Colleague deliberately staying late at work just to accrue TOIL?

But op does the same job so has a good understanding plus the colleague has admitted making appointments on work days. Some people are just piss takers

Clever lady! Good for her. Work to live, not live to work and all that.

I never understand all the "mind your own business" posts. I get incredibly fucked off about colleagues who are paid the same as me but piss about all day and don't do the work that they should.
They come in late, leave early and have longer breaks. Don't wear the correct uniform. It's very poor management which is one of the reasons I am retiring in two weeks.

In many workplaces work requirements and workloads are easily understood by and visible to more than individuals and their manager. It’s likely that OP has a good understanding of her colleagues’ work.

I previously worked at an organisation that had a reasonable TOIL policy. For example, you could get quite a generous amount of time back if you’d travelled and stayed away, or had to work a lot of overtime. All fine in my team and people appreciated it.

It then turned out that someone in another team had been accumulating TOIL in the manner that you describe. Lo and behold there was a crackdown, the whole system was overhauled and almost nobody could claim TOIL anymore…

if she’s busy working through the day and is busy working essential tasks in the additional 15 minutes, then what she says about gathering toil is irrelevant

Only her and her manager will have a clear idea of work backlog, tasks, timings. This is not something you can accurately judge.

Taking appointments in a mix of work and personal time is acceptable, often there is very little flexibility about when GPs Dentists Consultants can see people. Appointments are like gold dust.

If it doesn't affect you directly (eg you missing time off to cover for her) then I'd stay out of it personally. It's your manager's job, not yours.
I wouldn't be surprised if her toil is refused at some point. Wherever I've worked, it's ONLY agreed OT that receives toil. Probably worth a look at your employee handbook to check procedures, but again, that's your manager's job.
Of course, if its making your job difficult then yes, you should raise it with your manager, but focus on YOUR needs and difficulties. Let your manager work out the "why".

That's so weird, Toil is only really applicable in our work if you're on company business for hours at a time, like a half day conference on a Saturday that you take instead on the Monday etc.

The “how does it affect you” brigade don’t seem to get that it does affect you as presumably you have to pick up the slack when she’s off? i probably wouldn’t talk to your manager however why don’t you start doing the same? i’m sure if everyone suddenly starts having loads of TOIL time off they will start to get stricter about how it’s managed!

They are not petty rules. TOIL accrual is rife with abuse and pisstake in every workplace that allows it, and needs fair but firm management like this. @TheLever , I salute you 👏.

Where I work this would suggest a poor line manager and/or TOIL policy.

There is no business need to work longer than standard hours, so as a manager I only agree toil by exception (eg unexpected periods of high workload, specific events involving travel / extra hours)

If her absences affect you directly I would probably raise it once with the team leader and suggest that building up that much TOIL doesn’t seem consistent with business needs and ask them to apply a consistent approach.

"She also arranges appointments and runs regular "errands" on her working days (so leaves the workplace for up to an hour) when she has every Monday and Tuesday off."

This is none of your business. If other people have this flexibility on their working days (whether they use it or not), she is also entitled to it on her working days. Most people don't work part-time just for fun, they have other commitments during their "days off".

Well clearly you are working then. This is a different situation

10-15 minutes daily would be an hour a week approximately. Assuming she's contracted 37 hours a week or thereabouts, assuming she's doing it every day, that's around 9 months worth.

But I'd have thought anything under 15minutes or so wouldn't be counted anyway. I mean I can easily leave 15 minutes later because of just plain rafting at the end of the day. You know, remember there's half a sandwich in the fridge to take home, must just deliver the book I borrowed back type thing, so I'd look at that as being normal working. Never occurred to me to start counting it. I just see it as building a favour for the time I need to leave slightly early, or the traffic is bad so I'm late.

Rife in the civil service with people starting at 7am from home with no meetings or little work till 9am. Not much you can do about it OP, can understand how frustrating it is.

Presumably you can demonstrate why though (incident, releases etc).

If someone on your team was completing the same number of tickets as everyone else but was apparently working hours extra a week to complete then you would question it.

It would bother me if the time selected for time off was as inconvenient to the rest of the team as possible. Not your case, an example would be someone in retail having time off in December.

We are small and there is no need to work extra hours. We close at a certain time, it’s not the same environment. I assume you know workplaces are different. I don’t run an IT department. And as you say, I would probably pay you to work that time if it would impact the business to have the time off. If I ask people to work extra I pay them for doing so.

TOIL in some business is not good business sense. You end up having to pay someone to work overtime to cover the person who is off using TOIL. I either pay them or encourage them to go home at home time.

When I worked for the NHS this was rife amongst admin staff.

It’s a pisstake. Flexi time and TOIL are meant to be “for the needs of the organisation”, not for Janet to stay late for 15 minutes every day browsing the internet because she fancies building up enough time for a few days off at the end of the month.

Good luck with your line manager though, if it’s anything like the NHS managers just don’t manage staff and they’ll do fuck all.

I can build up 20+ hours in one weekend!

There's no way your petty rules would work in an IT department.

Stay out of it. I agree that it’s annoying and I would feel exactly the same as you, but it’s not your job to police her and you don’t need to waste your emotional energy on it.

There’s also a risk that anything you try to do will backfire or create an enemy of her.

Try to let it go and just focus on your own job (I know that that’s easier said than done).

I work in IT and build up huge amounts of TOIL when working late to implement out-of-hours changes.

I maintain a spreadsheet with all the times, dates and change references.

I took three weeks of TOIL this summer and have a fortnight scheduled for Christmas.

If the company isn't happy with that, I can either stop doing unpaid out-of-hours changes or they can put their hand in their pocket and pay me overtime. 🤷‍♀️

With regards to the OP, I've worked previously with people that took the piss with sickness. There were women that clearly coordinated with each other to have a weekly day at the beach during the summer - shamelessly coming back to the office with fresh sunburn and suntans! Them being off work, resulted in my workload rising massively, so I can see why OP might get pissed off.

Why isn't OP's manager tracking this TOIL to ascertain why it is required? If it can't be justified, then surely it can't be claimed back - what's to stop her colleague sitting there until midnight twice a week to build up the 'holiday' entitlement?

10-15 minutes a day? It must have taken years to build up a week of TOIL