then I can't see the problem other than maybe the employer worrying that they seem to be not paying overtime.

The only problem I can see is if the [i]pace[/i] of work of Employee F interrupts other people's workflow - their part of the job stays too long with them and others are having to wait on them. Or if they're breaking away from tasks and idling/gossiping/interupting others..

If the hero is the only person who can do these complicated 2 hour jobs then why would the company be looking to get rid?

Why doesn't he just take more 2 min jobs and when asked to do a 2 hour one because no one else can then explain that to the manager.

Document the work you do in a day or week with a timeline. If no one can do it quicker or better then what will firing you achieve? Unless you've been awkward and rubbed people up the wrong way in the past?

In general someone having to work more hours doing the same job as everyone else sticks out as a problem. Sometimes everyone else is right and you do have an issue? What's the old saying one persons calls you a something then it's them. Everyone does and it's you?

The employer does need to demonstrate a duty of care and that employee's are taking breaks during working hours.

Is it the same job, or is it that work is more complex than some others but assigned the same time or perhaps beyond his abilities so it's taking longer, but he doesn't want to admit it's a struggle and aware that the job needs to be done in the time so is working at his own cost.

It's a management problem if he's assigned things he's unable to do.

On the other hand, maybe it's just not a problem at all. He's happy spreading the load over a longer period, the work gets done.

He could even be taking the proper breaks every 40 minutes whereas most British workers tend to skip breaks entirely other than lunch and even then may work through lunch eating at the desk. Most places I've worked at I've found everyone is busy heads down at their desk and the only break is a quick grab of coffee and back to the desk, little chatting other than work related.

Offices are miserable places.

My office is great.. But I've also worked in bad ones.. It's all about the culture. We do a lot of eating lunch whilst working but that's mainly out of choice.. We'd rather surf the net at our desks whilst keeping an eye on things than sit in a cafe for an hour.