Colleague deliberately staying late at work just to accrue TOIL?

You know what? You are absolutely right.

We have one of these piss takers at work as well. Weeks worth of TOIL accrued - no idea how. That part of the business run sub optimally because of it and the rest of us pissed off and resentful. They also switch off their phone at 5pm sharp despite their part of the business means that they should be contactable in an emergency. Works from home all the time when their job really requires them on site. Our manager just won't deal with them because the person is bolshie and he is really weak.

It sounds a bit fraudulent because she's using her work time to do other things then accruing additional hours when those additional hours she could be using for her own use. Although it is only time it's still taking back from the business something she shouldn't.

The point is that if the employer is petty enough to make you clock in and out then employees will be petty enough to use this to their advantage e.g. having breakfast at work, staying longer chatting, etc. It's a normal consequence of such a system.

I could have written your post OP.
I am In exactly the same circumstances.
I have been to managers about it ( we’ve had several over the years). They all said they can’t do anything about it and it helps the person ‘cope’ with their workload. They do t want to upset or challenge her about it.
One manager even came to see me and said ‘we need to talk about Janet. They’ve built up a weeks worth of TIL’
I said well you’ve let her! So should be saying that to her!. Manager let her have half the week in the end so as no to upset her.
She then made us both do a timetable of what we do in our working day with a view to saying to Janet where she could have better time management and not need to stay late. Great. 2 months later manager was promoted so back to square one with a new manager.

I don't allow TOIL to be accrued by my team without business reasons and pre agreed.

We have flexitime in terms of being able to flex your start and end times, work a short day then a long day to accommodate your life, but not to work longer and take a day off.

It only took me asking the first TOIL accruer what they'd done in that time and no one has asked for a flexi day since. I'm in the civil service and it's rife, people working slowly or just "being there" and wanting that time back. It's theft and we've fired people for it before.

What you could do is ask your manager for clarification of the TOIL arrangements rather than dobbing your colleague in, and then ask them to send a reminder to all.

I'm gob-smacked that you're gob-smacked by this!
Just managing your toil and not having to account for it has been the case in every place I've worked since my first full time job in 2009 - only I actually can manage to open my mind and understand that other places might do things differently.

"Otherwise everyone could rack up 15 minutes a night by stopping for a chat, washing their coffee mug and retrieving leftover lunch from the fridge!"

Well, yeah, but they could also 'waste' 15 mins at any point in the day doing this if they didn't have TOIL. I'm going to completely blow your mind and tell you that both in my current job and my previous one we could accrue toil even when WFH and travelling for work - so we could say we were working for 30 mins when we were actually cooking tea or watching TV, or saying a journey took 3 hrs because of traffic when it actually only took 2.5, and nobody would know, check or care.

That's why it's for the organisation to put in processes to limit potential piss-taking - as other posters have said, being able to accrue a whole week is very unusual, there are usually limitations to the amount you can accrue before carrying it over.
But the whole point of TOIL/flexitime is that they are benefits - the idea is that the organisation trusts staff to use it responsibly, and for the few that don't it is for their manager to identify and... you know, manage.

It's really not hard to see when the odd person is taking the piss. Managers don't have to scrutinise timesheets. If someone like OP's colleague adds an extra hour every day, and ends up with 20 hours toil that month, it should be obvious for the manager to say 'well your output should be approximately 15% higher than usual, if it isn't, where did the time come from? What were you doing?'

However for the majority of people it doesn't work like that. They have a two hour lunch break to go to an appointment then stay an extra hour late = overall the same amount of hours and the same amount of work done.

Or they stay after work to help with a conference one evening - only takes a second for manager to look over the time sheet and see 'X accrued 4 hours toil on one day - oh yeah that was when she stayed late to work for the conference so worked 12 hrs rather than 8.' Or 'I see everyone on my team accrued 1-2 hours toil a day for the last 2 weeks at the end of march when everyone worked like mad to finalise the year end figures, completely expected.'

I find it interesting that so many posters are happy to call people scammers, grifters and piss-takers, but don't understand that the employer is at fault for allowing it all to be happen in the first place.

Every bit her business. If there are cheeky grifters, it impacts everyone. We had a grifter like that in the company before I went solo, freelance - we were all women, apart from our boss, we all pulled our weight - but her? Oh, Toby has a concert, I have to be there, oh, Lucy has a play, I have to attend, and we had to pick up all the stuff after her. This is not on.

Exactly.

Too many people allow employers to take the piss quite happily, but take offence when employees don't allow it to happen (and even use the system to their advantage).

Let's be honest, employers don't actually care about us and we're all very, very easily replaced. You won't win a medal for using annual leave for all your appointments instead of fitting them in on a Tuesday afternoon.

I hate the view that everyone 'owes' their employer the first 30m or do if extra work unpaid. It adds up to an extra 3 weeks a year. I have no problem stating late when needed, but either I want paying, flexi/toil or informal reciprocity.

I've worked in too many places in the past where flexibility only is to the employer, they pay as little as can be for away with and large amounts of unpaid overtime (ie double digits a week) are expected but they quibble if you will be 15m late because of the drs.

MYOB

I had a colleague who use to use their accrued TOIL to take a whole week off and it used to annoy me as it would have an impact on the rest of the team when someone was off for a week or more. We already had a very generous amount of annual leave and part-time staff can often use their bank holidays added up to get another week off. I've always used TOIL for one day at a time only, or for a half day. I think I've worked at places in the past where that was the policy.

Appointments is a bit of a tricky one. I work a 4 day week and have the flexibility to move around my hours or days of work so I always attend appointments in my own time. Full-time staff attend appointments in work time - time they are being paid for - which they don't have to make up. So, I can see why some people would make appointments during work time. I don't have so many GP or dental appointments that it bothers me so prefer a give and take approach with regards to work and know that I can work flexibly to benefit me, so should work flexibly to benefit the rest of the workplace.

It certainly sounds like your colleague is taking advantage if there's not actually extra work that needs doing. If there is consistently extra work to complete and they have the ability to stay late, They'd be better off negotiating a contract with more hours to be worked over 3 days.

I worked in a place once where 1 minute of TOIL would count. To get in and out of the building you just a swipe card, which will be linked to your flexi account. So if you left the building 10 minutes early it would go down by 10 minutes, the opposite if you left 15 minutes late. Adjustments could be made manually if you were going to a external work meeting, or I guess if you knew you bumped into a friend on the way out and spent 15 minutes chatting. But in the absence of adjustments it would just tick along. I rarely stayed particularly late, but wouldn't clockwatch, would finish tasks etc, and the tiny bits really added up. I'd be regularly reminded take my toil.

If there genuinely isn't enough work, then it just sounds like she's taking advantage a bit though.

Maybe she doesn't want to go into detail about her appointments - lots of clinics only run on certain days so you don't necessarily have a choice.

Or maybe she does take the piss and book them on work days - in which case that's (again) something management needs to address.

I never said there was

She's already told op that she deliberately makes appts for working days.
Yes I agree it's a management issue.

Yes, so there's no problem is there?

"I asked Mrs X why she was coming in so early and why she didn't speak to management about the excessive workload she obviously had; she admitted that her husband left for work very early and rather than get the bus, she used to get a lift with him - getting dropped off at 7am. Nothing to do with workload (although she was busy) but no-one in management had ever bothered asking why she came in so early - they took everything she said at face value."

But what was the actual problem here? She was coming in at 7 and not leaving early, was busy during that time and therefore accrued TOIL.
If she was deliberately pretending to work during a graveyard time before her actual working hours, that would be a different matter.

That's my point, though.

If the system is set up to allow what OP's colleague is doing, then she's not scamming anyone or taking the piss, she's just doing what she's allowed to do - and OP could do the same if she wanted.

OP says herself it's her own conscience that stops her doing the same, rather than it being something that's technically not allowed.

Well, I don't know. If you have such a flexitime system, you basically have to be present at core hours and otherwise can do what you want within that system. Doesn't sound like the pp is breaking those rules, just maybe the spirit of them.

It is your business.

She made it your business by telling you in her own words that she is knowingly cheating the system.

in our organisation that behaviour is gross misconduct and the response is dismissal for breaching HR Policy relating to Flexi leave.

you are absolutely within your rights to report her to her manager. Say what I've said above, that she has admitted it to you of her own volition, you didn't force her to say anything. They can then take appropriate action. It would be very poor management to know this and not act on it.

This used to be a huge problem in one team I worked for in the NHS. To be fair, the NHS as an employer has been dependent on goodwill from all staff for years now, but loads of us in admin regularly worked an additional 30 mins a day - in an outpatient setting, you can't lock up and leave if there are still patients there or reports that have to go off urgently, or a patient on the phone.

Loads of people had lists of 15 mins here, 30 minutes there, and it was so frequent that people were accruing loads of extra time.

However, eventually it became so problematic that the manager (who wasn't great to be fair) stopped TOIL unless it was agreed in advance.

Paying overtime wasn't an option so she asked everyone do a time and motion study for two weeks to get down on paper how efficiently people were managing their workloads, where the stress points were and whether there were specific times that were more likely to accrue overtime. She then introduced amended start and end times for the day (like a mini shift system) to cover the hours where people were accruing all the TOIL.

It sorted the problem and also put a stop to the deliberate misuse of the system.

In another department I worked in, a colleague had accrued a huge amount of TOIL - constantly 'rushed off her feet'. The manager was telling me 'Oh, Mrs X is here at 7am every day just to keep on top of things!'.

I asked Mrs X why she was coming in so early and why she didn't speak to management about the excessive workload she obviously had; she admitted that her husband left for work very early and rather than get the bus, she used to get a lift with him - getting dropped off at 7am. Nothing to do with workload (although she was busy) but no-one in management had ever bothered asking why she came in so early - they took everything she said at face value.

Are you all allowed to run errands in work time, work 15 minutes late, then accrue that time?

I would wait until it actually impacted me (eg when she's off) then I would raise it as an issue. Alternatively I would tackle it directly with her.

How is it "scamming your employer" if it's something you're allowed to do under their own policies?

If an employer can't be bothered to monitor someone's hours and how much TOIL they're taking - that's a management issue, not an employee one.

People can only take the piss where the system allows them to.