Colleague deliberately staying late at work just to accrue TOIL?

[KatParr]

She admitted yesterday she'd been staying past her contracted times, 10-15 mins here and there deliberately and has managed to accrue a whole week of TOIL!? we are a very small team who has an issue (imo) with sickness. Although we all have different roles, it inevitably impacts everyone when someone is off, even for leave. She also arranges appointments and runs regular "errands" on her working days (so leaves the workplace for up to an hour) when she has every Monday and Tuesday off. She is incredibly skillful at "looking busy" and talking constantly about having loads to do. Yes, I do notice it because none of us imo are busy enough to accrue TOIL.

She said she has leave left but wanted to 'save' it. I'm feeling pissed off. She has no reason to stay late every day as she does, genuinely, it's not that kind of role. I'm thinking of speaking to the manager about what she said regarding the TOIL. AIBU or should I keep my nose out?

Thanks for the responses so far. Good point to check out the policy on TOIL before anything. We really are a tiny company (9 staff and only 1 full time) There is one line manager who can be quite permissive about stuff but I do now remember an email from some time ago when she asked people to take TOIL promptly, not accrue it for too long. My natural inclination WOULD be to keep my nose out, I'm incredible non-confrontational but there's been so much sickness this year. I really do rarely take sickness and work my alloted hours only. I'm just fed up covering for other people.

Where I work this would suggest a poor line manager and/or TOIL policy.

There is no business need to work longer than standard hours, so as a manager I only agree toil by exception (eg unexpected periods of high workload, specific events involving travel / extra hours)

If her absences affect you directly I would probably raise it once with the team leader and suggest that building up that much TOIL doesn’t seem consistent with business needs and ask them to apply a consistent approach.

They are not petty rules. TOIL accrual is rife with abuse and pisstake in every workplace that allows it, and needs fair but firm management like this. @TheLever , I salute you 👏.

The thing that baffles me is if she's using flexi to do these things on her working days, how is she ALSO managing to accrue TOIL by only staying a little later most days? It's doesn't add up. I also work exactly the same days as her, I know days off involve other commitments but she's also said in the past that she makes appointments on her working days deliberately, quite blasé.

The “how does it affect you” brigade don’t seem to get that it does affect you as presumably you have to pick up the slack when she’s off? i probably wouldn’t talk to your manager however why don’t you start doing the same? i’m sure if everyone suddenly starts having loads of TOIL time off they will start to get stricter about how it’s managed!

That's so weird, Toil is only really applicable in our work if you're on company business for hours at a time, like a half day conference on a Saturday that you take instead on the Monday etc.

If it doesn't affect you directly (eg you missing time off to cover for her) then I'd stay out of it personally. It's your manager's job, not yours.
I wouldn't be surprised if her toil is refused at some point. Wherever I've worked, it's ONLY agreed OT that receives toil. Probably worth a look at your employee handbook to check procedures, but again, that's your manager's job.
Of course, if its making your job difficult then yes, you should raise it with your manager, but focus on YOUR needs and difficulties. Let your manager work out the "why".

if she’s busy working through the day and is busy working essential tasks in the additional 15 minutes, then what she says about gathering toil is irrelevant

Only her and her manager will have a clear idea of work backlog, tasks, timings. This is not something you can accurately judge.

Taking appointments in a mix of work and personal time is acceptable, often there is very little flexibility about when GPs Dentists Consultants can see people. Appointments are like gold dust.

I previously worked at an organisation that had a reasonable TOIL policy. For example, you could get quite a generous amount of time back if you’d travelled and stayed away, or had to work a lot of overtime. All fine in my team and people appreciated it.

It then turned out that someone in another team had been accumulating TOIL in the manner that you describe. Lo and behold there was a crackdown, the whole system was overhauled and almost nobody could claim TOIL anymore…

In many workplaces work requirements and workloads are easily understood by and visible to more than individuals and their manager. It’s likely that OP has a good understanding of her colleagues’ work.

I never understand all the "mind your own business" posts. I get incredibly fucked off about colleagues who are paid the same as me but piss about all day and don't do the work that they should.
They come in late, leave early and have longer breaks. Don't wear the correct uniform. It's very poor management which is one of the reasons I am retiring in two weeks.

Clever lady! Good for her. Work to live, not live to work and all that.

But op does the same job so has a good understanding plus the colleague has admitted making appointments on work days. Some people are just piss takers

We had someone like you OP in the last office I worked in before I retired; couldn’t stop picking over who was doing what and running to the managers in the hope of getting staff “told off”. What a hateful pain in the neck she was. Despised by all

I work a job where we build up a lot of TOIL through working out of hours at events, and the company is really good at recognising it.

However, there is a policy that we need to use the TOIL relatively quickly after we've worked it. The reasoning is, the time off is to help us recover from working over our hours.

It isn't to be used for saving up for extra leave. If we built up a week like this, the request to take it would be denied as we'd be told we should have taken it soon after we accrued it.

Surely any extra hours outside of core hours should be directed by management according to business need not employee need to accrue TOIL. An extra 15 minutes is just normal finishing off after work time surely! YANBU. I would raise it for clarification on how TOIL is accrued.

I had an employee like this once, presented me with his TOIL sheet that he’d been sneakily building up for almost a year to about a week.

I have no problem at all with people taking TOIL when it’s legitimately earned and staff work extra time because it’s needed, but some of the things he’d claimed for was ten minutes to nip to the shop on the way home from work (when he was going for himself anyway). He’d also been very underhand about it.

I got the policy out and pointed out that he couldn’t carry over from one year to the next so that got rid of a lump, you also can’t claim for less than 15 minutes, that got rid of another lump. He ended up with about 3 hours, which was fine. I said ‘when do you want to take it?’. He stopped taking the piss so much after that.

For those saying it doesn’t impact on others, when someone is being underhand in acquiring extra leave when it leaves the rest of the team short handed, it absolutely does. It also affect staff morale to have someone being sneaky and taking the piss.

Sounds odd. In such a small team has the manager not questioned why she's always staying late and noone else is? It does sound like the manager may refuse to let her take it all in one go if there's been a previous e-mail asking people not to accrue TOIL.

You can talk to a manager.

But what bare you telling them that they don't already know? They know she's taking TOIL as they need to approve it.

FYI OP, in thr past I've had health appointments from hospitals which are next to impossible to move to a non working day as the clinic only runs then or they have moved the appointment several times and I was just grateful to be seen. For all you know she might be acting blasé to you because there's more going on.

By all means speak to a manager but like I said, you aren't telling them anything they don't know.

That's absolutely not how the TOIL policy should work. Nor is it the correct application of flexi time. She's massively taking the piss but her manager needs to address that with her. Presumably the manager will know when she asks for a week of TOIL (!) and ask her how it was accrued?

You could raise with your manager that there seems to be an issue with the work load distribution as X has built up so much TOIL and is there anything you can do to help.

And then the company would wonder why people were calling in sick!

Whats TOIL

Sounds like a colleague taking the mickey, which impacts everyone. Sometimes things like this need to be highlighted to managers etc to ensure appropriate policies are in place and being followed. At the end of the day, someone is being paid to do a job and it sounds like they aren't really doing that. It affects everybody if slackers are being paid and getting away with being lazy.
If you do approach managers, do it in the way of clarifying appointments in work time, TOIL rules etc rather than pointing a finger at a certain member of staff. Hopefully an email will follow reminding people of the rules and flouting will be dealt with.
All offices seem to have a shirker, fortunately the one in mine ended up being made redundant - she thought 25 years service would protect her......!

I have had jobs where I have had toil and jobs where I haven't but have never come across a situation where you could stay 15 minutes late and claim it. I'm a civil servant now and could only accrue toil if my manager had agreed that I needed to work extra hours. I've been there 5 years and this has never happened.

It sounds as if the whole policy needs re-writing.