A winning approach to managing employee overtime hours

Those businesses that aren't good at managing employee overtime hours effectively could easily be creating problems for themselves for the present and for the future. You will often hear some companies make the claim that they don't allow overtime, but what actually happens is that employees end up spending a lot of extra time at work trying to get assigned tasks completed. The employee will not get paid for these extra hours, and this can lead to resentment and frustration. Managing employee overtime hours ineffectively like this could lead to staff members becoming so disillusioned that they leave the job; nobody likes to think that they are being taken advantage of.  It should also be noted that making workers do these unpaid extra hours is actually illegal. When it comes to managing employee overtime hours there has to be good communication between the staff and the management. It could easily be the case that the managers just don't realise that the staff member is working extra hours to get their work done. The fact that the management is not aware of the extra hours is still not going to alter the fact that the worker may be feeling put-upon. It is vital that those responsible for managing employee overtime hours are aware about what time people come to work and what time they go home again. This way any problems can be nipped in the bud quickly. If it comes to attention that staff are working a lot more hours than they are getting paid for then it is worth investing why this is occurring. It could be due to the employee having poor time management skills or it could be that there is just too much work and paid overtime will be required. If the problem is that the employee has poor time managing skills then staff training can be provided to remedy the situation. Managing employee overtime hours in this way will stop a small problem developing into a big problem down the road. It is important that when it comes to managing employee overtime hours that your business has policies for this. One policy could be that no staff member is allowed to work overtime hours unless it is approved by management. This is an effective way to spot any issues early on and to stop any problems developing in the first place. It should also be policy to have a compensation package for overtime hours; this could involve such things as double-time, time and a half, or time-owed. It is a good idea that you insist that staff are not allowed to work overtime just because they want to be helpful; this feeling of helpfulness can quickly lead to resentment when they realise they are not being rewarded. When managing employee overtime hours you will want to keep careful records of who has done what. If you have a clocking in and clocking out system then this will make this easier to manage. If you take all these things into consideration then managing employee overtime hours should never become a problem for your business.