Dealing with staff who misuse their time at work

“Hang on a minute, I can’t talk just now, I’m at work, let me pop outside and we can have a catch up”. That’s what I heard the hairdressers’ junior tell her caller on the phone recently.  It’s alright love, I’ll towel dry my own hair!

Many of us will have been served by someone at work who is misusing their employer’s time. It can be as basic as ‘skiving off work’ when you are being paid to work, to timesheet or clocking in machine fraud. Not being at work but letting the employer think you are.

The increase use of CCTV has seen all sorts of misuse of time and what can’t be forgotten is that this is all fraud.

If you are contracted to work 8 hours and you spend 30 minutes a day talking with your colleagues rather than working, that’s 2.5 hours a week, over 16 days in the course of 12 months lost. It’s no different to the employee who is trusted to work remotely and lies about when they have worked, thankfully IT systems can validate the lie and expose the fraud.

We had a copier engineer attend Redwing Towers last week. He wasted a good hour, faffing about before saying he couldn’t fix it and someone else would have to attend. It was 4 O’clock. Coincidence. We thought not.

So what can you do if you find your employee is misusing their time at work.

Clarity is very important, when you hire new employees explain your expectations at inductions. Give examples of Ok and not Ok actions. Humour works well here. We say you can eat at your desk so long as it’s not an egg sandwich!

Give feedback if someone has misused the Company’s time, let them know. Explain what they did wrong and your expectations moving forward. Make a file note. Everyone can make a mistake once, but more than once tells you there is an issue with their attitude and they will not listen to your feedback.

If you need any assistance dealing with a tricky staff issue, please let us know 01527 306066.