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?

Where I work you're not allowed to work anything less than 30 mins to build up TOIL. And you have to have it agreed first. She's taking the piss & it is your business if it impacts you

To be honest, I'm not sure how your TOIL rules work in your IT department, if it means you're hardly there during normal working hours.

To the OP, I think TOIL procedures require a degree of honesty from everyone involved, or they create a really bad work atmosphere where people are unwilling to make an effort, because they suspect other people are taking the mickey.

Does your workplace have any sort of way to raise concerns to management anonymously? I would make a general comment to management that you felt the TOIL rules weren't being applied fairly, and that procedures could do with being tightened up-, so that there wasn't the temptation to exploit them.

Everyone who says it does not affect the OP, I disagree.

Quantitatively, she has to cover some of pisstaker's duties when she is having stolen time off, so this is extra work, possibly to the detriment of her own work

Quantitatively it affects the morale of the team: when you're working hard and seeing your team-member wilfully slacking for the same reward, it feels bad and encourages resentment, reduces harmony and the good-will needed to make the company run smoothly.

This idea that we should steal time from our employers, just because we can is definitely becoming more prevalent in UK society. We're all protected by laws to stop employer abuse of our time, so why on earth do the wrong thing, just because we "can"?

The pisstaker is no better than a shoplifter, who steals because she "can". When I go to the supermarket, I experience unwanted scrutiny: the doorman, the cameras, the bloody till asking a million times if that's really my own plastic bag. The stupid one way exit path. This is due to people who just take without paying, forcing the rest of us to put up with security measures that we don't need.

People like the OPs work colleague steal from their employer and cause the rest of us to be subjected to infantilising rules at work, like clocking in and out, appraisals, performance management, medical evidence for a rare day off and the withdrawal of working from home, so you can be monitored closely in the office.

To have her TOIL approved the way she is, management have to be aware of what's happening - so I'm not sure how she's taking the piss?

Surely the issue is the management or the workplace in general for allowing the situation in the first place?

Give it a rest OP and stop obsessing over what others do and get on with your own job. Or ask your manager for more work if you have time to get funny about what your colleagues are doing.

Get a grip 😂

@CinnamonJellyBeans surely the employer is at fault for allowing this kind of thing to happen in the first place, though? Employees can only take the piss where the system allows them to do so.

"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. "

This is your problem. Your management is not dealing with leave absence properly. Either you are under staffed or something is being badly managed. You should be able to cope with people being on planned leave.

What this woman is doing with toil is a normal consequence of flexible working and clocking in imo.

Some places have a flexi time system so you wouldn't need approval.

"We're all protected by laws to stop employer abuse of our time"

Oh really? Why do so many people do unpaid overtime then?

In order to build up a week’s worth of toil by staying 15 minutes late every day, she’d have to do it for about 6 months would she not?

That doesn't stop it from being a management issue.

I don't think @CinnamonJellyBeans needs to get a grip. She's spot on and explained it much better than I can.
You can really spot the piss takers on this thread. It's not about "working to live" it's about having a sense of pride in what you do not being proud you've scammed your employer out of 2 hours a week.

How is it "scamming your employer" if it's something you're allowed to do under their own policies?

If an employer can't be bothered to monitor someone's hours and how much TOIL they're taking - that's a management issue, not an employee one.

People can only take the piss where the system allows them to.

Are you all allowed to run errands in work time, work 15 minutes late, then accrue that time?

I would wait until it actually impacted me (eg when she's off) then I would raise it as an issue. Alternatively I would tackle it directly with her.

This used to be a huge problem in one team I worked for in the NHS. To be fair, the NHS as an employer has been dependent on goodwill from all staff for years now, but loads of us in admin regularly worked an additional 30 mins a day - in an outpatient setting, you can't lock up and leave if there are still patients there or reports that have to go off urgently, or a patient on the phone.

Loads of people had lists of 15 mins here, 30 minutes there, and it was so frequent that people were accruing loads of extra time.

However, eventually it became so problematic that the manager (who wasn't great to be fair) stopped TOIL unless it was agreed in advance.

Paying overtime wasn't an option so she asked everyone do a time and motion study for two weeks to get down on paper how efficiently people were managing their workloads, where the stress points were and whether there were specific times that were more likely to accrue overtime. She then introduced amended start and end times for the day (like a mini shift system) to cover the hours where people were accruing all the TOIL.

It sorted the problem and also put a stop to the deliberate misuse of the system.

In another department I worked in, a colleague had accrued a huge amount of TOIL - constantly 'rushed off her feet'. The manager was telling me 'Oh, Mrs X is here at 7am every day just to keep on top of things!'.

I asked Mrs X why she was coming in so early and why she didn't speak to management about the excessive workload she obviously had; she admitted that her husband left for work very early and rather than get the bus, she used to get a lift with him - getting dropped off at 7am. Nothing to do with workload (although she was busy) but no-one in management had ever bothered asking why she came in so early - they took everything she said at face value.

It is your business.

She made it your business by telling you in her own words that she is knowingly cheating the system.

in our organisation that behaviour is gross misconduct and the response is dismissal for breaching HR Policy relating to Flexi leave.

you are absolutely within your rights to report her to her manager. Say what I've said above, that she has admitted it to you of her own volition, you didn't force her to say anything. They can then take appropriate action. It would be very poor management to know this and not act on it.

Well, I don't know. If you have such a flexitime system, you basically have to be present at core hours and otherwise can do what you want within that system. Doesn't sound like the pp is breaking those rules, just maybe the spirit of them.

That's my point, though.

If the system is set up to allow what OP's colleague is doing, then she's not scamming anyone or taking the piss, she's just doing what she's allowed to do - and OP could do the same if she wanted.

OP says herself it's her own conscience that stops her doing the same, rather than it being something that's technically not allowed.

"I asked Mrs X why she was coming in so early and why she didn't speak to management about the excessive workload she obviously had; she admitted that her husband left for work very early and rather than get the bus, she used to get a lift with him - getting dropped off at 7am. Nothing to do with workload (although she was busy) but no-one in management had ever bothered asking why she came in so early - they took everything she said at face value."

But what was the actual problem here? She was coming in at 7 and not leaving early, was busy during that time and therefore accrued TOIL.
If she was deliberately pretending to work during a graveyard time before her actual working hours, that would be a different matter.

Yes, so there's no problem is there?

She's already told op that she deliberately makes appts for working days.
Yes I agree it's a management issue.

I never said there was

Maybe she doesn't want to go into detail about her appointments - lots of clinics only run on certain days so you don't necessarily have a choice.

Or maybe she does take the piss and book them on work days - in which case that's (again) something management needs to address.

I worked in a place once where 1 minute of TOIL would count. To get in and out of the building you just a swipe card, which will be linked to your flexi account. So if you left the building 10 minutes early it would go down by 10 minutes, the opposite if you left 15 minutes late. Adjustments could be made manually if you were going to a external work meeting, or I guess if you knew you bumped into a friend on the way out and spent 15 minutes chatting. But in the absence of adjustments it would just tick along. I rarely stayed particularly late, but wouldn't clockwatch, would finish tasks etc, and the tiny bits really added up. I'd be regularly reminded take my toil.

If there genuinely isn't enough work, then it just sounds like she's taking advantage a bit though.