Can employee be sacked for being a few minutes late?

charlie3090

marybelle01 wrote: »

That isn't an excuse. For starters, the law says a minimum of 20 minutes and that's what you take - if you don't, more fool you. But you do not play "magic time" with your timesheet. If you start at 9:05 then that is what you put - not 9:00. If you need to discuss your breaks you do that. It isn't a carte blanche to claim any old starting time and finishing time.

i wasnt trying to make an excuse, merely stating a possibility that this could be something the employee may say in his defence.

p00hsticks

sniggings wrote: »

why no more MR Nice Guy, this is someone life you are talking about here, if he is a good worker etc then why would you feel you had to sack him because people on here you don't know and who don't know the person in question say to sack him.

I agree you need to be fair and stick to the rules but was he really meaning to steal 16 mins or was he just not wanting to be seen as late again.

To man up you need to do what you feel is right not what a bunch of people on here say.

What no one seems to have picked up on so far is that, according to the OPs first post, this all came to light when the persons co-workers complained to management. Unless there's some underlying personal axes to grind, I'd have thought that the guy must be seriously 'swinging the lead' for it to have warranted his colleagues going to management about it, and management need to respond in some way to acknowledge that.

That action could be anything from a general 'reminder' to the workforce as a whole about the need for accurate timekeeping and working your contracted hours through a written warning to dismissal.

Magnolia

If he has a previous unblemished record might he have a problem at home that has caused this situation? Something like having to drop the kids at school or something.

Until you ask you will never know.

paddedjohn

Drunken_Daisy wrote: »

How many employees stay after work to finish off unpaid paddlejohn, excluding those that never take their full lunch hour of course .



A word of warning , and some flexibility is all that's needed .

I probably was harsh in my previous post and a bit of a rollocking would be more in order and a warning that if it continued they would be down the road quick sharp.

teajug

marybelle01 wrote: »

Yep I agree. It not the being "a few minutes late" that is the issue - it's the theft of time by lying on a timesheet about your hours in work. Gross misconduct every time.

Wow what about employee being asked to stay back to tidy up and not been paid for that, surely that would be classed as theft as well or is it just the employee that this applies to.....

Evilm

From the employers point of view: - Have you asked him about this? Its possible if this was a once off that he filled the time sheet in after a few days and had forgotten about it and it wasn't deliberate.

If the guy has an otherwise clean record and you cannot prove this has happened more than once (although it must be relatively bad for a colleague to go to the trouble of turn him in? Might be worth checking into why the colleague reported him.) then I would give a written warning.

If it appears this guy has been doing this for a while then I'd consider not being so nice and sacking him.

(as an aside I worked with an agency temp once who took 1/5 hrs for lunch instead of an hour, had everyone looking for them in panic and then tried to write out their time sheet (at the end of the same day) to say they'd only taken an hour! She seemed totally oblivious to the idea that that would get noticed!)

duchy

This thread shows all that is bad about current employment practices.

The employee has worked 5 years with an unblemished record-and suddenly there is a problem ....More likely either there is something going on in his personal life or there is a problem between him and his co workers

The employer knows so little about their employees they don't know which it is

The employer listens to staff tittle-tattle instead of investigating for themselves.

The employer needs to ask a bunch of random strangers what to do.

If you do continue down this path enjoy your visit to Croydon or wherever your nearest employment tribunal is held. Professionalism is a two way street.

Mike this is at least the second time you've come runing here for advice in managing employees. If your company has an HR department -you should be using it-if it doesn't (and maybe if it does) you should be asking your employers for HR training as you obviously need development in that area.

olias

Excellent post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Olias

marybelle01

teajug wrote: »

Wow what about employee being asked to stay back to tidy up and not been paid for that, surely that would be classed as theft as well or is it just the employee that this applies to.....

I took the OP to be saying that this situation was one in which they had found themselves - i.e. that they had been dismissed as a result of falsifying timesheets. Not that the OP was asking for an opinion on what to do as a result of their employee doing it. As I previously stated. So it was neither a suggestion nor an opinion on my part - it was a statement of the legal position which is that falsifying timesheets is justifiably gross misconduct in law. The OP did not mention that they were the employer, not that they were asking for opinions, and this was information that I did not know. Others may have done because clearly some people knew the poster - I didn't.

But "being asked to stay back" or "taking less lunch than entitled to" is still not a valid defence in law for falsifying a timesheet. If an employee has been late / left early and has otherwise made up those hours, then the correct thing to do is to discuss this with the employer / manager and get the arrangement agreed above board - not to decide to falsify their timesheet on their own and without anyone else knowing.

thegirlintheattic

I'm sorry but problems at home/with colleagues does not mean that you can falsify your timesheet.

Falsifying timesheet = gross misconduct.