Hours of *work* - what's your view (slightly lighthearted debate)

RosaBernicia

For me it kind of depends what you mean by contracted hours and the reason for them. My current job is not customer facing and my team know I am always available by mobile, so I quite often work 10 - 6.30 ish so that I get quiet time to finish up in the evening. If I need to travel for a meeting or set up for an event I may well start out before 7 and work into the evening. So it's not about being present in one place 9 -5. I just make sure that I work my agreed total hours and I don't include time I know I spent faffing or tidying. I do include time that I have worked when I would otherwise have been free to do as I wished eg. travel, working lunches or dinners with contacts.

However, when the main focus of your job is being there on the phone or on email ready for when people expect office functions covered, or on shift when other people are also working to a set time, then it IS a priority for you to be available at those hours and I would expect people to be ready. I wouldn't necessarily expect people to be set up in advance of their start time, as some systems can take time to open up etc, but in that case I'd set their hours for appropriate set-up time eg. 0845 in and working, 0900 open for business (and that means set-up of the work system not the kettle).

Re. sloping off, it does get noticed, and yes minimum effort gets you minimum reward. I have little patience with people fussing over staying 10 mins past their usual departure when I have worked 20 extra hours in the same week trying to keep their job in existence.

Rosa xx

Wellery82

GothicStirling wrote: »

That's quite sad.

Having been a manager, I can tell you someone with that attitude is that last person on my list for extra hours and promotion opprtunities [last year I took a waitress on £6.10 an hour and promoted her to assistant manager on a salary of £18,000]

If she had had the same attitude, minimum effort equals £7,000 a year difference in wage.

I tend to agree with this, not that it is a requirement for people, but that sometimes having a different attitude gives you those lucky breaks in life. If you are hard working, friendly, customer focused and hold a positive attitude, then it lends itself to giving you breaks in your career. It may not be where you are working but someone you work with may move on and offer you a job with them down the line, whatever it may be.

As an example when i was a student i worked in a restaurant chain that employed part time pot washers on minimum wage. One of these individuals worked so hard and efficently he was given the chance to help out the chefs in a very junior role. Every time he turned up he would have a smile on his face, and would make sure he got in 15 minutes early, and stayed until his job was finished etc. Anyway he carried on his good attitude and to cut a long story short ended up as head chef at the restaurant, before moving to a really good establishment. This was all from his attitude

thunderb0lt

Where I work, the core hours are 09:00 - 17:00 but we have a flexi system so have to clock in/out. The other thing is we have to record everthing we do in my department and this is recorded into a spreadsheet which calculates the effiency of the worker which in turn has an eefect on any pay rise.

DCFC79

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

I thought it was the other way round, ie the closer you live, the later you are ...

Was certainly the case when I had to get the boys to primary school, we lived very close but were always late! When the head spoke to me about it and said I might have the EWO on my doorstep, I said I'd be delighted to show her what I was battling against at home!

yes your right, no idea where that came from,

Print_Screen

I think it depends on the organisation. My hours are 9-5, in fact this is the only job I have ever had with such short hours, I actually believed that they ceased to exist.

But anyway I am usually in at 8:40 and leave after 5. I used to stay later and continue to take calls. As I work in internal IT people expected me to then be there later and later after 5 to help them.

Until they used to call me at 5:50 on Friday nights asking me to help fix their "urgent" problems as they totted off home.
Apparently although the problem was "super urgent" they were too busy to let me work on their PC during the day. :think:

My colleague told me to just turn off the phone after 5 which was good advice.
This is what I do and deal with the voicemails in the morning.

Although now people have started to chance it and come into the room after 5 asking me to start fixing problems.

I have no issue working after 5 to finish something I started before but I am not going to start something that may take a few hours to resolve at 5. C
Coming into my office as I am not answering the phone will only lead me to leaving exactly at 5

RosaBernicia

Jimavfc82 wrote: »

I tend to agree with this, not that it is a requirement for people, but that sometimes having a different attitude gives you those lucky breaks in life. If you are hard working, friendly, customer focused and hold a positive attitude, then it lends itself to giving you breaks in your career. It may not be where you are working but someone you work with may move on and offer you a job with them down the line, whatever it may be.

Very true - I got one of my roles via the operations manager I used to deal with occasionally. I had already handed in my notice for my old job, went to bend his ear about a few things that frustrated me, since there was no reason to keep quiet any more... and was asked to interview for a higher paid role in his new department

Rosa xx

LadyMissA

Hootie19 wrote: »

We had a "heated debate" in the office today, and so I thought I'd ask here and canvass others' opinions.

If, for example, your contracted hours are 9.00am to 5.00pm, what time would you expect to be seated at your desk (or place of work) and what time would you expect to leave?

I seem to be in the minority in thinking that I should be sat at my desk, ready to begin work at 9am and that I should start to pack up and clear away at 5pm. My colleagues believe that as long as they are in the building at 9am, that's acceptable, and that they should start to pack up their desks at about 4.45pm, ready to be out of the building at 5pm.

My argument is that my contracted *hours of work* are 9 to 5, not my contracted hours of *being in the building* are 9 to 5.

So - whose side of the argument do *you* come down on?

I say you are at the desk with the PC on at about 8.55 and you do not turn it off till 5pm as these are your hours.

I know people who used to get to work at 8.30 which looked good and they would sit there reading the paper till way after 9am where as I got there at 8.55 and was ready working and that looked bad but these people would be out the door dead on 5pm and nothing said

tattycath

When my hours are 9-5 I am always in about 20 minutes early so i have time for a cuppa and still be at my desk ready to work at 9, and i don't start preparing to leave until 5. If i am ever half way through a task when it's time to leave, i usually stay until the task is completed.
Similarly when a shop advertises opening hours at say 6am-10pm I don't expect them to open late and close early. I went to a shop tonight-it is supposed to shut at 10pm. I opened the door at 9.55pm and an assistant said, 'Excuse me we're closing' I only wanted 1 item so she let me continue. I used to shop in a certain shop-mentioning no names- and i discovered my local branch was closing early several days a week, the alleged excuse was that if it was quiet the shopkeeper saw no sense in staying open-I stopped buying from them and now go somewhere more reliable.

claire16c

In my last place of work the hours were 9-5, but in that line of work, that often didn't happen and there was no overtime or flexi pay, but it was the nature of the business and you either accept it or dont do it. On Monday mornings you had to be in at 8, and most people were in the office by 8.30/45 the rest of the week, if I ever got in at 9 I felt like I was late.

Then if we had important meetings or whatever some weeks, we could routinely be in the office til 6 or 7, a couple of times I was there til 8.

We had to fill a time sheet in on the computer but I dont know what was the point, apart from recording holiday time, because you got paid the same whatever hours you did.

But then I once heard that one woman had been doing really long hours for weeks on end and they told her not to record it on the computer as that, because it was breaking the law!

Personally though, I left at 5 unless there was something that actually needed doing. I wasn't going to be a lemon who just sat there gone 5, just for the sake of it. I got my work done, and thought it showed I had better time keeping skills. Some of the people who worked late every single day, was most likely because they were chatting all day, not because they actually were working harder.

Savvy_Sue

tattycath wrote: »

Similarly when a shop advertises opening hours at say 6am-10pm I don't expect them to open late and close early. I went to a shop tonight-it is supposed to shut at 10pm. I opened the door at 9.55pm and an assistant said, 'Excuse me we're closing' I only wanted 1 item so she let me continue. I used to shop in a certain shop-mentioning no names- and i discovered my local branch was closing early several days a week, the alleged excuse was that if it was quiet the shopkeeper saw no sense in staying open-I stopped buying from them and now go somewhere more reliable.

The thing is, many shops don't want to pay staff for the NECESSARY time required for opening and closing checks: they want the store opened at 9 am, so they pay from 9 am, which means staff need to be in by 8.45 am in order to get the floats out etc, and then they aren't supposed to start cashing up etc before the shop shuts at 6 pm, and that can take half an hour or more, but the staff are only being paid for the hours the shop is open.

I think that staff should be ready to work at the start of their working day, BUT I think employers should be sensible about what time staff need to start work in order to be ready to greet the Great British Public at a particular time.