Attendance/Hours Tracking

Saint Sonner

I work for a fairly large company. No one in the business has clock in cards and attendance must be monitored by managers.

I work in the finance department where the majority of us report to the financial controller – for the past number of months he has been making us fill in what time we started work and what time we left at on an excel spreadsheet that can be accessed by anyone in the company.

Everyone in the department can see everyone else’s hours. I can see his thinking but he told me recently that he uses it to put pressure on those not doing the unpaid overtime.

Is this legal?

gandalf

I'd have a couple of concerns with this, if the spreadsheet is open to all whats to stop someone else changing your inputs maliciously?

If you are identifiable by name on the spreadsheet would it not be a data protection issue if other people within the organisation who have nothing to do with the department and who do not have responsibility for you as an employee have unfettered access to this information?

I don't think him using this information to pressure people into unpaid overtime in itself is illegal once the maximum average working week for employees doesn't exceed 48 hours and once his behaviour is not seen as bullying.

Morally I do believe it is wrong and the HR department may frown upon it if they are unaware of this practice.

newmug

I'd say it was the HR department who came up with the idea! Always remember, they're on the companies side, not yours.

Saint Sonner

newmug wrote: »

I'd say it was the HR department who came up with the idea! Always remember, they're on the companies side, not yours.

AFAIK HR department know nothing about it but they seem pretty lax - I asked a couple of months ago for a copy of my tasks and responsibilities and they have yet to get back to me!

jimmycrackcorm

We have time and attendance tracking because there is a legal requirement to ensure the European working hours directive is being followed. As for everyone in the department seeing the hours, surely they can see when people are coming into work and when they are leaving so it's hardly confidential data...

gandalf

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

We have time and attendance tracking because there is a legal requirement to ensure the European working hours directive is being followed.

If that is what it is being used for then that's fine.

The OP said that its being used to "pressure on those not doing the unpaid overtime" which is wrong and could potentially be seen as bullying depending on how the FC is applying this pressure.

As for everyone in the department seeing the hours, surely they can see when people are coming into work and when they are leaving so it's hardly confidential data...

Imho that kind of information should only be available in this way to management only and not to all. Also as I said what protection is in place to ensure the data isn't tampered with and also what guarantee is there that it is being recorded accurately.

Saint Sonner

Ironically the FC name is on it and he has stopped entering his data for over a month