Dear Evil HR Lady,
We have a part-time pastor at our church who is required to work 30 hours a week. He has signed a contract that states he only works 30 hour weeks. He is an “exempt” employee.
He doesn’t tell the personnel people in our church when he is on vacation or when he is taking sick leave. My question is, how do we know how to calculate his vacation and sick leave if he won’t give us this information?
To read the answer click here: Why tracking employee hours is dumb.
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I work for a government contractor, so we must track time worked by direct charge employees. If we don’t, the government won’t pay us. And because we pass through a portion of our overhead expenses to the government, we must also track all overhead employee time. This “hourly” culture has seeped into every pore of the company, and not in a good way. There’s too much focus on showing up and not enough focus on getting things done.
Yep. That’s exactly what happens!
SunnyCS – it happens n private sector companies too, but differently. Too many managers don;t seem to understand how t determine “performance” based on actual work. “Face time” (or “butt in chair” time) is all they see.
> There’s too much focus on showing up and not enough focus on getting things done.
This should be one of the quotes that was entered for “Best Management Quote”. I would vote for it in a heartbeat.
The longer I work, the less I see the value of having your butt planted in a chair.
I don’t even know how I’d begin to bill my hours if CBS paid me by the hour. It takes me very little time to actually sit down and write a post, but I’ve thought about it for hours, sorting everything out in my mind. Do I get to count the hours that I thought about it while at the grocery store, or making dinner?
From the question it doesn’t appear that it is a matter of hours worked that is the concern but instead when the individual will be away from work and therefore unavailable and tracking his/her time away from work that is paid. An organization wide policy seems like the best answer for notifying when you will be taking vacation and how much vacation you will be taking.
Sure! Then address that problem. They are trying to fix problem A with solution B, instead of solution A.
Whether you have to track his hours or not, it’s unprofessional and rude to the other employees for him not to let them know he’s going to be out. They are handling his calls, and it makes them look like idiots when they put a call through thinking he’s there, and he’s not.
As a receptionist, I hated this. Many times, I noticed people did this when they wanted to leave but didn’t want the boss to know they were bailing for the day. By not telling me, they ensured I couldn’t rat them out. But it frustrated me, because I knew what they were doing and had to take the flack for it anyway.
That is super unprofessional. That would drive me insane as well.
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