Colleague deliberately staying late at work just to accrue TOIL?

Yes!

In my experience it isn’t just 15 mins at the end of the day it’s usually TOIL claimed in lunch hours that add the time on as well. It’s poor management to have team members working through lunches and regularly staying late it would suggest a staffing issue or ineffective processes. When I put the new TOIL policy in place I explained to everyone that it wasn’t to punish them, their work life balance was important and TOIL needed to be taken soon after it was worked. If people were staying late I needed to know so I could fix it - staggered shift starts and finishes for instance. TOIL can be a destructive hidden cost it’s very hard to count the effects of it like you would be able to with just monitoring overtime payments. The person who was abusing the system was getting other people in on extra hours to cover when they were on their never ending TOIL days so the business was paying someone to cover their time off that was completely unnecessary in the first place.

Personally, I'd keep my nose out.
Sounds like you're just pissed that she's work out a way to successfully navigate the system.
As they say, don't hate the player, hate the game.

People shouldn't be getting time off in lieu unless they've agreed with their managers that they need to work after hours or on their usual non-work days. It might be worth requesting a clear statement to everyone on the rules for TOiL, without mentioning anyone's name.

So what happened after that?
An excellent example of bad management - two people in a team, one claiming vast amounts of TOIL, one not, someone's clearly taking the piss.
BTW she didn't need to speak to management. There was nothing stopping you from going to them, saying that you covered her far more than she did for you, and that you wouldn't be doing it anymore.
If you did her work on occasion surely you're very well placed to judge whether the workload was truly excessive.

Sorry, I probably wasn't very clear about that!

We had a system whereby we all worked for different teams under a bigger umbrella department (think HR but with different divisions). We all had to cover one colleague for the purposes of sickness/AL/TOIL. I covered her workload and she covered mine.

It was designed so that - broadly speaking - we all provided/received around the same level of cover each for Leave, over the year.

Her workload, like all of ours, was busy but not excessively so & manageable within 9-5 hours. However, she was accruing a huge amount of TOIL which, on top of her AL, meant that my workload was effectively doubled providing cover for her, far more often than other people.

I couldn't understand why, as she wasn't doing anything markedly different to the rest of us and her workload wasn't any bigger.

Our manager (who managed the umbrella section but not the individual workstreams) constantly told me how my colleague was 'snowed under/collapsing under the weight/on their knees' etc and so was forced to come in at 7am just to manage it all.

It was impacting on me quite a bit so I spoke to my colleague and suggested she speak to management about her excessive workload that was impacting on us both. I'd also noticed that the reason management thought she was snowed under was that she walked around from office to office telling everyone that she was snowed under.

That was when she explained that she didn't need to come in at 7am, she just did it so that she could get a lift in to work with her husband. She continued finishing work at 5 as that was when he picked her up. She then just blithely claimed for the extra 2 hours a day.

None of it needed to happen as she had her own car and parking space so could have started at 9am. She just didn't want to (for whatever reason).

Has anyone done the maths yet? Staying 15 minutes extra day, takes 6 months to build up an week of holiday. Paid for holiday, while others do your work.

Yes, i'd be either pissed off, or if management allow it, do it myself!

Yep, so again, the issue is the company policy and a lack of effective management - because if they were keeping an eye on people's hours and the amount of TOIL accrued, this wouldn't be able to happen in the first place.

I've personally never known any company not to have policies around TOIL - when you can take, how much you can accrue in a month etc. - some are more flexible than others, but there's never been a company who's just said you can do whatever hours you like and accrue days and days of TOIL to take in a massive chunk of time.

If OP does work somewhere like that, then it sounds like her colleague is just taking advantage of the system and not doing anything wrong (in terms of going against policy) - it's just OP doesn't feel comfortable doing the same herself for whatever reason.

But the issue here is that the company currently doesn't have a policy against it. So what exactly are they supposed to say? As @DarkForces pointed out the system is too flexible

They could instigate a policy against TOIL without pre-approval, or needing a certain amount of time worked over to qualify, but as you can see in the comments, so many people consider that 'rigid'.

If pisstaker hadn't taken the piss nothing would have to change, but they did so , it must. Maybe the rigid complaining people are actually the pisstakers themselves. And the good employees won't mind as they actually were not piss-taking anyway.

I think you may need to change your username 😉😆

We don't have TOIL.

But we have a great manager who accepts that some days you're working 15 minutes over your time because the job needs finishing and is happy for you to aim to leave 15 minutes earlier another day or come in 15 minutes later (usually same week but sometimes week after) to make sure over the month you work your weekly hours.

I've also sometimes got 15 minutes of my 30 minute unpaid lunch and have left 15 minutes early. They can't make you take and you can't request to take lunch breaks at end of shift by my job allows for me to leave early for this as it doesn't effect operations.

This

Only a bad manager will make changes that negatively impact 10 good employees because one employee happens to be taking the piss.

If someone is taking the piss, you manage them appropriately - if you do it properly, record it the right way and in accordance with HR and your disciplinary policies, it's not really relevant whether the employee in question finds it "unfair".

It's only 'taking the piss' if it directly affects other people - like your teammates workloads.

All the other stuff you mentioned doesn't harm anybody, in fact it helps the company by having happy, productive staff. And chatting with colleagues builds relationships. Especially in thinking roles. I always find the solution to a problem comes more easily when I've had a good break. And I can get things done much more quickly because I know the right people, thanks to all my time erm 'wasted' having a chat.

As @daisychain01 pointed out the bigger issue is, a lot of Flexi etc realises on goodwill/give and take. When people take the piss , managers bring in rigidity as a result. Depending on the situation trying to 'manage' a single person results in claims of unfair treatment etc with these kinds of people, so it's easier to have a blanket policy.

If she can do it and get away it, I’d start doing the same thing. Offer to stay late to ‘help’ with whatever work she’s pretending to do 😂you’ll have a nice week off accrued by January. If your manager’s don’t seem to care/notice, then play that to your advantage.

But regardless of all that, it's still the job of the manager/employer to know what their employees are doing and to pick up on whether these "micro actions" amount to piss-taking or an appropriate use of the flex-time policy in place.

If an employee is constantly taking the piss (and this lady may well be) then it's a poor manager who hasn't realised and who has allowed it to happen at the expense of their other employees.

That being said, I do find MN to be rather rigid when it comes to work ethics and "moral compasses" - in real life, I know very few people who don't occasionally take the piss at work, whether it's having a longer lunch on a Friday, or faffing around having a 20 minute chat by the kettle, or just taking the long walk back from the post office to spend more time out in the sunshine on a nice day.

Firstly I don't agree that the system "allows" what the colleague has admitted to doing. What's more they're pretty clueless blabbing about it with a colleague.

secondly, it entirely depends on the Policy wording relating to flexi time / TOIL and whether there is anything mentioned about breach of policy and what constitutes said breach. Probably something like "if the employee is found to be inaccurately stating their hours worked, they may have the right to TOIL withdrawn temporarily, indefinitely or permanently depending on the severity

thirdly, the OP has heard the colleague describing what they do intentionally, and the OPs instinctively know that doesn't sound right.

in the OPs shoes I would talk informally to their manager, who will then decide whether they choose to take further action. That's their choice, not mine.

of course the other colleagues don't need to lose their right to TOIL, they've done nothing wrong. The colleague who chooses to play the system stands the risk of having Flexi withdrawn, Its like sick leave, there are patterns and trends that can be detected, so in the case of this colleague if they are logging 15 or 20 min additional time on a regular basis, it isn't exactly difficult to detect a trend.

Also it depends on the nature of work IMO.
In mine each role has two patterns. Ordinary 9-5 don't get TOIL. We just need to get things done in the time available. On busy periods we work loads and when it's quiet (summer/Christmas) we can get away with not doing much.

We are very output driven.... If someone does personal errands etc during work time but can accomplish the same output , good for them. If not, they'll get pulled up on output never time.

On-call has TOIL where every minute is accounted for but we have full incident and audit logs, so people can't make up reasons for TOIL.

It really depends on the nature of the work. TOIL IMO promotes piss-taking and the creation of unnecessary 'work' in complex output driven roles. It's perfectly acceptable for 'presence'/'output per unit time' roles like retail

As her manager, you have every right to call her out on this bad behaviour. Wait … you aren’t? Are you working extra hours because of her? Do you have equity in the company?

If not, none of your business. Snitches get stitches.

Common practice when I worked in a local authority. One of the worst was an early bird martyr that would come in at 7.30am when no one else did, pay her bills, have her breakfast and then read the paper and left early every Friday to do her other job.
Others would eat lunch at their desk, not answer calls during that period then claim they’d not had a lunch break.
Wouldn’t particularly bother me, but some of the worst offenders where absolutely pre occupied with what others where claiming and doing when they where in work. Absolutely toxic place and their behaviour created a horrible presenteeism work ethic, where a lot of staff weren't actually doing anything, but sitting in an office trying to accrue toil.
Not a fault of flexi time, just piss poor managers that couldn’t manage

What do you foresee ops manager doing given that the colleague isn't doing anything that's wrong or would justify a discipline?

The only way this gets redeemed is that the team loses their option to work flexibly and everyone needs to be micromanaged. Why should the rest of the team suffer because op has a bee in her bonnet over someone who's essentially playing the system in a way that the system allows.

I think your issue is the cover you are having to do when colleagues aren’t there due to sickness and time in leiu. That’s why you’re irritated and that’s what you can go to your manager about. How can your colleagues nor working be managed better do you are not carrying the load.

The system isn't "set up" for staff to deliberately take 15 mins here and 15 mins there, going on errands when they should be working and makes appointments on workdays (not quite sure what that actually means, but anyway).

These are micro-actions that together add up to petty theft from the employer, playing the system, particularly adding on time in tiny amounts to eventually gain a day off.

the reason the OP doesn't do it is because they have what's called a moral compass and doesn't cheat the system that is put in place to ensure that work is carried out and time worked over and above the contractual hours of employees is honoured by giving that time back, not deliberately (metaphorically) shuffling paper around the desk, doing a job a bit slower to then be able to log and claim back the time.

Flexi time is very much a system that relies on trust, but it's so prone to being fiddled. Like taking a couple of first class stamps from the petty cash tin because nobody knows and the person won't get found out because nobody has the time or visibility to check.

Well, two things can be true at the same time. It can be the employer's fault. But the OP is also allowed to be annoyed at it affecting her, so she can complain. Personally I think she and everyone else should start doing the same, and dump colleague in it.

@CinnamonJellyBeans is right in that so many people on here have a 'turn a blind eye' attitude... Maybe they're piss takers too.

This. I agree the “running personal errands” in work time is the bigger pisstake, especially when only working part-time. It doesn’t sound like she’s making up the time that she’s taking off to do the errands.