At what salary would you consider unpaid overtime acceptable?

[glowingstars]

I’ve recently noticed my colleagues (in office-based, annual salary type roles) are now being much stricter about leaving on time i.e. only working their contracted hours. And if they do end up working late in order to meet a particular deadline, they’re much more likely to ask for time off in lieu at a later point, and managers are agreeing to this.

Obviously this is no bad thing! But it’s a noticeable shift from 2-3 years ago when unpaid overtime was seen as an expected part of the role.

All of these people earn above average salaries, I would guess between 35k and 75k.

It got me thinking, is there a salary point at which you’d consider a) some or b) a lot of unpaid overtime is acceptable? So for example some unpaid overtime should be expected at 50k and a lot at 100k?

Obviously I know this won’t bear much resemblance to how it actually works in the real world (for example I know that teachers do a lot of unpaid overtime and don’t earn high salaries) but I just thought it would be interesting to hear thoughts!

I used to work my nuts off all hours. I think it is something you can do when younger without commitment. It also used to be worth doing. In the mid 2000's i was getting annual payrises of £12-15k every year. Hard work and ambition was rewarded and there were clear routes to promotion.

I rarely work over hours now. I'm not quite as ambitious now as have other committments and i feel underpaid (despite being on a salary that many would consider high). Cost of living crisis has made this even more prevalent and I am unwilling to work harder for less. Wfh has killed presenteeism thank god.

I havr just taken a new and better paid job. Depending on the structure i may work harder there if it seems yhat it would be advantageous for me to do so.

I guess the question is what is overtime. For a salaried role expectations on work may vary. A city lawyer probably shouldn’t think their role is 9-5 as that isn’t the culture and a teacher is likely going to be doing work from home in the evenings, however efficient they are in the daytime.
In my role I tend to claim overtime for things that required me to be in the office at a particular time outside my normal working time but for odd bits of work done from home, I just do it. I’m a mid level manager for a small charity so although my salary is low by most standards, it’s high-ish for the sector.

I’m in that bracket, higher end of junior ranks in an investment bank and yep, always happy to crank out the hours to meet a deadline.

However, these urgent deadlines happen 2-3 times per year- the rest of the time I can easily do my work in 8-9 hours a day and our culture is a flexible one e.g. need to leave early for an appointment, no one’s tracking whether I make the time back up.

i’m paid to do my role, rather than for fixed hours- it can be achieved without a fixed 9-5 framework. Essentially my managers expectations is that I attend all meetings within reasonable hours (so 8-6) but usually 10-4 and deliver work items outside of that. 95% of the time the work items can be achieved within the time around the meetings, whether I chose to work 8-4/10-6/8-6 with a long lunch, etc.

very happy with work life balance, salary and progression opportunities.

This is very true. It becomes easier as you become more qualified bizarrly as billable targets often drop to accomodate some of the softer expectations and you become more confident in your abilities and don't allow yourself to work for clients for free.

Solicitors often have 1600 billable hour targets annually which equates to 30 chargeable hours a week, 52 weeks a year with no allowance for holiday / sickness etc. obviously people have sickness, holiday etc as well as other non chargeable tasks so it is easy to see how you end up working very long hours as an expectation to meet that annual target.

Where i work currently is much more reasonable at 5 chargeable hours a day and sometimes i don't manage that. I don't care anymore as i'm still hugely profitable and they need me to supervise the more junior team members.

I regularly hear partners moaning that the associates coming through don't work as hard as we all did. Conversely however hourly rates are going through the roof so the businesses are still immensely profitable even if people miss their hours target.

In which case, this should be clearly set out in the contract eg for the teacher, '55hrs/wk with core hours of 8am - 5pm'. A figure needs to be put on it in the same way a figure is put on the salary, so the exchange of money and services is clear. Can you imagine doing this the other way around - saying it was 40hrs/wk but including a woolly clause that the employed can demand more pay depending on their domestic needs? It would be absurd! So why do we accept it? Obviously, employers don't want to be transparent as it is much easier to work out that the 'highly paid' role you've been offered is, in reality, paid at a comparatively low hourly rate...

Your mind would be blown at the concept of a discretionary bonus, which is how many highly-paid jobs incentivise the extra working. Literally no set calculation criteria and no obligation to pay it. But can be very chunky if the employer has had a good year and you’ve kept your nose clean.

@TerraNostra I've no doubt! The most my annual bonus can be is £1000 (and that's much higher than most other public sector organisations I've worked for) it's understandable in an environment where things like the market, commission, profit etc can result in high rewards end of the year and how the argument can be made that working extra eventually pays off because you are directly contributing to that success. When you work in non profits or the public sector it just doesn't work like that, so it is an ethical issue that people are paid for the hours they put in, and why flexi is such an important feature of places like the civil service who will really struggle to complete for workforce otherwise.

*compete

Very true. But I think that is why we have to. be careful about creating expectations that public sector working principles/practices should be applied to the private sector, which is what many here seem to be suggesting.

Eg “Employers should not be allowed to have contracts that say you must work the hours to get the job done”.

It’s entirely up to employer and employee to contract freely with one another (within basic health and safety and discrimination boundaries of course).

Personally, I think the attitude that its the employees who are doing exactly what they are being paid to do are somehow the ones taking the piss needs to be addressed.

The only ones taking the piss in these scenarios are employers.

This is abject nonsense, civil servants over a certain grade just work as is needed until the job is done.

Across any jobs with progression or any level of seniority, this is completely normal. Most contracts provide for it.

But surely that’s just a mindset thing? It was somewhat taken for granted pre-covid when far more people worked permanently from an office that there would be coffee breaks/chatting etc throughout the working day, it’s just par for the course. I still wouldn’t have expected to work over my hours to compensate for it.

This is abject nonsense, civil servants over a certain grade just work as is needed until the job is done.

At SCS level and above which accounts for a minority of the CS. Whilst I know some G7-6s don't participate in flexi, that's on them, every department I've worked in has allowed up to G6 to work flexi. I'm not that poster, but it's not abject nonsense.

^This

I'm a G7 and I don't work any unpaid hours. Nor do the vast majority of 7s I work with.

A lot of 6s perhaps do but not all and then SCS don't have flexi anyway and do need to just 'get the job done'.

As a result, I'm perfectly happy staying as a 7 because the extra pay wouldn't be worth the change to my work life balance and well-being.

Noone should be in the habit of working additional hours without reward. No matter what their pay

If the job can't be completed in the time allocated they need to hire more staff

@PotatoCatkin I'm looking towards my G6 now actually and it does worry me as I'm not ready to "go above and beyond" nor do I think I should at G6. My G6 doesn't track flexi, but I know she will go to appointments and school events etc with no guilt because she mostly works over. I like to track the hours to take extra leave though.

If I don't own the company, I want paying/TOIL for my overtime. I don't work for free.

I used to work in an independent shop and we were expected to do unpaid overtime (minimum wage. Think it was about £5.25 an hour). We had to do a whole day once a year for stock taking and the owner bought us a bunch of flowers instead of paying us as a thank you

DH is and engineer and earns about £70k. He gets paid overtime and wouldn't do it otherwise.

I don’t think it’s quite to clear cut when bonuses and pay rises are dependent on performance though. So you may do ‘unpaid’ overtime, but going the extra mile could earn you a £20k bonus. So it’s not actually ‘unpaid’.

I was on a minimum wage job at a school and was expected to stay 10 minutes after my contracted hours finished every day to clean one of the break areas, which could only be done at that specific time. When I tried to gently query it, I was met with looks of surprise. How dare I suggest maybe extending my contracted hours to cover that extra time.

I have worked for places previously and willingly given my spare time or done overtime with no notice because I had built that relationship with the employer. One with mutual respect, where everyone mucks in to support one another and any of that time is compensated in some way, beneficial for both parties and most importantly appreciated, not expected.

I soon left and now work from home for less hours and more money.

Other than pretty menial jobs when I was a student, I don’t think I’ve ever had a job that had a concept of “overtime”. You worked until what you wanted or needed to complete for that day was done - it might mean leaving at 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm etc. I definitely took the flexibility both ways though - so if trains were late or something came up I’d happily come in late or leave mid afternoon every now and then. People manage their own time and workload.
DH is the same - he might leave work early or very late, but no one monitor your hours.

You’re missing the point- when pay is not directly related to hours, there is no such thing as “additional hours”. You get paid salary and possibly bonus for agreeing to work on those terms, so there is no work “without reward”. If you don’t think the reward is enough, you negotiate a pay rise or move on.

Where I work jobs are ‘banded’ and at certain level it is made clear occasional, unpaid overtime is expected

I don’t agree, why you’re junior you do it for the experience and exposure, not a short term bonus. There will have been several years of my early career where I was working for below min wage. If you don’t do it you don’t succeed long term.