Refusing overtime at short notice

Gargatron

I currently work for a fixed salary and so unpaid overtime is something I have to accept, as it is written in my contract that I am expected to work sufficient hours to ensure that my job requirements are met.

However, there are some days where I am asked to stay back for a few hours, or work on a bank holiday or on a weekend but only to be told the day before. Sometimes (not always) there is absolutely no reason for them not to give me several days notice. There is nothing in my contract that says that I am required to be given notice to work overtime, but sometimes it can be extremely frustrating if I have made plans to take the kids out only to let them down at the last minute. Do I have any right to ever say, "Sorry, but I really can't work tonight"?

Jarndyce

No, not if your contract allows your employer to do what they're doing.

If the needs of the business require it, and that is for the employer to decide, then you could be disciplined and even sacked for refusing to follow a reasonable management instruction.

Its difficult to advise without knowing the nature of your business - eg how genuine the need for urgent overtime is - but perhaps the best advice would be for you to mention that it is causing you problems domestically and try and come to some agreement that you will be given say 48 hours notice wherever possible, recognising that exceptionally you can still be called out at short notice.

Only you can know whether by raising it at all, that will have any further ramifications for you.

DVardysShadow

Jarndyce wrote: »

No, not if your contract allows your employer to do what they're doing.

If the needs of the business require it, and that is for the employer to decide, then you could be disciplined and even sacked for refusing to follow a reasonable management instruction.

Its difficult to advise without knowing the nature of your business - eg how genuine the need for urgent overtime is - but perhaps the best advice would be for you to mention that it is causing you problems domestically and try and come to some agreement that you will be given say 48 hours notice wherever possible, recognising that exceptionally you can still be called out at short notice.

Only you can know whether by raising it at all, that will have any further ramifications for you.

This all hinges on 'reasonable'. As I read the OP, it is not reasonable requests as the notice is unreasonably short without good cause. We don't know what OP does or if the work absolutely needs to be done on the day requested. If it does not, then even more reason to consider the requests unreasonable.

Gargatron

I work in Education in the IT department. Sometimes there are problems with servers that absolutely need short notice overtime. But these would not be requests by management, these would be automatically dealt with in my own time by myself as part of my job, I have no problem with these as they actually are urgent.

The types of overtime I do have difficulty with would be staying back a few hours to supervise presentations for parents at a moment's notice or requests made on a Friday afternoon to come in Saturday morning because some builders are in and might need to work around computer cabling. I don't mind (too much) the fact that I have to work overtime, it's the fact that I only get told about it at the last minute.

DCFC79

Gargatron wrote: »

I work in Education in the IT department. Sometimes there are problems with servers that absolutely need short notice overtime. But these would not be requests by management, these would be automatically dealt with in my own time by myself as part of my job, I have no problem with these as they actually are urgent.

The types of overtime I do have difficulty with would be staying back a few hours to supervise presentations for parents at a moment's notice or requests made on a Friday afternoon to come in Saturday morning because some builders are in and might need to work around computer cabling. I don't mind (too much) the fact that I have to work overtime, it's the fact that I only get told about it at the last minute.

Could you as a department not come to an agreement, so sometihng like you each take it in turns to stay behind each week so you cover week 1 etc, and similar thing for weekends so you each do a weekend.

Savvy_Sue

DCFC79 wrote: »

Could you as a department not come to an agreement, so sometihng like you each take it in turns to stay behind each week so you cover week 1 etc, and similar thing for weekends so you each do a weekend.

That's one plan, coupled with being a bit pro-active (OK so maybe you shouldn't have to be!)

Where I work, we in the admin team are a bit better than some of our colleagues at the 'joined up thinking' kind of thing. So they'll plan an event which requires a flipchart, and only wonder a few minutes before it starts where the flipchart lives. We'll be minding our own business and there will be sudden panic: we drop everything and tell them where it should be, only it isn't. And so on. If we'd been asked the day before, we'd have found it then.

The event may be in the diary, but what needs to happen may not be. So if the OP sees a parents evening in the diary, then asking if someone needs to be on hand for any presentations could pre-empt a last-minute request to stay late.

I don't know what systems you have for diaries, but maybe jogging people to think about whether they need a techie on site could be helpful too.

nancy_31

Sometimes, in every work, there is some instances the you need to make some overtime in a short notice. And, if the need of your presence is very important, I think you need to accept the overtime. It is our responsibility to take the duties of our job. When we accept the job, we accept everything that goes with it. So, if you don't like the idea of overtime, better settle it with the employer before you accept the job.

bap98189

Gargatron wrote: »

The types of overtime I do have difficulty with would be staying back a few hours to supervise presentations for parents at a moment's notice or requests made on a Friday afternoon to come in Saturday morning because some builders are in and might need to work around computer cabling. I don't mind (too much) the fact that I have to work overtime, it's the fact that I only get told about it at the last minute.

In my opinion they are taking the pi$$. Yes if a system goes down, it would be reasonable that you have to fix it. But supervising presentations and waiting around in case builders need to move cables are things that are not urgent, and frankly I would refuse to do if the overtime is unpaid.

If I were you I would be looking for another job, or at the very least contacting HR to ask for a definition of what exactly is "reasonable" reasons for overtime.

Jarndyce

DVardysShadow wrote: »

This all hinges on 'reasonable'. As I read the OP, it is not reasonable requests as the notice is unreasonably short without good cause. We don't know what OP does or if the work absolutely needs to be done on the day requested. If it does not, then even more reason to consider the requests unreasonable.

I'm not sure where in the OP you can deduce that the requests are unreasonable. Without the employer's justification for making the request, nobody can make this judgement - we have only heard one side of the story. It is obviously quite common, and understandable, in IT jobs for employees to be able to be called out at short notice.

Furthermore, the only way to test this is for the OP to refuse a request and see if they get sacked, and for a Tribunal to judge whether the dismissal was fair, ie within the range fo reasonable responses for a reasonable employer to make in the circumstances. I would say that in 9 out of 10 cases, if not more, the employer would satisfy this test, because the Tribunal would not substitute their own view of what is a reasonable request, but will only judge whether the employer genuinely considered it to be a reasonable request, and therefore whether they acted reasonably in dismissing when the request was refused.

If you follow that, it means that testing reasonableness by refusing a request is not advisable! As already stated, trying to negotiate an understanding as to how overtime will work is by far the best option. (I presume you are not in an area covered by union recognition, otherwise this would seem to be a candidate for some kind of formal agreement).

scheming_gypsy

Gargatron wrote: »

The types of overtime I do have difficulty with would be staying back a few hours to supervise presentations for parents at a moment's notice or requests made on a Friday afternoon to come in Saturday morning because some builders are in and might need to work around computer cabling. I don't mind (too much) the fact that I have to work overtime, it's the fact that I only get told about it at the last minute.

Course you can turn it down; you say 'no can do mate, i've made plans already. If nobody else can cover it let me know and I'll see if i can rearrange but you need to tell them to give us more notice'.
You work in the IT department with the rest of the team, if you've got plans they'll ask somebody else and if nobody else can do it the boss will tell you to work out who's doing it between yourselves or he'll have to do it. Then as a team you tell him (or possibly her) that if the teachers want somebody to stick around for presentations to parents then they give sufficient notice so it can be arranged and then the manager goes and tells the teachers / head of department.
I've done IT in education and for some reason the IT departments never lay the rules down and let teachers dictate to them. With the presentations all you need to do is to make sure that everything is set up prior to the end of the day, anything after that is at the departments discretion and not a requirement.

If you keep saying yes then you're first on the list and nobody else in the department will do it because there's no need to ask them.

jazzyman01

Would not the first step be to talk to the line manager? Put forward the fact that you are willing to do the overtime but would ask that you are given notice as soon as possible because you may have plans. Use the builders/parents etc as an example - this must have been planned in advance even if it is only a few days.

I believe there is an alternative to getting sacked. If you can get some agreement to the above (and I would follow up in writing identifying what was discussed and agreed). In addition keep a record of the hours worked and the notice given. Final issue would be to raise a grievance if everything else fails. This would not impact on your employment but may well give you some clearer guidelines and a commitment to providing you with notice.