15 Minutes expected before you begin

[ThatPearlkitty]

Inspired by another thread but a separate topic when eg the role is 9 to 5 paid hourly then why do some employers want people eg 15 mins before your actual start time why dont they pay for your time before then, yes i understand most roles is necessary eg coat, get ready for the day etc but then its free labour ?

Exactly.
I start at 9 and arrive about 8.52 usually. It doesn't take me 15 minutes to take my coat off and log in - I'm not a sloth. If they wanted me in free of charge at 8.45 I'd have had to decline the job.

Are you for real? You expect the employer to pay for you to hang up your coat, get a coffee/tea, etc etc? A 9am start means ready to work at 9am. Not 9.15

Yes if they mandate it of course.

It’s illegal to steal time from employees and an employer can be fined for doing this, regardless of the NMW or not

If you have to be logged on by 9am and not a minute later, then your employer has to start paying before 9am.

I cannot see how an employer insisting a member of staff has to arrive 15 minutes before their start time would not count as paid working time.

If it is more like a suggestion from the employer and nobody gets into hot water for arriving at their start time, then maybe that is Ok.

When I worked in a shop as a teenager (around 2010) we were only paid in 15 minute periods. We were expected on the shop floor 10 minutes before our shift for a briefing and they always kept us all almost 15 minutes after our shifts in which time the whole shop had to be cleaned - all unpaid. They even used to lock us in so that we couldn’t leave at the time our shift finished, a colleague once had to call the police before the manager would let him out despite his shift having finished!

After I left at 18 I found out the manager was fired for skimming our wages even further but the company never rectified the discrepancies.

I'm paid by the hour. It's required we're there 15 minutes before we open (shop) but I get paid the moment I get clocked in and it stops the minute I clock out.
I've worked in other jobs where I only get paid by the hours I'm contracted to but required to be there earlier. It makes sense to be there well before time, however I didn't do any actual work until my contracted hours.

almost every single place I’ve worked you have to be logged on for 9am and none of them have paid
problem is those types of jobs you question it and you’re immediately replaced (call centre)

the place I work now I have to be logged on for 9am but as it only takes a few mins, and all my breaks and lunch are paid, I don’t mind as much

My teenage DD is expected to arrive 5 mins before her shift starts for a quick briefing and to stay until the shop is cleared up ready for the next day, doors locked until they are all let out BUT she gets paid the minute she steps into the shop until the minute she leaves (minus break time if she’s working a longer shift). I imagine there must have been grievances/tribunals in the past but it all seems quite fair now for her.
I wfh most of the time and count my working hours from the minute I switch my computer on. When I go into the office it’s the same — switch on and say hi to everyone as it boots up but that is still work.

IMO the message should be 'You have to be working by [contracted start time], please arrive in time to do whatever you need to do beforehand to make that possible.' Where I do think the boundary gets blurred is that a lot of employers who practise this know full well a lot of people just get straight down to work and they can squeeze a few minutes' unpaid work out of them each morning, which all adds up.

I worked shop floor and you were expected to out on shop floor ready for morning briefing at ten to. Even though we all started on the hour. And then expected to stay behind fifteen minutes after close to tidy up. Paid until close. These were explicit expectations. In a job that was very much about being there for specific hours. I don't mind when stuff runs over occasionally, but this was just a way not to pay for our hours.

It's a bit different in a salaried office job.

I don't think employers can stipulate it needs to be 8:45 for a 9 am start but they can ask that you are at your desk and ready to work by 9 am.

They can deliberately instigate a 'culture', though and 'make it known' what the management like to see in people they consider for promotions. Just as exploitative, but nothing is ever written down.

I’m so glad I’m not as militant as a lot of the posters on here. I have been given the opportunity to do my dream job within my current company - I wouldn’t have had a chance if I had an attitude like some

You ask your manager “is logging onto my computer etc part of my job role?” When they answer yes, you tell them you will continue to do it their time not yours then.

Petty employers like this destroy goodwill from staff. Most people are happy enough to come in, make a cup of tea, have a chat, log on, and maybe start working a few minutes early.

Once you start trying to enforce legally unenforceable unpaid work, you get staff working to rule.

And petty employees are why employers have to make rules

No you can't. Plenty of us don't piss about on company time and don't need to be treated like naughty children by our employers.

Is it just you being done a massive favour by them, then? Do you not bring a great deal of knowledge, skill and experience that they will equally hugely benefit from?

Actually it’s a mixture of both - I’m mid 50s and have no working experience of the role and therefore wouldn’t have been able to get a similar role elsewhere but because I made myself visible in a good way, I was given the opportunity.

They gain someone keen and willing to go the extra mile and I gain my only opportunity to move into this type of role

following rules and laws is now militant...righty ho

Im sure if I took a chocolate bar - just a small one from the counter of a shop each day for free as a member of staff, management wouldn't mind as it gives them chance to show loyalty to the employee and would be a nice attitude to have. Any company not allowing this type of behaviour would be militant

Depends on the job I guess.
However, I used to work for a large insurers who insisted we come in 15mins before our official start time so that we could boot up an ancient, creaking IT system that they refused to spend money updating, regularly crashed, and looked like something on the old BBC Basics we used at primary school in the 80s. So I had to use unpaid time to make up for a lack of investment and upgrading of their own in house tech. I did resent that.

the expectation is that staff are ready to start work at their contracted time and not walking in the door at 9am, hanging up their coat making a coffee and finally sitting down at 915

I don't understand why so many posters suggest logging in and logging off should happen outside of the paid working hours.

I need to be ready to do work things. Logging in and off is an essential work thing, as is restarting computer or putting things away when clean desk policy is in play.

When I worked with a complicated set of remote connections, it took 10 minutes to get through it all. It wasn't my personal hobby, it was my work.

Tbf the more people with your attitude, the better. It makes the rest of us look reasonable 🤣

I used to work in a place (local government) where start time was 8.30am (no flexi) but had to be logged in, ready to take the first call at 8.30am. I and some colleagues would arrive by 8am to ensure we had toilet, coffee, chit chat, logged in to the many applications etc and then some would walk in dead on 8.30am and do the whole toilet, coffee, chat, logging in after all that and was nearer 9am before they 'started' used to annoy me so much but manager wouldn't do anything. The other end of the day we were expected to stay logged in until 5pm. If the phone rang at 4.59pm and 30 secs then we had to take it and could be almost 5.45pm by the time we logged off. I used various tricks to not get that 4.59 phone call, I got caught out a couple of times but managed to get away with it with a made up work I was doing. No longer there now but its still the same apparently!