If you start work at 9am, should you arrive at 8.50am?

[pontipinemum]

I watched a video recently where people were complaining that if they started work at 9am, 3pm what ever it might be that they will turn up on the dot if their boss expects them to be there earlier they need to pay them more.

I do agree, as apparently some places ask you to arrive 15mins early for a seamless cross over. Which could actually work out at nearly 60 unpaid hours over the year.

I have been bang on time arriving to work and would not consider myself late but I had 1 boss who would consider that late and she made sure I knew.

But if you want to get in, get a cuppa tea, say hi to people you aren't arriving 10 mins early to actually start work. I have worked with people who come in at 9am on the dot, then go to the kitchen for 20 mins before even turning on the computer.

I wfh now so I do tend to start a bit earlier then my official start time

Ooh well when I worked for one place we had to get to changed before going up to the work floor. So we’d change and then clock in on time then walk up…. So we were there earlier to change, clocked in dead in the dot then walked up and started work slightly after the start time.

however I’ve never yet had a job that I leave dead on time so I think employers should take that into account when moaning!! I also used to often have lunch sat at my computer responding to emails! So they would effectively get less work out of me if they started whining about me arriving at 9 and being ready to start at 9.05!…. Because if they were going to be that pedantic I’d be setting an alarm and leaving on the dot and also putting my feet up during my lunch!

I worked in a Nursing home where it was required that we took Covid tests each day but at work not beforehand at home. It meant that we had to take the test over 15 minutes earlier than shift to wait for the result. They also had electronic pads for notes which you had to log into ready for the shift which were temperamental and could take a good 10-20 mins to connect. We also had to clock in unpaid 15 minutes before shift for handover. We were told that if you clocked in any more than 2 minutes later than 15 minutes BEFORE your start time (so actually 13 minutes early) your wage was docked 15 full minutes.

We'd come in, take the LFT test and leave it in the side, begin the log in process and go through for handover. The manager got mad when we couldn't say whether we had a negative result yet and he didn't want people in handover without a clear test. And he was almost shouty angry when he found us after official start time standing in the office still trying to log in the data pads too. His solution was to tell us that it was to be done before work and if it took longer than we should be in earlier.

That was the day most people got the hump and started doing tests at home and bringing a photo in and working without data pads until they'd logged in and synced up. When asked about the pads or why there was no client's data entered in the system for the first 20-30 mins of morning shift we shrugged and said the pads aren't logging in. We also took our 15 minutes back as an extra break whether he liked it or not.

I'll be nice and come in a tiny bit early to make the working process smoother but do not flipping get mad at me and demand I come in unpaid. That's when I push back and encourage colleagues to push with me.

Please report this to HMRC. What they are doing is not legal.
There are quite a few care institutions on this list:

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/national-minimum-wage-enquiries-and-complaints

I see this so often in my current role (schools) where a Headteacher will start dictating start and finish times of after school club staff and what type of club it is and what day they are, to the point where the TAs gets sick of it and says they’re stopping doing it.
Turns out they’re doing the clubs completely out of the goodness of their heart. School now has no clubs.

Also, an admin lady needed to finish an inset (teacher training) day early for childcare reasons. Headteacher demanded she make up the time in the week. Poor admin lady. Turns out inset days weren’t even in her contract and she’d been doing them for 9 years. Because the Head was snotty with her she requested all the overtime be paid - she got over £5k.

Some people shouldn’t manage other people.

Would have been interesting to hear that conversation.

"I will be leaving the INSET day early this afternoon"

"Well then, I expect you to make up the time later on during the week"

"You do realise that INSET days aren't in my contract and this is unpaid overtime"

I completely agree. 60 hrs of unpaid work a year? Exactly. What about school? Should students aim to arrive 10 minutes early to mentally acclimatise?

Waiting for a computer to log on is clearly a work task to be done in work hours.

Why pen in hand? Relatively few jobs involve handwriting.

I work in an occupation where people rarely leave work on time - it's not the sort of work that you can really abandon half way through a task and take up again the next day. The quid pro quo for that is reasonable relaxation around starting times and lunch breaks.

I remember once working somewhere where one of the managers suddenly decided to try enforcing the rule that people had to turn up early to be ready for work at 9 a.m. on the dot. It was completely counter-productive as everyone started working to rule and walking out at 5pm on the dot and productivity fell noticeably. That manager didn't last.