When does the working day start?

steerpike

Hi

I work in a call centre on shifts - on earlies we have to be at our desks at 8.45 (15 minutes before the phones open up) to get our workstations powered up ready to take calls at 9.00. We are paid for this time as its part of the shift pattern 8.45 -16.45

However later shift - i.e. 10-18.00hrs are expected to arrive early and power up in out own time to be ready to start at 10am

Seems a tad unfair to me and I tend to arrive on time or just a minute or so before the official time.

Under pressure to be at my desk at 9.45am as this is the 'accepted' procedure....although I think my employer is getting an hour and a quarter free time from me every week

Am I being silly to think this?

Whiteknight

How long does it take to power up your workstation?

I would have thought that as long as you were ready and available to work at your start time it would not matter what time you actually arrived in work. - if your computer was ready within 5 minutes no need to turn up earlier.

Pee

Depending on how you feel about the job it's probably easier to just turn up as expected. I took the alternative approach and it took me a long time to prove that I was so good at my job that when I arrived to do it actually didn't matter. They do accept that now, I think.

steerpike

I feel that a small clique at work are trying to impose their 'rules' tbh.

We aren't allowed to sign off the call line until after our finish official time so it you pickup a call just before or bang on signing off time - you have to grit your teeth and deal with it even though it usually means that you are 20-30 minutes late leaving as the system has to be powered down after sign off...unpaid .

purplepardalis

Such is the challenge of managing a telephone based environment!

If for example, everyone works 35 hours a week excluding their break taking their turns on a shift pattern an the phone lines are open 9-6, then how can you pay the extra when it varies so wildly as to who does the extra? However, if everyone takes their share of the shifts then everyone has to do those extra minutes in turn so at least it is fair.

I would say that 15 is too many if it is more time than it takes to log into your machine, long into the phone and be ready to take calls.

If you can think of a way to manage it better then put together a proposal and approach your manager with it. I am always delighted when one of my team think of a way to do things better.

getmore4less

steerpike wrote: »

I feel that a small clique at work are trying to impose their 'rules' tbh.

We aren't allowed to sign off the call line until after our finish official time so it you pickup a call just before or bang on signing off time - you have to grit your teeth and deal with it even though it usually means that you are 20-30 minutes late leaving as the system has to be powered down after sign off...unpaid .

<2 seconds with the mains switch.

InsideInsurance

You would need to read your contract to see what it says.

Certainly it was my experience in 10 years of call centre work for 9 different companies that all of them expected you to be ready to take calls at the start of your shift and be available for calls up to the very end of your shift. Any preceeding or subsequent setup/ turn off was done outside of your paid hours.

That said, the majority also allowed you to take breaks which they were not legally required to do and if you were caught on a very long last call (and I was for 2 hours once) and your manager saw then you would be allowed time off in lieu at a later date. The odd 5 minutes here and there were effectively part of your contract

Slinky

25 years ago I worked for a company where all the admin staff were expected to stay until everybody including the telephonist was ready to go. Our old clunky switchboard meant that she couldn't switch over to the night service (where the calls rang round the building for a recruitment consultant to pick up) when somebody was on a call as you'd end up cutting the caller off. Sometimes we'd all be stood around for 30 mins waiting for a consultant to finish a call so we could all go home. Absolute madness. And no overtime was paid - it was just the way this mad business worked and it was expected of us.

Still, we clung together in adversity and I'm still friends with several people I worked with there now.

LadyMissA

bit unfair I guess if on one shift you get paid for the 15 mins and on the other you don't

At my last job the reception took down the time when you can into the building and then IT gave the manager a log of the time you logged into your PC so you couldn't say you were in work before 9 and on the pc if you weren't

Humphrey10

It starts when you sit down at your desk imo. You shouldn't be using the companies computers in your own time, so as soon as you touch the on/off switch you are 'at work'. That's how I view it, anyway.

LadyMissA

Humphrey10 wrote: »

It starts when you sit down at your desk imo. You shouldn't be using the companies computers in your own time, so as soon as you touch the on/off switch you are 'at work'. That's how I view it, anyway.

so you shouldnt switch it on until you start work?