Work outside of normal hours

AmyTurtle

MY OH has a better higher paying job than me, and he puts in extra work at evenings and weekends. In return the company effectively let him work flexitime to suit his commute (8-4 rather than 9-5) and will let him work from home whenever possible. If he wants to wander out and buy a bacon roll at 11am, he can - his company trust him to manage his workload.

My job is professional, but not management level. I work my allotted hours and no more, but equally my company are not very flexible about our hours either. A while ago my colleague was off work for months for cancer treatment (just us 2 do this job) and I put in loads of overtime. When I had my performance assessment at the end of that year it wasn't taken into account at all and I got an average rating despite doing 3 people's work for 6 months (we are understaffed by 1 person). From then on I though bo**ocks to it - it's not a job where I feel appreciated so I won't go out of my way for them anymore. If I wasn't pregnant I'd leave

AmyTurtle

Sorry, didn't really answer the question - in my work the more senior you are the more hours you are expected to work, and same goes for my OH's workplace. Manual staff at my work get paid for overtime but office staff don't so for managers it's unpaid.

InsideInsurance

I think as a general rule of thumb the higher your grade the more hours you'll probably be working.

It can come down to personal choices though to some degree. I've known a few fairly senior people who don't even do the 9-5 of their contracts let alone anything beyond it but in their cases they have all hand picked their supporting team and whilst they have very big responsibilities they've small teams in tier 1 & 2 down from them. They also take a lot on trust from what they are provided.

A while back I had to write a slide deck for our Company MD to present to the Insurance Division Board. It was about 7 slides and probably 2 slides of additional information for back pocket. Our Insurance Division CEO then decided to present the same slide deck to the Group Board but with a shorter time slot she wanted it cutting to 5 sides but ended up wanting over 35 back pocket slides as she wanted full granular breakdown of every number in the slides, copies of expert opinion etc

Obviously took my colleague and I a while to pull this together but she was also reviewing it and asking for other items, for things to be reordered etc. Arguably she was creating a rod for her own back, her MD hadnt felt the need for all this and so had spent about 10 minutes just reviewing the slides where as she spent a good few hours doing the same. Plus of course us creating it all even more hours.

In the end I dont believe any of the slides were even presented as the Group CEO said he'd reviewed them and it looked good/ he had no questions.

Indie_Kid

purpleshoes wrote: »

There are some jobs depending on the manager you have where if you are off and you pick up the phone and you can't do it, it really doesn't go down well.

My mum is finding this a lot. She's a carer and had just done a night shift. She was asked to stay a few extra hours, which she refused because had another night shift to do the following evening. Her employers weren't pleased.

Mum used to pick me up on a Wednesday evening and used to use that as an excuse to get out of working the Wednesday evening, which they weren't happy with. But apparently, a migraine wasn't good enough either.

74jax

Thank you everyone, really good replies.

Hermia

Do you mean working weekends/evenings as part of your normal working hours or as overtime? The profession I am in is not a Mon-Fri 9-5 one so I have worked evenings and weekends since I graduated. That applies to workers at all levels, although senior managers don't need to as much as they don't deal directly with the public. The people I know who work Mon-Fri 9-5 are definitely in a minority. I don't know many companies that close for the weekend.

74jax

Hermia wrote: »

Do you mean working weekends/evenings as part of your normal working hours or as overtime? The profession I am in is not a Mon-Fri 9-5 one so I have worked evenings and weekends since I graduated. That applies to workers at all levels, although senior managers don't need to as much as they don't deal directly with the public. The people I know who work Mon-Fri 9-5 are definitely in a minority. I don't know many companies that close for the weekend.

Sorry I meant as extra work or unpaid overtime.

Jagraf

I think flexi time, with core hours, is brilliant if workable. It means that you can take time off for the dentist etc in your own time, or build up holidays. I have no idea on studies but I would think this is the most cost effective method for companies.

I do also think up the higher up the ladder the longer hours expected. Not fair tbh.

And as for being self employed, you may as well take your bed into work and just stay there

lostinrates

Jagraf wrote: »

And as for being self employed, you may as well take your bed into work and just stay there

Well. If your self employment allows it. Plenty of self employed might work all hours, or funny ones, but not possible from bed.....

Gloomendoom

My job has no formal hours so my employer can expect me to work any time... and they do.

I've also worked on holiday and from bed when ill.