Help please disciplinary re clocking in times

bestpud

tinkerbell84 wrote: »

Is that where they swipe their cards?? :eek:

(sorry - couldn't resist )

Eww!! You always get one...

I bet MollyJoe feels like sticking it up someone's arris at times - I know I would with management like that! :rotfl:

MollyJoe

We all want to avoid a D.H.

Bad time keeping is not something I or my colleagues would want to be known for.

My original question was how much time can they stipulate we must be clocked in before we are actually paid to start work?

What would be a reasonable amount of time? i.e the 30 seconds to walk to the desk and then 90 seconds to power up would seem reasonable.

At the end of the week they did but at the beginning they thought 60 seconds was (8.29am originally briefed), what will they deem reasonable next week.

Thank you

Soubrette

I used to work in a call centre and we were required to log onto our computer at least 5 minutes before our start times.

We sat anywhere and so were required for health and safety reasons to make our chosen workstation of that evening suitable for our height etc but still were expected to be ready to take calls at the start of the shift ie if the shift started at 8.30 - you were ready to take any calls at that time.

As adjusting chairs/monitors etc were actually a requirements of the job then I always felt it was unreasonable.

We were also expected to take calls right to the end of our shift, leading to a few minutes over each shift too.

In return they had a massive turnover of staff - my intake was about 30 and after 3 years only 3 were left (3 weeks intensive training plus ongoing training through-out - utterly wasted), the best of them left very quickly. Staff were also unwilling to be flexible in return.

Poor managers get the employees they deserve I'm afraid

Sou

jumpycheese1

How stupid can your employer be? I don't how many people start work at the same time as you, but if 20 people clocked in for 8:30am will take more than 1 min to clock in.

If you clocked in at 8:29:01am and you get disciplined for that - that is pathetic!

jumpycheese1

There are some people I have worked with do not understand the meaning of timekeeping. This means you should be ready to start work at 10:00, 11:00 etc, not enter the building at that time.
Soubrette, I worked in call centres and it takes an age to sign into the computer, open up the relevant applications etc. We were told NOT to switch off the base units as they will take longer to log in than those computers that have been switched on all night.
These people who swanned in at the time they were supposed to take calls always were 15 mins late as were chatting to the other late colleagues. They only lasted 5 mins either they got the sack or quit.

Soubrette

jumpycheese1 wrote: »

There are some people I have worked with do not understand the meaning of timekeeping. This means you should be ready to start work at 10:00, 11:00 etc, not enter the building at that time.
Soubrette, I worked in call centres and it takes an age to sign into the computer, open up the relevant applications etc. We were told NOT to switch off the base units as they will take longer to log in than those computers that have been switched on all night.
These people who swanned in at the time they were supposed to take calls always were 15 mins late as were chatting to the other late colleagues. They only lasted 5 mins either they got the sack or quit.

Logging on, adjusting chairs, desks, finding footstools etc are all part of your job imo. It is therefore not reasonable to ask you to come in early to do those necessary parts of your job without pay.

It is equally unreasonable to take 15 minutes to log in or to expect to be paid from the minute you walked in the building.

I personally think it is reasonable to expect a 5 minutes time lag between logging on - we had to do it straight away - and being ready to take calls. Obviously my erstwhile employers did too - they just wanted that time for free :mad:

Sou

Incisor

MollyJoe wrote: »

Thank you all

It is simply a time recording - used as a tool to monitor.
We all appreciate that punctuality is important and accept that if we were late then it would need to be addressed.
This isnt an ideal time to be job hunting - quite a few of us to no avail.
We are not paid for overtime - or receive time in lieu - we work as per our contracts - "hours as required".
No we are not allowed to leave 2 minutes early - we are not allowed to switch off the phones / pc until 4.30pm.

Other than joining a union what would we say individually to our manager should we receive the disciplinary meeting.

Liz the Whizz - " its sad" you echo many of our team - I too used the words sad and also pathetic at the trivial depths our manger is sinking to.

This really is easy. You work your contracted hours, they tell you when to turn up, you clock in before that time, they tell you when to go, you clock out after that time. If that is not good enough and they put you up for a hearing for not clocking on by 0828 when you are contracted to be there from 0830, you tell them that they have no jurisdiction over your time, you are giving them the contracted hours and there is nothing to discuss. Yes, it could cause grief, but you can expect petty grief from them all of the time.

CFC

Incisor wrote: »

This really is easy. You work your contracted hours, they tell you when to turn up, you clock in before that time, they tell you when to go, you clock out after that time. If that is not good enough and they put you up for a hearing for not clocking on by 0828 when you are contracted to be there from 0830, you tell them that they have no jurisdiction over your time, you are giving them the contracted hours and there is nothing to discuss. Yes, it could cause grief, but you can expect petty grief from them all of the time.

I think that this is wrong advice and following it could lead to trouble for the OP. The employee is not contracted to be THERE at 8.30, they are contracted to START WORKING at 8.30.

The point being that the employee is required to be ready to start work at that time, seated, coat put away, and pc turned on and with applications open. Desks are 30 seconds walk from the clock in point, no pc boots up and can have applications open in less than 1min 30 seconds. If this went to a tribunal (looking into the dim and distant future) I cannot see that they would believe this to be an unreasonable way of assuring themselves that the employee was ready to work in time.

The employer is choosing to do it via a clocking in system; other ways it could be done are a manager actually eyeballing the pcs and workers at 8.30pm, or pulling actual log in times from the pc.

As for what will seem reasonable next week, it may change of course, because the employer may actually time the process from clocking in to logging on. If the applications take 5 mins to boot up, then you can expect it to become 8:25.

Soubrette, I can understand that the system didn't agree with you; but if you have 100 employees who all take 5 mins to boot their system up, over the course of that 5 minutes you have actually lost 8 hours productive time, or more than one employee for the whole of a working day!

ceridwen

Whew! They ARE being petty arent they - arguing to get seconds of your own time spent on the job. Since they are being so petty - then possibly they might argue that the time (30 seconds?) walking from where you clock in to your p.c. is to come from your own time - but it is absolutely the case that the p.c. wont work unless its booted up and that booting up is "work" and therefore comes in work time.

I must admit that if they were that petty and determined to nip bits and pieces of my own time for nothing - then I would equally carefully take that 2 minutes (or whatever) as being in the loo for longer than I needed to "do the business" on principle. I'd like to see them argue that it took 3 minutes, rather than 5 minutes, to go to the loo - well-known biological fact that women take longer to go to the loo than men by necessity - I dont think we need to start going into details here;) .

I am presuming that this isnt the only way they are being petty - are there any others?

I think they need to mind well the phrase "You get what you pay for".

I have the feeling that they are going to keep running this one and nipping off another minute and another minute etc ad infinitum. Luckily big handbags are the fashion at the moment - a very practical thing too in some respects - big enough to hold a book or newspaper as well as "handbag" things - so, if they get to the stage where they've had you there sitting at your computers for several minutes before the time you are paid to start work - then use that time to sit there reading your own stuff whilst waiting for the p.c. to boot up or whatever. They are only paying you from 8.30am - so make sure your fingers go nowhere near that phone until 8.30am on the dot.

I see you say the majority of your team are at their desks 10-15 minutes early anyways - so if it does take 2 minutes say to boot the p.c. - the employer is not only getting that 2 minutes for free, but another 8-13 minutes as well - so, if someone is at their desk normally 10 minutes early - then thats 50 minutes for free the employer is getting of free labour each week (10 minutes for booting up and another 40 minutes chucked in). This employer doesnt seem to be taking any account of that at all - its all one way.

Incisor

CFC wrote: »

I think that this is wrong advice and following it could lead to trouble for the OP. The employee is not contracted to be THERE at 8.30, they are contracted to START WORKING at 8.30.

The point being that the employee is required to be ready to start work at that time, seated, coat put away, and pc turned on and with applications open. Desks are 30 seconds walk from the clock in point, no pc boots up and can have applications open in less than 1min 30 seconds. If this went to a tribunal (looking into the dim and distant future) I cannot see that they would believe this to be an unreasonable way of assuring themselves that the employee was ready to work in time.

Note this, they are contracted to start work at 0830. That is the beginning of the fulfillment of the contract. When they clock in is not part of the contract, the company are claiming jurisdiction over people during their own [non contracted] time. So as long as people are started by 0830 and clocked in, that is the end of it. The advice is sound. There are no grounds for the company to complain about anyone not clocking in by 0828. [And beyond this, as clocking in is a procedure demanded by the company, it could be argued to be work anyway]

.... Soubrette, I can understand that the system didn't agree with you; but if you have 100 employees who all take 5 mins to boot their system up, over the course of that 5 minutes you have actually lost 8 hours productive time, or more than one employee for the whole of a working day!

If you really buy that line of petty management think, then of course the 2 minutes clocking on across 100 employees amounts to 3 hours 20 minutes stolen from the employees over a working day.

Intelligent management will declare the objective of having work started at 0830 but not be so petty as to dictate to employees what time they should clock on. If they presume to hold disciplinaries about what happens before 0830, then they are presuming that the time is contracted time. It isn't.