Employee claiming hours on her day off while working a full day elsewhere

[dodgylady23]

I manage one staff member. She’s casual and until recently another person (friend of hers) was signing her timesheets off.

For a number of reasons, not least of which being this employee is hopeless and has an attitude problem, I suspected something fishy with her timesheets so had them (rightfully) signed over to me.

She works four days with us and one day elsewhere. I had to insist multiple times that she add this regular day off to her calendar to indicate she was off. I’ve approved a few of her timesheets now, but just noticed she has claimed to have worked six hours for me on the day she works a full day elsewhere - her agreed day off from here.

Queried this with her only to have her get very defensive and claim she had urgent work to do here so managed to do both. She mentioned working on one thing (not at all urgent and a quick task) and “other bits and pieces”. She said she would send through evidence of her work if need be.

1. I didn’t authorise her to work on that day
2. This “urgent” work could have waited until the next day, or any number of days in the weeks ahead before it became urgent.
3. It’s impossible to work two jobs simultaneously.

AIBU to outright reject those additional hours and give her an award for biggest pisstaker of the year?

Sounds like fraudulent timesheets to me, and it has probably gone one for a while. Start the evidence gathering process.

I was in a similar situation with a staff member, it became obvious that they were not working their full hours and logging unreasonable amounts of time to jobs that they just weren't doing. I suspected they were logging in at about 1030 and disappearing at about 1430, it seemed like they were taking a lot longer to reply to messages outside of these times(home working) and also were not picking up any new tasks. I tried to get them back into the office but they claimed that their brakes had failed.

As I couldn't force them in (no adequate public transport from where they lived, wage was far too low for me to demand they took a taxi and they claimed they were struggling to get the car fixed), and I had no way of proving they weren't working, but sometimes you just know. I went for mistakes instead, because they were trying to claim they were doing 8 hours worth of work in 4 each day, they often made silly mistakes, so every single mistake I jumped on. He was confronted with these mistakes (after many conversations) and based on the evidence of these mistakes, he left without a fight, basically admitting that he really hadn't been working the whole time.

That’s shocking @juice92. Interesting to see how you went about getting him out given. I swear these people spend probably more time and energy spinning nonsense to get away with slacking than they would just by doing the actual work. I just don’t get the mentality behind it, knowing you’re flagrantly rorting the system while others are hard at work and remaining good with yourself.

It's weird because everyone knows that entering incorrect times on a timesheet is fraud and yet there is such a range in responses. I worked one place with an onside childcare centre so you sign your child in and out. One of my colleagues would claim a full day's work when the childcare centre timesheet would record her 5 actual hours in the workplace. Everyone knew but nothing done. While some other staff were pulled up for taking sick leave or being 5mins late. Probably better for it all to be computerised. We have facial recognition technology now so no need for signing in. The data could be collected automatically and breaches flagged in the system.

Why in heavens name would you pay for someone who is fraudulently claiming hours worked? Bizarre. Is that you fraudulent staff member?

Well, it appears she’s doubling down rather than backing away. I’m not going to go into too much detail given according to a couple of posters I have given her identity away and could get in big trouble for doing so, but safe to say her double down suggests to me she even believes her own bullshit at this point. That’s scary.

Sounds like you need to "manage" her more ruthlessly, i.e. give her specific tasks to do on specific days and not let her manage her own workload. If she's taking the piss on the day she's working for someone else, how can you be sure she's actually "working" all the hours she claims to be working on the days she's allegedly "working" for you.

Indeed @zaazaazoo . I seriously can’t be bothered dealing with this. And I’d rather be spending my time doing my job than going over old records. But it’s not just me that’s angry. It’s a reputational risk for the organisation. Not to mention a financial risk. I suspect it’s not the first time she’s done this, or that she’s the only person involved. If I can get to the root of this (and I will), I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again. And she can never weasel her way back in, as she’s done before. Apparently.

I have many times finished things off in my own time, even when I was in a junior job! It means it's done and also out of my head and I can start fresh in my next scheduled/official hours. It might not be urgent, but it's 'unfinished'. Obviously this becomes more normal the less 'casual'/senior you become, but it's the same work ethic.

Fortunately I have rarely worked in jobs with (detailed) timesheets, which lets be honest, can mean more time recording than actually doing. And if it has in reality been 6-9am and then 4-7pm worked, that would look 'bad' on timesheets (so yes it would be fraud to put 10-4 or whatever, but expected....)

At all points, I have tried to do a good job.

If at any point I'd been 'confronted' by someone who thought I was misclaiming, I'm sure I would have stuttered and looked guilty and gone red ... from the shock of/and the distrust.

So please be absolutely sure before you accuse them.

The other employee, the friend who was signing her time sheets, is also guilty of misconduct if she knew.

We had a member of staff that set up his own business outside of our work, but doing the same type of work.

We didn't know about it and only found out accidentally as he left something on our office server and someone found it. A little bit more digging and we found his business online and discovered that he was advertising as being open Monday to Friday, 9am to 5.30pm. i.e. exactly the same hours he was supposed to be working for us!

This was all post-Covid and while we had been a bit concerned about his progress on work for a while, we were also aware that he was having to work from home in a 1 bed flat with his wife and two toddlers, so (foolishly) gave him the benefit of the doubt during difficult times.

Once we realised what was going on, we dealt with it on a performance management basis, by discussing the poor turnaround of work and asking him to come back in to the office full time. He wasn't very happy about it, for obvious, but unspoken reasons. This combined with a bit of extra pressure to turn around jobs in a better timeframe forced his hand, without us having to go down the disciplinary route.

Within a month of being back in the office, he'd put his notice in, telling us he'd got another job with another firm. I'm not sure if he ever actually started working for them, or whether he then just went to work for himself full time.

We were ready to go down the disciplinary route if it had carried on, especially as we had a no-compete clause in our contract (or rather, he needed to inform us if he did other work as confidentiality and conflict of interest is important in our industry).

@dodgylady23 - if your pisstaker is an actual employee, I'd speak with HR as this is clearly a disciplinary matter. You'd have to go through an investigation process and hold an investigation meeting with her to establish her side of the story formally, then take it from there. Try not to give too much away to her at the moment in terms of your investigation.

ACAS has some useful information - ACAS, but hopefully you have an internal (or external) HR department that can deal with a lot of it for you.

@zaazaazoo the management time involved, and the possibility of not proving it, makes it a waste of time. Much better to put in systems and procedures (which do take time to develop) to stop such things happening. Especially as her contract is up for renewal shortly. Sometimes you have to consider the bigger picture.

She sounds manipulative with a strong personality who can dominate others . It looks like she has got someone to sign her sheets off for her knowing she was moonlighting . I bet she was doing the bare minimum in works time too .

She does the bare minimum while she’s in the office, yes @JazzyJogger . It’s unbelievable.

Also unbelievable is that she’s STILL claiming I’m the problem person here because she managed to work both jobs at the same exact time perfectly well. I mean I know women are great multi-taskers but come on.

I've been at work many years . I've seen people like this everywhere I've worked. This time she's been called out . Don't be surprised if she just bails out. She will go somewhere else and do this again but it won't be your problem.

Here’s hoping @JazzyJogger

She likely "managed to work both jobs at the same exact time perfectly well" because one or other or both of the jobs don't require as much time as you or they have been led to believe.

When someone else works one or other of the roles you'll probably find it can actually be done far quicker because she's been double dipping with two employers.

At least as a casual hire she hopefully won't be your problem for too much longer OP. Next time someone like her is taken on at least you'll know to be strict about working hours and your expectations (I know she's a problem you inherited).

This is wage theft and usually a sackable offense.

Ugh I used to work with someone who would log on at 0810 then bugger off to have breakfast with a friend in another department until just after 9. Then leave the office on her lunch break for an hour, as we were allowed to, but then get back and start eating at her desk and not doing anything for another hour as she was "having her lunch". Such blatant piss taking. She'd have been the one that made everyone else have to go back to the office after lockdown and you could guarantee she'd absolutely take the piss.

I work for a charity in four departments. I also do extras as needed, anything from special events to driving mini buses. I normally have 4 line managers sign off for each department before going to the central pay role. Making sure I claim correctly, mark what I've been doing, what I understand the hourly wage for that job is and then checking my payslip when I get it is a nightmare, but it is the only way to do it. Her vagueness sounds very dodgy to me. She should have everything to hand ready to prove.

On a side note, can I have her job? It sounds bliss.

It's fraud and theft. I had similar happen once. I was there when the person walked into our building when they were claiming to have been there the whole time. They had a second job over the road with another company which they were supposed to do after their shift with us.

There's enough from what you've posted OP to sack for gross misconduct. I'd look to prosecute as well.

Be ready to source a new worker in three months.

We had an agency worker who always seemed to have been missing first thing in the working day (after going back over time sheets and noting stated time of arrival). So I hung around and watched him sign in and immediately walk out. I followed him to a MacDonalds down the road where he sat down to a breakfast. He was so surprised when I sat down opposite him! He said he 'thought it was all right' to do that. I told him not to bother coming back. I couldn't work out if he genuinely thought it was acceptable behaviour, or if he was one of those people (there are many!) who think that something is 'all right' if they get away with it. I think you do get a certain number of no-hopers and dweebs who agencies hawk around the bigger workplaces. Strangely, his replacement was a real gem and we offered him a contract after 6 months.

I'm sorry but unless you know for certain with proof that she didn't work these hours then all this is speculation. Do you know she didnt work that day for sure??

I would not be signing them off. She shouldn’t be claiming for that day at all, and if she did have urgent work she should clear it with you first before working. She’s taking the P