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?

I had a colleague who use to use their accrued TOIL to take a whole week off and it used to annoy me as it would have an impact on the rest of the team when someone was off for a week or more. We already had a very generous amount of annual leave and part-time staff can often use their bank holidays added up to get another week off. I've always used TOIL for one day at a time only, or for a half day. I think I've worked at places in the past where that was the policy.

Appointments is a bit of a tricky one. I work a 4 day week and have the flexibility to move around my hours or days of work so I always attend appointments in my own time. Full-time staff attend appointments in work time - time they are being paid for - which they don't have to make up. So, I can see why some people would make appointments during work time. I don't have so many GP or dental appointments that it bothers me so prefer a give and take approach with regards to work and know that I can work flexibly to benefit me, so should work flexibly to benefit the rest of the workplace.

It certainly sounds like your colleague is taking advantage if there's not actually extra work that needs doing. If there is consistently extra work to complete and they have the ability to stay late, They'd be better off negotiating a contract with more hours to be worked over 3 days.

MYOB

I hate the view that everyone 'owes' their employer the first 30m or do if extra work unpaid. It adds up to an extra 3 weeks a year. I have no problem stating late when needed, but either I want paying, flexi/toil or informal reciprocity.

I've worked in too many places in the past where flexibility only is to the employer, they pay as little as can be for away with and large amounts of unpaid overtime (ie double digits a week) are expected but they quibble if you will be 15m late because of the drs.

Exactly.

Too many people allow employers to take the piss quite happily, but take offence when employees don't allow it to happen (and even use the system to their advantage).

Let's be honest, employers don't actually care about us and we're all very, very easily replaced. You won't win a medal for using annual leave for all your appointments instead of fitting them in on a Tuesday afternoon.

Every bit her business. If there are cheeky grifters, it impacts everyone. We had a grifter like that in the company before I went solo, freelance - we were all women, apart from our boss, we all pulled our weight - but her? Oh, Toby has a concert, I have to be there, oh, Lucy has a play, I have to attend, and we had to pick up all the stuff after her. This is not on.

I find it interesting that so many posters are happy to call people scammers, grifters and piss-takers, but don't understand that the employer is at fault for allowing it all to be happen in the first place.

I'm gob-smacked that you're gob-smacked by this!
Just managing your toil and not having to account for it has been the case in every place I've worked since my first full time job in 2009 - only I actually can manage to open my mind and understand that other places might do things differently.

"Otherwise everyone could rack up 15 minutes a night by stopping for a chat, washing their coffee mug and retrieving leftover lunch from the fridge!"

Well, yeah, but they could also 'waste' 15 mins at any point in the day doing this if they didn't have TOIL. I'm going to completely blow your mind and tell you that both in my current job and my previous one we could accrue toil even when WFH and travelling for work - so we could say we were working for 30 mins when we were actually cooking tea or watching TV, or saying a journey took 3 hrs because of traffic when it actually only took 2.5, and nobody would know, check or care.

That's why it's for the organisation to put in processes to limit potential piss-taking - as other posters have said, being able to accrue a whole week is very unusual, there are usually limitations to the amount you can accrue before carrying it over.
But the whole point of TOIL/flexitime is that they are benefits - the idea is that the organisation trusts staff to use it responsibly, and for the few that don't it is for their manager to identify and... you know, manage.

It's really not hard to see when the odd person is taking the piss. Managers don't have to scrutinise timesheets. If someone like OP's colleague adds an extra hour every day, and ends up with 20 hours toil that month, it should be obvious for the manager to say 'well your output should be approximately 15% higher than usual, if it isn't, where did the time come from? What were you doing?'

However for the majority of people it doesn't work like that. They have a two hour lunch break to go to an appointment then stay an extra hour late = overall the same amount of hours and the same amount of work done.

Or they stay after work to help with a conference one evening - only takes a second for manager to look over the time sheet and see 'X accrued 4 hours toil on one day - oh yeah that was when she stayed late to work for the conference so worked 12 hrs rather than 8.' Or 'I see everyone on my team accrued 1-2 hours toil a day for the last 2 weeks at the end of march when everyone worked like mad to finalise the year end figures, completely expected.'

I don't allow TOIL to be accrued by my team without business reasons and pre agreed.

We have flexitime in terms of being able to flex your start and end times, work a short day then a long day to accommodate your life, but not to work longer and take a day off.

It only took me asking the first TOIL accruer what they'd done in that time and no one has asked for a flexi day since. I'm in the civil service and it's rife, people working slowly or just "being there" and wanting that time back. It's theft and we've fired people for it before.

What you could do is ask your manager for clarification of the TOIL arrangements rather than dobbing your colleague in, and then ask them to send a reminder to all.

I could have written your post OP.
I am In exactly the same circumstances.
I have been to managers about it ( we’ve had several over the years). They all said they can’t do anything about it and it helps the person ‘cope’ with their workload. They do t want to upset or challenge her about it.
One manager even came to see me and said ‘we need to talk about Janet. They’ve built up a weeks worth of TIL’
I said well you’ve let her! So should be saying that to her!. Manager let her have half the week in the end so as no to upset her.
She then made us both do a timetable of what we do in our working day with a view to saying to Janet where she could have better time management and not need to stay late. Great. 2 months later manager was promoted so back to square one with a new manager.

The point is that if the employer is petty enough to make you clock in and out then employees will be petty enough to use this to their advantage e.g. having breakfast at work, staying longer chatting, etc. It's a normal consequence of such a system.

It sounds a bit fraudulent because she's using her work time to do other things then accruing additional hours when those additional hours she could be using for her own use. Although it is only time it's still taking back from the business something she shouldn't.

We have one of these piss takers at work as well. Weeks worth of TOIL accrued - no idea how. That part of the business run sub optimally because of it and the rest of us pissed off and resentful. They also switch off their phone at 5pm sharp despite their part of the business means that they should be contactable in an emergency. Works from home all the time when their job really requires them on site. Our manager just won't deal with them because the person is bolshie and he is really weak.

You know what? You are absolutely right.

This. I agree the “running personal errands” in work time is the bigger pisstake, especially when only working part-time. It doesn’t sound like she’s making up the time that she’s taking off to do the errands.

Well, two things can be true at the same time. It can be the employer's fault. But the OP is also allowed to be annoyed at it affecting her, so she can complain. Personally I think she and everyone else should start doing the same, and dump colleague in it.

@CinnamonJellyBeans is right in that so many people on here have a 'turn a blind eye' attitude... Maybe they're piss takers too.

The system isn't "set up" for staff to deliberately take 15 mins here and 15 mins there, going on errands when they should be working and makes appointments on workdays (not quite sure what that actually means, but anyway).

These are micro-actions that together add up to petty theft from the employer, playing the system, particularly adding on time in tiny amounts to eventually gain a day off.

the reason the OP doesn't do it is because they have what's called a moral compass and doesn't cheat the system that is put in place to ensure that work is carried out and time worked over and above the contractual hours of employees is honoured by giving that time back, not deliberately (metaphorically) shuffling paper around the desk, doing a job a bit slower to then be able to log and claim back the time.

Flexi time is very much a system that relies on trust, but it's so prone to being fiddled. Like taking a couple of first class stamps from the petty cash tin because nobody knows and the person won't get found out because nobody has the time or visibility to check.

I think your issue is the cover you are having to do when colleagues aren’t there due to sickness and time in leiu. That’s why you’re irritated and that’s what you can go to your manager about. How can your colleagues nor working be managed better do you are not carrying the load.

What do you foresee ops manager doing given that the colleague isn't doing anything that's wrong or would justify a discipline?

The only way this gets redeemed is that the team loses their option to work flexibly and everyone needs to be micromanaged. Why should the rest of the team suffer because op has a bee in her bonnet over someone who's essentially playing the system in a way that the system allows.

Common practice when I worked in a local authority. One of the worst was an early bird martyr that would come in at 7.30am when no one else did, pay her bills, have her breakfast and then read the paper and left early every Friday to do her other job.
Others would eat lunch at their desk, not answer calls during that period then claim they’d not had a lunch break.
Wouldn’t particularly bother me, but some of the worst offenders where absolutely pre occupied with what others where claiming and doing when they where in work. Absolutely toxic place and their behaviour created a horrible presenteeism work ethic, where a lot of staff weren't actually doing anything, but sitting in an office trying to accrue toil.
Not a fault of flexi time, just piss poor managers that couldn’t manage

As her manager, you have every right to call her out on this bad behaviour. Wait … you aren’t? Are you working extra hours because of her? Do you have equity in the company?

If not, none of your business. Snitches get stitches.

Also it depends on the nature of work IMO.
In mine each role has two patterns. Ordinary 9-5 don't get TOIL. We just need to get things done in the time available. On busy periods we work loads and when it's quiet (summer/Christmas) we can get away with not doing much.

We are very output driven.... If someone does personal errands etc during work time but can accomplish the same output , good for them. If not, they'll get pulled up on output never time.

On-call has TOIL where every minute is accounted for but we have full incident and audit logs, so people can't make up reasons for TOIL.

It really depends on the nature of the work. TOIL IMO promotes piss-taking and the creation of unnecessary 'work' in complex output driven roles. It's perfectly acceptable for 'presence'/'output per unit time' roles like retail

Firstly I don't agree that the system "allows" what the colleague has admitted to doing. What's more they're pretty clueless blabbing about it with a colleague.

secondly, it entirely depends on the Policy wording relating to flexi time / TOIL and whether there is anything mentioned about breach of policy and what constitutes said breach. Probably something like "if the employee is found to be inaccurately stating their hours worked, they may have the right to TOIL withdrawn temporarily, indefinitely or permanently depending on the severity

thirdly, the OP has heard the colleague describing what they do intentionally, and the OPs instinctively know that doesn't sound right.

in the OPs shoes I would talk informally to their manager, who will then decide whether they choose to take further action. That's their choice, not mine.

of course the other colleagues don't need to lose their right to TOIL, they've done nothing wrong. The colleague who chooses to play the system stands the risk of having Flexi withdrawn, Its like sick leave, there are patterns and trends that can be detected, so in the case of this colleague if they are logging 15 or 20 min additional time on a regular basis, it isn't exactly difficult to detect a trend.

But regardless of all that, it's still the job of the manager/employer to know what their employees are doing and to pick up on whether these "micro actions" amount to piss-taking or an appropriate use of the flex-time policy in place.

If an employee is constantly taking the piss (and this lady may well be) then it's a poor manager who hasn't realised and who has allowed it to happen at the expense of their other employees.

That being said, I do find MN to be rather rigid when it comes to work ethics and "moral compasses" - in real life, I know very few people who don't occasionally take the piss at work, whether it's having a longer lunch on a Friday, or faffing around having a 20 minute chat by the kettle, or just taking the long walk back from the post office to spend more time out in the sunshine on a nice day.

If she can do it and get away it, I’d start doing the same thing. Offer to stay late to ‘help’ with whatever work she’s pretending to do 😂you’ll have a nice week off accrued by January. If your manager’s don’t seem to care/notice, then play that to your advantage.

It's only 'taking the piss' if it directly affects other people - like your teammates workloads.

All the other stuff you mentioned doesn't harm anybody, in fact it helps the company by having happy, productive staff. And chatting with colleagues builds relationships. Especially in thinking roles. I always find the solution to a problem comes more easily when I've had a good break. And I can get things done much more quickly because I know the right people, thanks to all my time erm 'wasted' having a chat.

As @daisychain01 pointed out the bigger issue is, a lot of Flexi etc realises on goodwill/give and take. When people take the piss , managers bring in rigidity as a result. Depending on the situation trying to 'manage' a single person results in claims of unfair treatment etc with these kinds of people, so it's easier to have a blanket policy.