to speak to my boss about colleague abusing flexible working

[hatgirl]

argh... let me say first of all I am not a clock watcher, I work in a stressful job and people frequently work over their hours and there is a general agreement that a few minutes here or there or a slightly longer lunch occasionally is more than deserved pay back. We are a good, supportive team and there is pretty much no bad feeling other than the occasional niggle which is always resolved openly and professionally (yey for us!)

Essentially we are very much trusted by our manger who knows how hard we all work and various members of staff have different flexible working patterns in place which works well.

Myself and another colleague have recently started working 'compressed hours' essentially we work 10 days worth of hours over 9 days and have the 10th day off. For this to work we take shorter lunches, and work an extra bit at the start and end of each day... or at least I do, my colleague is working normal hours but still taking the 10th day off. At first I thought she didn't understand the system (I requested it first and she piggybacked her own request on the back of mine) so had a chat with her about it explaining the system again.

A few months down the line and she is still basically taking the piss. She is close to retirement and was recently refused voluntary redundancy - she is annoyed with the organisation and when I have reiterated to her the importance of us doing 10 days over 9 (again this is not done in a horrible way just in a general discussion way)she basically laughs at me and says that the organisation owes her after years of service (which is probably a fair point but doesn't change the fact that she is getting a paid day off every 2 weeks).

I'm now in two minds whether or not to now go to my manager as I am getting nowhere discussing with her directly, or if I should just wind my neck in and let her get on with it after all it doesn't exactly directly impact on me.

My boss will come down on her like a ton of bricks as him trusting us not to abuse flexible working is a big thing when he could be a complete arse about it if he wanted to be and he will be really disappointed that she is doing this. I actually really like my colleague and don't want her to get into trouble but a) her wages come out of public money

and

b) I am absolutely shattered doing the longer days (a lot of this is also because I have a longish commute - she lives 10 mins away from work) but value the day off in return and don't feel it fair she is getting the same benefit without putting in the work - also other colleagues not formally doing compressed hours are working the same hours if not more than her and are not getting a day off at all!

As much as I like her I just think her attitude on this issue stinks.

Would I be unreasonable in having a word with my boss and creating bad feeling in the team?

Or am I being petty and it is my bosses job to notice this and sort it out? Its literally as little as coming in 10 mins late, taking an extra 30 mins for lunch and leaving 10 mins early but it all adds up to the extra 50 minutes we work extra each day to get the 10th day off.

awful lot of 'don't sneak' here; people need to get out of the playground. She is a fraudster and a thief and it is NOT petty to be annoyed.

you have a crap manager as he has not noticed. (most managers are crap, that's why they are managers...) Eventually he will notice, and you will lose the perk too.

tell her that you have a problem with doing her job for her helping when she is stealing hours. That then puts the ball in her court.

To be clear, the op isn't complaining that this woman comes back from lunch 20 minutes early, she is fraudulently taking 24 extra days holiday every year?? Why wouldn't this piss all of you off??

Exactly so. I'm astonished at some of the resposes saying it's no big deal.

OP how about suggesting a booking in and out system to your manager ( maybe as part of your appraisal ?). We used to have this where I worked for those who used flexi-time. You simply sent an email to your manager on arrival with the word "IN" in the subject line and the "OUT" when you left. The manager could see from the time on the emails that you had been there when you were supposed to be.
It's more difficult to monitor the lunchtime situation as presumably she could send the IN/OUT emails at say 12pm and then 12.30pm when in actual fact she is taking lunch between 12.30pm and 1.30pm ( depends whether you have a fixed or flexible lunchtime).
This worked really well at my office and revealed that one person was not only abusing the flexi system but was also claiming overtime payments for hours every evening when they said they were in the office, but in fact they were leaving only about 15 mins after everyone else and not 3/4 hours as they had put on their timesheets.

Corygal you weren't in that position, as you WERE pulling your weight. This lady isn't. She's nicking 24 days leave a year and impacting on her colleague's work and peace of mind.

OP here's a whistle. Suggest you blow on it.

And if you need a reason to suggest it just say that you have heard on the grapevine that some staff are uncomfortable that you and your colleague have these compressed hours and that it could be open to abuse. You want to assuage any fears up front so suggest a booking in/out system for you both will act as "proof" in case of queries by his own management or HR further down the line. Sell it to him that he's covering his own position in case anyone ever questions his decision to allow the compressed hours system in future.

Oh no, I don't work for the public sector. I work in a highly completive, high remuneration private sector.

Where the work delivered is key, not face time.

I couldn't give a shit about petty jealousies or whining that 'she has it better than me'. If the work is done to satisfaction, then she could spend an hour on lunch for all I care.

This is the problem with petty people. They jealously notice the unimportant stuff. OP mentioned the woman is very good at her actual job, which I assume is client facing. If she makes rhe customers happy even though she comes in 10 minutes late, what is the actual issue?

My job is to meet sales figures, get customer satisfaction on target. Not sit with a clock seeing who leaves 10 minutes early. That is is what petty functionaries do.

OP, if the woman is very close to retirement - ie a couple of months then I would let it go because you'll change nothing and just have a big headache.
I don't agree with those who say it's no big deal. It's fraud - you are not complying with the terms of your contract.

Yes but you work in that environment Flatbread. My working hours are not monitored - they probably wouldn't want to as my busiest time is usually 10pm with mind numbingly tedious conf calls.
But the OP doesn't work in that kind of situation. Hours are monitored and if everyone has to follow that rule then they should. The woman obv isn't doing over and above if she needs the OP's help.

Flatbread your attitude for a manager is disgraceful. A member of your team highlights some irregularity within your team and you would get cross at them for inconveniencing you, creating work for you and basically lose all respect for them when it's actually another team member who's behaviour is causing disharmony in the team?

The business is basically giving money away to one particular employee for nothing and that employee has already made her contempt clear for her employee by her attitude of 'they are due me' but you would appear to ignore that fact as long as you weren't inconvenienced and the sales targets were being hit...

A good business is more than hitting sales targets.

employee=employer

My job (private sector) is work and completion driven now and I am far happier than I ever was in the public sector.

During my time in LA management I lost great staff to the private sector, a lot of them citing better job opportunities, being able to run their own work schedules and own their own work and (importantly) feeling that they were unfairly being expected to carry poorly performing staff.

In the end I was left with a department with a lot of people with attitudes and competancies as poor as the OP's colleague. Very frustrating. If I was OP's manager, I'd want to know because this issue is clearly affecting team morale, and potentially, [good] staff retention.

I can't believe the attitude of some people on this thread. People like OP's piss-taking colleague are the reason why so many businesses are reluctant to offer flexible working. If this carries on without being addressed, when it is found out, the employer could just cancel flexible working for all. She is committing fraud. If I was her employer I'd consider sacking her.

OP - there is a MN board called 'employment issues' where I think you should re-post/link this because there are many of us on that board who are qualified HR practitioners who can give more focused advice.

Saying that the responses have (from a professional point of view) been absolutely fascinating to read. But I'm sure have brought you no further forward in deciding how to address this. Some of the posts have been brilliant.

FWIW, your kind of moral dilemma is not a simple one at all for shed loads of reasons. It would make a good a very good case study

Some of the issues:-

1. the better managers judge people in terms of the quality of their output (work produced) and not in terms of the quality and quantity of their input (being measured by things such as being on time). We have no way of knowing if OP's manager is one of these people. If she is then she should have signalled her expectations as such, as it impacts point 2 below, I suspect this is not the case here. If it is then let me know as lots of the following doesn't apply.
2. every individual in an organisation cuts their own 'deal' with their relationship in the firm, in their head. The technical term if you want to google it is 'psychological contract'. This woman has cut a very different one from the OP. which is normally fine (especially where you think you are rewarded for your efforts, and are recognised for what you do yourself). Everyone's deal is different (some work for money, some for love, some for the free coffee). The reason for the conflict is that OP is upset that someone's deal is very different from her own, and she thinks hers is the right deal to have (and in fact it marries not just with unwritten expectations but also with explicit procedural requirements, so OP is clearly 'in the right')
3. usually the advice would be to butt out. But you can't do that when you have team working. With team working everyone in the team has to meet the 'team' expectations. If they don't then the whole team working thing breaks down, irritation grows, morale falls and it goes tits up. We can all remember that inner rage when we were at school when the teacher teamed us up with the lazy person to do a 'joint project'. Same thing here. So. it really needs addressing, and butting out will only create more tension.
4. someone mentioned that boss would think worse of them for being a sneak. Unfortunately true with some managers. Happens because managers expect people to look after themselves and leave the managing to the managers (bit old fashioned, but it is what it is). OP will have to manage it sensitively to avoid this.
5. OP is concerned that effect of punishment (on pension etc) might be disproportionate to the crime. True, but OP is the colleague, not the judge, so punishment is between colleague and manager and she should rightly ignore this.
6. effect on public purse? Whatever. That bit doesn't interest me in the slightest personally, but we all have different moral weather vanes I guess.
7. one of the minor points raised is I think actually quite fundamental to the issue:- that the OP does loads of stuff outside her job description to help her colleague and none of this is known to others. This really affects the 'deal' thing I mentioned in point 2 and will eat up the OP up if not also addressed.

I think even the HR experts may disagree on what to do next.

If I were your mentor my advice would be to go to the manager to discuss, but make it a discussion about you and not about her. That gives your manager far more options so leaves the 'mgmt' side to her, exactly where it should be.

I would ask your manager for a meeting to discuss the following:-

1. that you have for the past 'x' years been training staff with whom you work as an equal, and that although you do not expect this to result in a Change in job description or a payrise, or anything, you most definitely want it to be officially documented, mostly because it might help you in terms of presenting your skills better should there be any re-orgs or re-grades in the future. You should list out specifically all the things you have provided assistance to your colleague on.
2. you should also state that now the flexi working is in place, could you have a quick review of it so that you can satisfy yourself that he is happy with your performance in the light of the new arrangements and has no issues with it. State that you think it's important for your continued progress with the org that all parties are comfortable that all is working ok.

When you get to that meeting try to make it all about you but don't try to protect your colleague if it comes up. When you get to point 2, a good manager will ask you how you feel it is going yourself and if he doesn't then ask if you can put across your views on it all. That's your opportunity to say that although you are really pleased that the company trusts you enough to perform your role, you do have a lingering worry that some people might think that compressed hours is 'taking the mick' and you are concerned that the mgmt have not put in place steps to monitor your timeliness, which means that you would have no defence if someone accused you of not pulling your weight. Boss will either try to reassure or ask if you have suggestions. If he tries just to reassure then you will need to then come back and ask him what he thinks his own staff should do, should they ever feel that someone else is abusing systems such as flexi working. That will give him enough info to act on should he choose. If he asks you for suggestions on how to prove your timeliness then you should suggest that you have an IT logging on/off policy, so that the IT guys can pull off the stats every month to prove you are all keeping up with your side of the bargain. It would take a reasonable IT analyst about 15 minutes to program such a report.

Mammoth post. Sorry.

In my previous life (before kids) I ran a small public sector computer support office and had a member of staff who took absolute liberties with the flexi system.

I started varying my hours daily to do some checking - the work that was being done was just not enough - nowhere near that done by other staff - either he was ill, lying about his hours or incompetent - in any of those scenarios something had to be done. Turned out he was overclaiming about 7 hours a week.

Our department had fixed rules - abuse of flexi, first time offence puts you back on standard hours. I had an official talk with him, he had no explanation, he thumped the table, threw a chair across the room and went straight to HR accusing me of bullying him. They spoke to my boss and colleagues, finding that I am soooooo not like he was making me out to be, and moved him to a HIGHER PAYING JOB in the department.

This was 10 years ago and I am still bitter when I think of it...

Doesn't help you much OP - but thought I'd let you know that even when the boss does notice, sometimes it still sucks!! I'd keep quiet, but make sure your boss knows when you are there doing the extra hours.

Flatbread your attitude for a manager is disgraceful

Er, no. It is based on performance, not face time. And we have lots of metrics monitored on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly basis to evaluate the output/performance metrics of each member of the team.

If face time was important, there would be a system monitoring that, but there isn't so I assume it is not a key performance metric in OP's workplace either.

As I understand from OP

1. colleague X is good at her client-facing job
2. colleague X knows she needs to upgrade skills and is proactively managing it by pointing it out to her managers and coming up with a satisfactory solution to learn IT processes from her colleagues
3. most of her colleagues like her and except for OP, no one else finds it 'demoralising' that she takes 30 minutes lunch or works 10 minutes less than others. Probably because she gets her job done as she has in-depth knowledge and can solve things quickly

So what exactly is the issue? If she finishes her job and instead of 10 minutes browsing on mnet, goes home instead, that is worthy of managerial attention? Because a petty colleague was clock-watching instead of focusing on her own job?

Callthemidlife has some excellent advice

Bytheway1 illustrates an important point, I think. I have had to learn this the hard way. I assumed if you worked really hard at work, and were always on time, did extra hours, always gave 100% you would a) be rewarded and b) rewarded more than those who didn't do those things.

It has taken me years to realise that there is usually a much more political situation going on, in which there isn't a linear relationship between effort/diligence as an employee and success. In other words, in this situation it may be that the manager is a bit incompetent and doesn't want this pointed out, perhaps the manager really likes the other colleague and values her way of interacting with the public over and above any slightly slackness in her flexible working hours, or perhaps the manager is on JobSite searching for a new job every lunchhour as she hates hers and so isn't likely to pull up this colleague anyway.

Who knows? But this is why I have found it best not to interfere with other people's relationships with their managers/company unless directly affected. I have a colleague who has, by all common agreement, not met her goals for year and years, yet, because of her personality and sheer cheek still seems to be rewarded and promoted.

And I do agree with Callthemidlife if you were to do anything, then going to have a review meeting about yourself, your goals and your responsibilities (including not having to help colleagues who can't use the IT systems properly) would be the best way forward.

Flatbread

1. Okay colleague x is good at that bit.

2. It isn't a satisfactory solution. She's not managed to learn IT processes, all she's doing is make OP do it for her.

3. Yes they like her. But they don't know she's leaving early and coming in late, and OP is doing some of her work for her.

And 'the 'petty colleague' isn't clockwatching. She's busy catching up with all the crap she's having to do that colleague x has left her with because colleague x has been cutting into her working day asking for yet more help with her IT, that should have been done first thing in the morning.

Flatbread If you work in a company/dept that only focuses on performance and not hours worked then it would be pointless to bring it up.

But hatgirl's workplace has clearly taken the trouble to come up with working times for the staff. Why would they bother to do that if it was an irrelevance to the way they work or the expectations they have of the staff?

Good advice and interesting post from Callthemidlife.

OP, if you've had words with her and she's still doing the same shirking shit she's sticking two fingers up to you as well as the company. Can't believe the amount of people that think it's less acceptable to "dob" or "tout" when someone is doing something wrong than cheating your employer in the first place.

What I'd do, is next time she asks you for help simply say, "I'm busy right now; how about we go over it tomorrow morning when we're in by ourselves, like we talked about?".

If she still doesn't get the hint after repeated instances of the above, then go to your manager. She's had enough warning, and frankly I can't wait to see how the "but they owe me " argument flies in that tribunal.

It's gross misconduct and therefore likely to be a dismissal offence. Surely your manager will notice? She can't be getting the work done that she should. Is he a good manager who trusts his staff and gets the best out of them? Or is he just not monitoring the flexi because he is lazy?

The manager will know that she wanted to retire and my guess is that he knows she's less than perfect but there's no point in disciplining her. She's fed up and I see no point in keeping her on - should have just let her retire. However, if it's brought to his attention he will have to take action and would this be catastrophic for her pension?