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?

TOIL can be stealing company time. I think everyone should be able to raise it to their manager. Your work hours are your contracted time. Extra hours do not automatically belong to you. It is a form of fraud to create extra work to either be paid for it or paid in time off. It is still stealing if it’s not genuine. Common mistake that people think TOIL is something that belongs to you - it doesn’t, it is time outside of your contract and needs to be agreed with your manager

As frustrating as it can be, these types of people are in most work places. Yes, she's playing a game, staying over 15 mins everyday to take a whole week off later in the year, as well as running errands through the day - but what can you do? Her manager knows she is doing it and is ok with it.

The only thing you can do is disengage from her, any of her work that can be left until after her holiday, leave it for her to get back and don't make life easy for her where possible, if she asks you to pick up any tasks, just say you can't. If you don't have to do any of this for her, then it's not impacting you anyway so don't give it any headspace.

Time off in Lieu

If you’re not busy enough to be able to accrue TOIL, then you can cope with someone in the team being off work for leave or AA. It seems to me so often that folk are just unwilling to do anything out of their narrow set of routined deliverables. Frustrating.

Time Off In Lieu IE you have to work additional hours but you don't get pay but extra leave!

I'd stay out but you're right. We are allowed max 1.5 days TOIL in a 28 day cycle. We are also not allowed to build up any of that time at home (it is monitored too); additionally TOIL is discretionary- if it were a busy week or anything important happening, it would be rejected. This person is profiteering from poor management.

None of your business...

People are allowed to take toil, go on leave or to be off sick.

You are not the team manager either.

There's no way your petty rules would work in an IT department.

I've worked for plenty of good IT businesses and departments where there were similar controls around TOIL that seemed to work well.

But they also paid decent salaries, paid overtime, gave decent training and had good opportunities to work with new technology - and that really helps smooth the way. It's also a lot less disruptive than shed loads of TOIL meaning changes are done OOH but then there are limited people around in hours to handle the occasional fallout.

We’ve all worked with these people.

We have (yes still have) one member of staff who would take 2 lunches, an hour each, then breaks and then claim overtime after 5! Utter joke.

They still work at the company and overtime is banned as the budget has been spent (on them claiming the hours)

In my company you can only take 10 hours of overtime with you to the next month, the rest gets paid. If you are doing night- or weekend shifts, it add up quickly, but staying late 15 to 30 minutes past closing time can't be that much in total. Furthermore, whenever I am in the office I either leave before rushhour or I stay late so I won't be stuck in traffic. If my employer wants me in the office they can deal with the consequences of that, because it also impacts my free time. Thankfully, we have a good back and forth with management.

But I gotta say, the posters here saying that people should just lose the overttime they worked or people can't even take time off because they are so understaffed, really baffle me. It's the sign of a bad employer, surely, that you can't take time off ever and that the sickleave days and turnover rate are through the roof. That would be a massive red flag for me and a strong sign to look for employment elsewhere.

I think you’re missing the point which is that they’re deliberately ‘working’ (unnecessary) short blocks over their contracted hours in order to build up extra leave. Not that anyone else needs to or is refusing to work over their hours.

It also doesn’t follow that if people aren’t having to work extra hours the business can afford the additional time off. Maybe they got their staffing model right in the first place.

How would it be fair for me to work Friday evening and all day Saturday and Sunday (12+hours on occasion) only to be told that I can only claim back 8 hours and that I'm not free to use the hours as I wish?

I can see how those rules might work in an admin team, but it's just not practical for an IT Department - especially if the company doesn't want to pay overtime. The work simply wouldn't get done.

If you have a proper TOIL system then you long the actual hours you work.

So you can take a 2 hour lunch and then stay late to make the time up that day or even accrue more for another long lunch.

We had core hours 10-12 and then 2-4 beyond that as long as deadlines were hit and you didn't go over 2 days TOIL all was good.

People who abused it lost the right to have TOIL.

Check your policy - and maybe google to se other company policies online to maybe be able to suggest some amendments.

I instigated some changes where TOIL or overtime was acceptable but only after having a quick check with me prior so I knew whet to expect. We also have a policy that you can only carry over 8 hours to the next month - but I’m happy for people to use the TOIL up within the month it occurs - meaning it is being taken round about the time it is being worked. Therefore trying to avoid burnout.

There is flexibility where someone may work hours at the very end of the month and so they don’t lose their hours. But as I am kept informed I can make sure this little blips are looked after.

I am also flexible when it comes to appts, family emergencies etc for my team of 21. In most cases as I am reasonable they will always make sure where they can the missing time is made up without me even having to ask. It pays dividends back when I require them on the rare occasion to be flexible too.

however the worst thing for a team is when one person doesn’t play fair and the others have to cover or can see the unfairness when they themselves are good workers. Then the rot sets in.

I would get the policy, check it and then if you can see abuse the best way to handle it might be a word with your manager. Not dobbing in the staff member but discussing your concerns on capacity and covering holidays at a time when there is also issues re sickness.

Faced with the prospect of having to maybe manage or prioritise work being done and other work not being covered your manager might step up.

It seems we have two things going on here.

1 - Someone working beyond their contracted hours and getting time off in compensation. This, by itself, is entirely fair - and a lot of employees would do well if this sort of thing was more easily available.

2 - Someone (actually the same person) slacking off during the working day and not doing as much work as they should. This is not fair and it would be legitimate to be raised as a complaint. But it's strictly speaking a distinct issue from the TOIL one.

I don't side with the "none of your business" people, at least not in relation to issue no. 2. People are entirely entitled to raise grievances against their lazy colleagues when it negatively impacts on their own work.

It is though because it affects her when she is off.

When I was much younger, I worked for a v small company (6 of us). As soon as the director went out, the other 2 people who should be answering calls both made long personal calls (I'm talking over an hour sometimes) which meant that I had to answer all the calls. This was before email, so there were a lot of calls.

I really wish that I had said something, but I was too young.

Can’t you see that yours is a totally different situation? If it’s business need, that’s entirely different to someone staying late every day through choice ‘finishing work’ because they’ve been titting about through the day / have poor time management skills / just want to accrue hours to get an extra week off.

This

This is a management issue. Surely her manager has to sign the toil off and is aware of it? So if it is a shit manager they are unlikely to refuse it or go higher up.

We can't accrue TOIL without prior manager approval. Seems like there isn't a policy or if there is she is abusing it. Maybe just have a chat with your manager about the TOIL policy for your own information and then you can work out whether she's being a CF or not.

Do you even work in the Civil Service @MuchasSmoochas ? Or just decided to have a swipe. In my dept it is taken seriously and people have been sacked for that sort of fraud.

Thats amazing (8 weeks annual leave!) And outrageous (ita jaw drippingly shameless) in equal parts

Its also one of a billion examples of "this is why we can't have nice things"

Some people are the worst

I manage a team and overtime(for TOIL) has to be approved. It doesn’t necessarily have to be approved in advance because sometimes events need to be dealt with unexpectedly (rarely in our industry but sometimes). However I wouldn’t be approved frequent overtime for day to day tasks. I’d be having a chat about workload and what someone had on their plate that could be deprioritised or shared.

Having said that we also operate flexi time, so assuming you won’t miss a meeting or commitment, someone is perfectly at liberty to arrive 30 minutes earlier, pop to the post box or do an errand for 30mins and that doesn’t need approval. You can’t though do this for large amounts of time. It’s clearly defined.

Perhaps you need to discuss with your manager the overtime and flexi time policies more generally.

Why is her line manager not noticing the TOIL? I wouldn’t approve this for my direct report unless it was a particularly busy week with events etc. Don’t say what she told you but just ask about the TOIL policy. You don’t know what she has discussed / told her line manager and you could end up looking the bad one here.

Check the policy first.