Employment contract clauses
Discussion
My wife has just been given her new contract at her work and I have a question about the following clauses;
Now I tend to think that these are standard, but it doesn't hurt to get some clarity from outside, before raising them internally;
You may be required to work such additional hours in excess of your normal hours of work as are reasonably necessary for the proper performance of your duties and to meet the needs of the Company’s business. No extra payment will be made for any additional hours worked, unless expressly authorised by your line manager (or) Any overtime worked by you at the request of the Company will be paid at your normal hourly rate.
The Company reserves the right to require you to work different hours of work according to the needs of the business, whether on a temporary or a permanent basis. This may involve shorter or longer hours of work, or working on different days of the week or at different times of the day in accordance with operational requirements. It is a condition of your employment that you agree to work different hours if requested to do so by the Company.
What has happened in the past is that my wife has been given time off in lieu for work done at the weekends, but there is reason to think that this will no longer continue. How do companies deal with this generally? When I have worked O/T I have always been paid for it.
The other query is regarding working other hours. I have told her that it is unlikely to be just dropped on her, and that it has to be reasonable, ie if she has time off booked / weekend away paid for etc, that it would be unreasonable of the company to ask her / force her to work. Secondly, they would also give her notice of such things.
Would I be right, in a ball park sense?
Now I tend to think that these are standard, but it doesn't hurt to get some clarity from outside, before raising them internally;
You may be required to work such additional hours in excess of your normal hours of work as are reasonably necessary for the proper performance of your duties and to meet the needs of the Company’s business. No extra payment will be made for any additional hours worked, unless expressly authorised by your line manager (or) Any overtime worked by you at the request of the Company will be paid at your normal hourly rate.
The Company reserves the right to require you to work different hours of work according to the needs of the business, whether on a temporary or a permanent basis. This may involve shorter or longer hours of work, or working on different days of the week or at different times of the day in accordance with operational requirements. It is a condition of your employment that you agree to work different hours if requested to do so by the Company.
What has happened in the past is that my wife has been given time off in lieu for work done at the weekends, but there is reason to think that this will no longer continue. How do companies deal with this generally? When I have worked O/T I have always been paid for it.
The other query is regarding working other hours. I have told her that it is unlikely to be just dropped on her, and that it has to be reasonable, ie if she has time off booked / weekend away paid for etc, that it would be unreasonable of the company to ask her / force her to work. Secondly, they would also give her notice of such things.
Would I be right, in a ball park sense?
I wouldn't be worried about the overtime clause if she's used to doing unpaid overtime in her current job, i.e. it's very common in finance to have a 37.5 hour week but work 60+ so that clause wouldn't bother me.
Not sure I'd be happy with the second clause though, it's very vague, i.e. if she's told to work 10 hours per week, will she only get paid for those 10 hours?
At the very least, I'd be asking what scenarios they are looking to cover with those clauses. How senior is your wife and how much sway might she have to change those clauses if she raised concerns about them?
Not sure I'd be happy with the second clause though, it's very vague, i.e. if she's told to work 10 hours per week, will she only get paid for those 10 hours?
At the very least, I'd be asking what scenarios they are looking to cover with those clauses. How senior is your wife and how much sway might she have to change those clauses if she raised concerns about them?
The first clause sounds very much like the one my manager trots out every time I moan about going into work during holidays or working evenings or over weekends. Wouldn't be so bad if I was being paid what I call a mid-range salary, £45K+, I wouldn't mind it so much. But I'm not so I do.
First point is pretty standard.
2nd point is a little questionable although probably standard-ish (my contract contains this if I remember right).
I'd not worry too much about it - neither of these 2 terms are out of the ordinary for life in IT (developer here - over 10 years on the coal face!).
2nd point is a little questionable although probably standard-ish (my contract contains this if I remember right).
I'd not worry too much about it - neither of these 2 terms are out of the ordinary for life in IT (developer here - over 10 years on the coal face!).
talksthetorque said:
If it's an IT management role then they may need her there to oversee implementations at off peak usage hours or similar requirements that would be part and parcel of the role of an IT manager.
Never have I heard of anyone needing a manager to oversee them doing an out of hours implementation. Manager may agree the overtime or be involved in change management in advance, or sign off the work afterwards, but for actually doing the work there's no need for a manager to be involved. As you say though, there may be other requirements - incident management escalations, travel, etc. - that could affect working hours and these generously-worded clauses allow for that.Caveat: Sample size of one
TheAngryDog said:
You may be required to work such additional hours in excess of your normal hours of work as are reasonably necessary for the proper performance of your duties and to meet the needs of the Company’s business. No extra payment will be made for any additional hours worked, unless expressly authorised by your line manager (or) Any overtime worked by you at the request of the Company will be paid at your normal hourly rate.
The Company reserves the right to require you to work different hours of work according to the needs of the business, whether on a temporary or a permanent basis. This may involve shorter or longer hours of work, or working on different days of the week or at different times of the day in accordance with operational requirements. It is a condition of your employment that you agree to work different hours if requested to do so by the Company.
I'm an IT Manager and I can't offer my team overtime anymore, we use a banked hours system. They sometimes have to travel and they don't get extra time or money for that but they get a good salary and it's part of their contract that they may have to work extra depending on business needs. That's pretty common in IT and they all accept it. They're not sales staff on the road every week.The Company reserves the right to require you to work different hours of work according to the needs of the business, whether on a temporary or a permanent basis. This may involve shorter or longer hours of work, or working on different days of the week or at different times of the day in accordance with operational requirements. It is a condition of your employment that you agree to work different hours if requested to do so by the Company.
Working different hours or days of the week on a temp or perm basis would concern me a little. Could they decide that her IT work must be done outside core business hours so she would have to agree to working weekends or evenings? My guys are more than happy to work late into the evening if a server is down or if we need to do work on production machines that are offline but they get the hours back for that. We'd never stipulate that they could be subject to "permanent" working hour changes. That's the sort of thing they could use to manage someone out of the business. Oh, we want rid of her lets use her contract and make her work permanent night-shift (knowing she wouldn't). I'm being over paranoid but it looks a bit unreasonable to me.
Word for word, that is exactly what is in my new contract that arrived this morning. I would presume it's standard "tested" contract text now. I work in health where shift work is the norm and overtime is in lieu or time and a half, having moved into management this is not the case, but some people need it spelling out if they've been promoted from a shift role (e.g nurse) to management.
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