re office cultures where people are expected to work beyond contracted hours

[user1485342611]

Just following on from the 100% attendance thread, AIBU to think there's nothing wrong with working the hours you're contracted to work and then going home and getting on with other things.

There just seems to be a growing attitude that anyone who leaves work at 5.30 every evening lacks ambition or commitment or drive or whatever, even if they're hitting their deadlines and doing the work they're supposed to do.

Obviously, there's times when you have to be flexible and hang on a bit later than usual to get something finished on time, or help a colleague out. But surely that should be the exception rather than the rule?

If your job couldn't possibly be done in your contracted hours, then surely more staff are needed? I don't understand why it's acceptable to contract someone to work 8 hours a day then give them a ten hour workload. That's exploiting people.

This is why I left City law - I will happily work late to see something through to completion or help a client with an urgent situation, but the expectation that I would sit at my desk reading the Mail/Guardian until gone 7pm before heading home began to affect my mental health.

And yes, I agree with maybe.

where I work it is bell to bell, even for salaried, so you are more than 3 minutes late to fob in you have a black mark, 4 marks and you get a warning, so everyone here leaves on the exact dot of home time. if they won't be flexible then neither will the staff.

If most people could work properly the whole day - no chats, no internet, etc, then they could leave at 5.30. I knew someone who did that - but because we get distracted (eg this thread!) we end up working late.....

Some of it is presenteeism. But some of it isn't, in that people genuinely need to work more hours to get the job done.

But in certain industries/businesses you won't last long with a 9-5 attitude because the mechanics of the business needs you to work more than that to make money.

I'd say to this that, in that case, there is a deep-rooted problem in the jobs/industries.

Other countries have lower levels of presenteeism than the UK but higher productivity levels. It can be done.

I know some people have no choice, for various reasons, than to work late. But it's the 'approval' of it, and the 'disapproval' of people who go home when they have their work done and don't hang around that I don't understand. Obviously it only happens in some organisations, but it's sad that some people are brainwashed into thinking that hanging around the office killing time somehow makes you more valuable and admirable than someone who goes home to spend time with their family, or doing something in the community or developing outside interests that I find sad.

In my first job it was raised (as a negative) in my appraisal that I "always wanted to take my full lunch hour" as apparently that showed a lack of team spirit.

That's disgusting.

The entire state education system would also fall apart if everyone just worked their contracted hours
Then do it. Together. The system is built on lies. Stop telling lies. Build a better system which doesn't exploit staff and which doesn't tell pupils they can 'have everything' without any significant effort.

I was one of these people- demanding job that I had to work stupid hours to complete (at least 50 hours a week).

Now I've had a baby and asked to go back part time, they're using this against me- "but the hours you worked show that this can't be a part time role".

I wish I'd worked to rule and told them the workload was too high, rather than soldiering on and hoping that my commitment might translate into support from them if I ever needed it.

Ah therein lies the problems and benefits of a salaried wage.
Flexibility but you're expected to get the job done and that gets taken advantage of.
Dh is a salaried senior manager and frequently works 7-5.30 6 days a week, but he can nip home and leave early if he needs to.

I am paid hourly and yes I leave on time except the rare occasion someone has made a mistake and we can't cash up and lock the safe until it's sorted.
They asked me to stay and do extra work unpaid for them and I laughed and said "no thank you!"
Will it hurt my future promotion chances? Maybe, but I don't want to be promoted into a company that exploits their staff and expects them to work for free.

Research shows that most office workers only actually work for about 6 hours a day. So if they STILL need to say late despite already being there much longer than that, then they must really be wasting their time.

When did this madness start of working unpaid hours.

Never had it in my working life
I was salaried with set number of working hours - flexitime so logged in and out only having to work core hours, the rest was flexible. Supervisor/lower management role
Any hours worked over were either given as TOIL or over a set amount paid at overtime rate of 1.5. Overtime paid for a 3 week trip to Far East!!
After I returned to work part time after years off as sahm again in a lower managerial role I was always paid for hours worked over and/or TOIL.
You always had someone who stay late - normally because they did not have a decent home life to return to - but they were seen as 'odd'.

Now according to these threads it is considered 'normal' to work unpaid hours.

When did the worm turn?

can i politely ask the teachers who have contributed to the thread ...
what hours are you contracted to work each week ?
and as you are paid over the school holidays, does that mean that you should be working those same hours each of the weeks the children are on holidays ( minus of course the weeks you take annual leave) ?
would you say , honestly that if you averaged out the hours you work in a year to say 47 weeks ( allowing for 5 weeks AL) that you worked excessively more than your contracted hours ?

I am genuinely interested and do not know what contracted hrs for teachers are ?

I used to work in an office and honestly the whole culture was weird to me. I'm an efficient worker, so I got everything I was supposed to do done way before the end of the day. But instead of saying "well done" and letting me go home, my bosses just decided to start giving me more work than everyone else, since I was faster at it.

So at my next job, I just did what was initially asked of me and then acted busy for the last couple of hours, so that management wouldn't think I needed more to do. I even had to stay 10-30 minutes late every now and then so that people wouldn't think I wasn't working hard enough (despite me having done more work by 4pm than most other people did all day). But then again, who knows how many of my colleagues were playing the same game, all of us spurring each other on in a perpetual charade.

Now I work for myself, and when I get all my work done by 3pm, I just stop working and relax for the rest of the day! Corporate life is ridiculous.

It depends how far up the food chain you are, I think it's the difference between a job and a career.
Job = do your hours.
Career = do what's required.

The entire state education system would also fall apart if everyone just worked their contracted hours
Then do it. Together. The system is built on lies. Stop telling lies. Build a better system which doesn't exploit staff and which doesn't tell pupils they can 'have everything' without any significant effort.

Would people rather Social Workers worked their contracted hours and left children in dangerous and abusive homes?

My ds works as a clinician in the NHS - they are always told by their manager that if they work beyond the end of their shift in order to finish a list of patients they must claim overtime (at time and a third)- even if it is 15 minutes.
The reasoning is that if they continually work over the end of their shifts without recording it the hospital management will never realise that they are understaffed.
As a result they employed 4 extra clinicians last year to ensure that patients were seen in a timely manner.

I had a manager who never took lunch breaks. Thought that it showed how committed they were. Senior manager told them that they needed to manage their workload properly, not working an extra 5hours a week to get everything done.

theredjellybean
We aren't paid for holidays.
Our contracts state term time only + 5 days (or other pd days). Our pay is divided over 12 months so we get equal pay each month.

My contracted hours are 32.5 hours a week. During term time only.

Your average classroom teacher gets 3 hours a week to plan/mark for 22 hours of lessons.
We can be Directed under directed time for 1265 hours and that calendar is published in advance e.g. so we know when the 9pm open evenings will be. But directed time only exists if your school signs up to the burgundy book pay and conditions.

(I've seen schools near me run the teaching day 8-430 with worse terms and paying the same salary. Not sure how they get away with it really because there's a teacher shortage in lots of subjects.)

Most teachers will work 45-60 hours a week.

redjellybean - this comes up every time there is a teachers' pay/ holidays thread. They aren't paid for the holidays. Teaching salaries are worked out on the basis of 200 (or whatever it is) working days per year. Yes, they get the same in their pay packet every month, including August, but that's because it would be more administratively complicated to do it any other way.

(There usually follows several pages of people trying to argue that this isn't the case. It is.)

I don't give a fuck what the 'expectations' are in a company.

I work the hours I am paid for. I take a full lunch hour.,I arrive ten minutes before I start work and I leave on the dot unless I am stuck on a phone cal or whatever.

I have kids, a husband, a house to keep organised, friends, family, hobbies, I like to take take time to relax, no chance am I sitting around the office any longer than I have to. There is so much more to life than work.

I think the OP was asking the question in relation to office workers specifically? I think it's accepted that if you're a teacher/nurse etc then you have to work extra hours unpaid (even though I don't particularly agree with this sentiment).

Working unpaid when there is no actual need is a little bit like stealing on the part of an employer. Presumably a member of staff is employed for a certain number of hours and paid a salary for those hours. If the employer then expects more hours to be worked for no extra pay then they are stealing that employee's time. This is particularly true where the employer is completely inflexible themselves and will not accept the employee taking back some of the extra time worked by way of a late start or a slightly longer lunch break. No one minds putting in some extra time and effort if this is appreciated and reciprocated from time to time.

And as for holidays. Half terms are just catch up weeks.
This Easter I've been on a trip for 3 days and in school 3 days for revision classes. 6 days out of my fortnight gone already (thankfully my school is good and pays for the revision classes). Then got 60 mock papers to mark and another 6o books plus planning for next term.

I love my job and am usually really organised so I reckon my working week is about 45 hours. But I'm in a good school where they care about staff. Not everyone can say that.

theredjellybean - teachers contracts state that teachers be available for work on 195 days each year, of which 190 are teaching days (the other 5 being for INSET). They are also required to be available for 1265 hours each year to be allocated reasonably across those days. These make up the directed hours, which are available for Headteachers to direct the work of teachers.
However, in addition, teachers must work "such reasonable additional hours as may be necessary to enable the effective discharge of the teacher’s professional duties".

That last sentence means, in effect that teachers work as long as necessary to get the job done