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.

I would be very surprised if the manager doesn't already know, or at least suspect.IME lots of people Approaching retirement take the piss and it is just not worth the hassle of opening a can of worms.Dismissing her would likely give rise to an employment tribunal which costs thousands before it even gets to court.
The thing that is much more likely to happen if you make a fuss, is withdrawal of this arrangement for both of you.

I am sure that Flatbread works for some organisation that is a as close as possible to public sector without actually being it, if she is t5elling the truth.

I have seen so many times good people carrying total shite colleagues in the public sector. I feel so sorry for those that are trying to deliver a good service under those circumstances.

I have actually been part of a process that got rid of one of these bad people as we logged his criminal computer use, and yes the manager was flatbreadish and did not want to act. The rest of the staff were really pleased the arsehole had gone though.

I'd be concerned that if one person was found to be abusing flexibility it may be stopped??
This risking op not being able to continue the working pattern?

I don't think posters understand what flatbread is trying to say

It really shouldn't matter exactly how many minutes you spend at your desk as long as you get the job done and deliver results. I personally pretty much come and go as I please - as long as I deliver, management don't care.

Hi everyone, thanks for all your suggestions. There have been some really helpful posts.

Ok I will clear a few things up

I'm not talking about the occasional long lunch or late start/ early finish. It is daily and if she wasn't being given the day off in return for supposedly working extra hours I don't think I would have been bothered at all - we are not a team that counts the minutes, providing the work gets done no one really bothers what people's working hours are... to an extent! There are others who work ordinary core hours who may work a bit over/ under each day and no one cares as we know it all balances itself out in the end. However, at the end of the day this colleague is getting a whole day off in return for extra hours that have not actually been worked.

If you look at it in terms of lieu time, if someone was claiming that they had worked extra hours that they actually hadn't done but were still getting time off in lieu people would look at it very differently.

For various very valid reasons my colleague has a long standing reduced workload in comparison to other full time workers in the team - which does mean she perhaps isn't as overloaded as the rest of us and therefore her workload is not impacted by her working fewer hours than she is meant to. This was the case before her new working pattern as well and again is not a problem for anyone in the team - it just explains why she is managing to not get into trouble for not getting stuff done whereas with others it would show up pretty quickly.

We don't have a clocking in/out system and one will not be implemented. The public sector organisation I work for is on a bit of a 'trust' drive and all clocking in systems have been removed. My manager is expected to trust us and he does, although I understand from the colleague herself that he had been a bit reticent about giving her this working pattern. He has no reason to believe that she isn't doing her hours as he also isn't a clock watcher and our work involves being in and out of the office all the time. The only reason I know it happens is because I am the only person who works the same hours as her so therefore am the only person who would know if she was coming in late/ leaving early. We are a professional team expected to work autonomously and professionally so there is not really anyone checking up on the output of the work we do, which would be very hard to measure anyway.

I'm still not sure she has entirely grasped that what she sees as a 'few minutes' adds up as much as it does under the way we work.

Sooooooo, what are you planning to do????

I am shocked that there have been so many posts saying YABU! Her actions are tantamount to fraud and in my last job would have been grounds for dismissal for gross misconduct (I worked with a girl who was fired for something similar).

I think you need to put aside your friendship with this woman and find a way to bring this to your manager's attention. It does not benefit the company or the other employees to have someone manipulating their working arrangement like this.

or a slightly longer lunch occasionally is more than deserved pay back.

I don't see how this attitude (being the op's) is any differing from op's work colleague.

Pot kettle black springs to mind.

DontEvenThinkAboutIt i'm going to speak to her again about it and make it clear again that the day off we get is actually in return for something and isn't just a day off for free (was planning to speak to her this evening but she left 45 mins early - thats pushing it even for her and was noticed by others) and she is working from home tomorrow as she is going away for the weekend and wants to get away on time . My boss is away for a couple of weeks so theres not much I could do about it for the time being anyway. I'm not someone who beats around the bush and have no problem addressing it with her. If I still don't get anywhere I think I am going to ask my boss to sort out some proper training for her as clearly me helping her hasn't solved the problem she is having with IT and leave it up to him to determine whether or not she is sticking to her agreed working pattern.

I do know he has had to correct her leave a few times as she keeps asking for leave based on her old pattern of work rather than the new one so he is perhaps more aware than I think that she may not quite 'get' what she is supposed to be doing.

Sounds like a good plan. Hope it goes well.

don't tell ur boss she is getting on and when u r older your performance may suffer yet others still expect you to work the same pace as the much younger staff, If you report her they will watch her and sack her do u really want that on your conscience be the bigger person,she will be going shortly cut her some slack and hope someone will do the same for you when you are her age.

sukysue. I think a lot of older workers may not agree with you that they are not capable of working as hard as their younger colleagues

Hat grild I cant believe the slack your getting for wanting to shop her, I would.

I wonder if it was happening to some of these other posters, i.e their company and staff they would have a different view??

She is taking the piss, no two ways about it..

Hatgirl Even!! Doh

Sorry if this has already been suggested but I think in your position I would email her, CCing your manager, and say that while you want to ensure she has enough of your time for technical help she needs, you need to be able to focus on other things during the work day. So, from now on, you will block 15 or 30 minutes for her at the start and end of each working day e.g. 9.00-9.15 and 4.45-5.00.

This will effectively force her to put the full day in if she relies on your help with incredibly basic technical things that she should be able to do by herself and will also get your manager into the habit of noticing if she's arriving late/leaving early. And it will minimise the impact her behaviour has on your workload because if she isn't there for your IT office hours, you are free to ignore her requests for help the rest of the time.

Yabu - i am manager to 10 staff who all work flexibly, ii am not actually in the ofice much and dont tend to check up on anyone - they are adults and need to be treated as such.

Your boss will know what she is like regardless of whether she dies every single minute.

I can see how you might feel this is unfair on you
BUT
From a managers perspective you will be seen as a petty tell tale and create stress for your manager, which they wont thank you for. They will need to act in it, you will create a hideous atmosphere to work in.

Your boss might be counting down the days / weeks/ years for her to leave, they dont need this.

As a manager working in a public sector role i would imagine there are better things for your boss to be spending time on..

Easy solution, flexible working seen as abused so withdrawn for all -

Still thinking about telling tales?

Will you all stop talking about this woman as though she's old! I'm her age and I will be working for another ten years. Nobody my age will get a state pension until the age of 66 now.

Get your boss to sort out the IT training; it's a very poor use of your time and clearly isn't working, otherwise she'd be able to use the system by now.

She sounds like she's really taking the piss. Are you working on reception by any chance? Are you both meant to be on duty together? Do you have to do more of the job if she's not there?

It's hard to say what you should do. If you speak to your boss she will know you have and the atmosphere at work could be awful afterwards. I think I would just be blunt with her and ask her why she's taking the 10th day off, when she hasn't worked the extra hours. Does she arrive before the others in the morning? If not, do they notice? Surely they'd be annoyed if they're working the same hours and don't get the day off?

If she is struggling with basic I.t. skills can she ask for training.
I work for the public sector and in November we all got a letter asking us to do an I.t audit on ourselves. Any areas we had problems with we were given one to one training. Even basic skills like making folders or sending emails were covered if people wanted it.

I said MAY if you read my msg correctly not are or all of them just MAY.

Well as you can now tell the Civil Service Slackers Club is a biiiiig organisation.

The only question is do you really want to be waggling your righteous stick around in its oh so publicly-funded and hornety nest.

ImperialBlether nooo give my organisation some credit they wouldn't put someone with IT skills as dire as hers on reception! What we do is a qualified role and has a 'professional' status (where clearly IT illiteracy is absolutely fine! ) but i don't really want to specify what.

Training is available to her and a list of IT training was sent round recently to the whole team by my manager but with a jokey message underneath saying 'or you could just ask hatgirl' its a running joke for the whole team that I am the IT support and even my manager comes to me first to fix stuff rather than calling the actual IT department. Its a distraction from what I am supposed to be doing regarding my own workload but ultimately probably saves the team as a whole a significant amount of time/work.

I've had to explain how to save word documents to this colleague within the last week... I know she has saved word documents a million times before without help, she just forgets every now and then and panics. Other than the IT stuff she is brilliant at her job and has so much valuable experience which is the reason she was turned down for VR.

all the IT stuff is a bit of a red herring really, it would still be an issue there no matter what hours we were working.

I've had a further thought, a few people has suggested dropping hints that we may be being monitored, I think I might try that first as well as part of talking to her again about it. I don't think they are as it would cause 'them' work but theres no reason why they couldn't be and she is actually a little bit paranoid about it for other reasons. But its more underhand I suppose than I would prefer.

Greenkit - I quite like hat grild!

Oh do fuck off cumfy. The OP said it was public sector not civil service. I'm a senior manager in the civil service and no way would this kind of behaviour be ignored. Certainly not in my department anyway.

Oh MrsPogles what a stylish way to begin your civil service weekend.

Very funny! 36 hours a week gets us 3 days extra holidays?? Ha ha! Every civil servant's working week is far more than 36 hours. Unless you're Lord Coe or some hot shot mandarin. Oh but then again we work flexitime which means if we put in those extra hours we can also take them as leave! Same as my other half who works in the private sector. I'm far more senior and qualified than he is but his private sector co offers better pay and conditions than my employer. Why should I continue to work to help the government for crap pay? The banks that are screwing our economy over offer lots more!