Do Hourly Employees Even Make Sense Any More?
from the changing-times dept
We've had many discussions around here about the changing nature of the work-life balance -- especially with laptops, wireless connections and (most importantly) mobile devices, the "work" part is creeping more and more into the "life" part. That's partly why we think companies should be a lot more understanding about when the "life" part creeps into the "work" part (meaning no longer freaking out if someone happens to buy something online or visit a social network while they're "working"). But, it's also raising questions in the other direction as well. Specifically, employees who are "hourly" workers are pursuing a few lawsuits over the fact that they don't get paid for responding to emails via their mobile devices during "off hours." This again raises a question about whether "hourly" workers really make sense in many jobs these days. It would seem that a far more effective measure of work should be whether or not you get the work you need to get done, done -- rather than how many hours you worked. There certainly may be some cases where hourly workers make sense, but in many situations where it's commonly used today, it's difficult to see why hourly wages are still the norm, over a full salary.
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Filed Under: hourly employees, work life balance
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If a company wants 24 hours a day of my life, they can pay for it, otherwise I stop working when I head out the door. If I am going to work 24 hours a day, I will do what I am doing now, working for my own company.
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You seem to be flailing around right now. Perhaps too many people have pointed out holes in your theories that are not easy to answer?
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I haven't seen it.
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Re: tech industry assumptions.
The growing irrelevance of hourly work, if its happening, is happening in a comparatively small section of the workforce. This is the domain of management or upper levels in most firms, where the rest of us poor schmoes, if i may use the term, are down here at the bottom. We work to a clock because its not like i can count inventory or handle checkouts from home(waiting on surrogates)
If i was somehow getting calls and emails that involved my job while off-clock but was expected to handle them Now, i think i would be right up there.. well, not making the lawsuits, but at least checking on the outcome. So i would expect anyone who is getting Paid for a number of hours but is expected to Work beyond that to feel somewhat the same way.
if you want to own my life, you are going to have to work out a better contract for that in advance. and toss in a new work-paid super-ultra-data-computer-phone.
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Re: Re: tech industry assumptions.
As to the main point intended - people should be compensated for the time they spend working all-in - I agree.
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I work as a sub-contract developer, going from place to place as required (i.e. whoever will pay me) in short-term contracts.
And when I walk out of the door at the end of the day, that's it until tomorrow, unless the employer is willing to pay me double time plus the agency fees. Strangely enough, they generally give that kind of grief to the permanent employees...
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Of course we're expected to be around during working hours and work at home otherwise.
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Exactly this. I'm also a contractor, and it seems far more prevalent in the last couple years than it previously had been. I actually work for IBM, but my paychecks come through a second company that is almost entirely contract workers. They have a small office somewhere, but most of their managers just have a desk in some IBM building where they manage a bunch of contract employees working for IBM. It is apparently cheaper to pay a company to do most of your hiring and firing instead of hiring people yourself and paying them well and providing benefits. Apparently paying for all the middle management and excess bureaucracy isn't a problem, though.
One of my duties used to involve setting up ActiveDirectory accounts for yet another company who contracted out much of their IT stuff to IBM, and at least 75% of the accounts I set up also were contractors! Sometimes when I talked to some of the people who had some problem with their account, the level of disconnected contact was almost amusing if it was depressing. Me, employed by company 1, contracted to work for company 2; company 2 was contracted to do IT work for company 3; company 3 used another contract company 4 to hire much of their workforce; person who had trouble with their AD account employed by company 4, talking to me.
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Of cause it make sense
Corporate prefer to think that employee time cost nothing; that it's OK to call me any time day or night; expect me to fix problem on the moment they arise and so on.
That's why managers of all sorts are promoting "work when you like" crap. While it should be "work any time we want" instead.
When some idiot in management chain made stupid decision which caused project off-schedule and I'm supposed to work 24/7 to fix it, I expect to get paid for it. This is only way corporate can be taught that stupid decisions cost money.
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they can make you attend work, but they can't make you work
A good contract should make it clear whether your pay is for your attendance, availablity, output, etc. But that only sets the initial expectations.
Hopefully (on balance) the employee will attempt to get through as much work as they can, rather than do as little as possible. If not, the employee and employer surely need get together to sync up their expectations and options.
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Re: they can make you attend work, but they can't make you work
However, if an employee is "off balance", and lets it be known that a weekend or 2nd job may make certain conversations seem in-communicato. But if it's known to the employer that some days output will be accomplished between the hours of 8pm to 7am, who then is at fault?
Let's say you know your body, Blamer and are able to accomplish more after 9pm in 1 hour than most people do in a week. However, India hasn't started outsourcing to the US yet, what do you do?
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QR
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Those who don't take the oath should see themselves as nothing more than a glorified accountant with an MBA. After all, creative accountants apply practices that may follow the letter of the rules of standard practices, but certainly deviate from the spirit of those rules.
http://mbaoath.org/take-the-oath/
http://features.csmonitor.com/economyrebuild/2009/0 7/27/new-mbas-vow-accountability/
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Weird. Maybe he has reservations.
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I applaud the content and intent of the oath, but actions and applied ethics speak louder than any set of canned words.
I'm betting Madoff would have signed that oath in a heartbeat! :-)
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welll....
My sister is a nurse at a hospital: nobody asks her to take patients home with her. She isn't even on an on call schedule
My wife is salary, and she is a high level manager for the company she works for. She doesn't take work home and they don't ask her.
My friend builds tires for Good Year: he doesn't get asked to take a few tires home with him to build.
Not everybody is expected to blend life with work. It would surprise me if most of the work force is required to blend life with work. When was the last time a trash man was asked to take his work home? Or a retail worker that isn't a manager?
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Re: welll....
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Factory Model in the Creative Digital Industries
Everybody likes a little face time now and then, but nothing about our jobs requires it to be 5 days a week, every week. When we love our work, even 'holidays' and 'weekends' are strange abstract notions. Most of the positions here are considered "artists", or at least "technical specialists" of various types. Anyone who has ever tried to create something "inspired" knows that art doesn't happen on a clock, even in what are considered the more technical aspects. The projects tend to actually get structured correctly, in that they are based on key assets being created by reasonable deadlines, and not on a widget-per-day type model. Key dependencies can be figured out ahead of time well enough, and evolve with the projects' progression appropriately. Time is also allocated for review and polish.
It's just the use of clocks and office space that hasn't caught up to the modern world yet. It's like a building full of Michelangelo's, daVinci's, Magritte's, Van Gogh's, Dali's, Duchamp's, Pollock's, and Ansel's all expected to be on-site, punctual, and cohesive. It never made any sense for any of these "creative types" to work inside a factory-widget model, and makes even less sense now.
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American Labour Laws aren't an exemplar to the world.
My employer is 'migrating' to this kind of policy (leave the cell phone on, in case we need you - or at least it appears to be moving to this). Why? 'Cuz they do it in the 'States?
Jeepers, the American 'business model' has given us the Banking Crisis, one out of six Americans with no medical insurance (and just about all of the rest under-insured, and on the brink of bankruptcy), the DMCA, and Harvard MBAs running the country...
Nope, I'll pass..
You should too, Mike. Life really too short. Go see a movie that requires a discussion later with friends, drink some wine in a sidewalk cafe and watch the world go by, go fishing, find some place that's not overlit and watch the meteor shower.
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Re: American Labour Laws aren't an exemplar to the world.
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Re: American Labour Laws aren't an exemplar to the world.
Firstly, US Productivity is typically in the top five globally for all the measures I've seen.
Take a look here for a simple graph
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_ove_pro_ppp-economy-overall-productivity-ppp#source
or here for more detailed data
http://www.bls.gov/fls/#tables
Note especially the GDP per capita report PDF in the latter one. Also, note on Page 11 it shows that the number of hours worked in the US is behind not only Korea and Japan (kinda predictable), but Austria and Italy! Of course, this doesn't take into account what is really the point of Mike's post, which is the amount of non-work time spent, well, working. On this topic, my experience is that Americans do suffer greatly...email at night, phone calls at dinner, etc.
But still, your impression on several key points is absolutely off the mark.
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Re: American Labour Laws aren't an exemplar to the world.
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It's never going to happen while accountants are around
At other companies it's not a matter of chargebacks but cases of whether dollars spent on a project are capital dollars versus expense dollars. I worked for one company where contractors were only allowed to work on capital projects, while employees had to handle all expense work. But then after a contractor designed and implemented a solution, they couldn't support it afterwards because support is expense dollars. Then, when the accountants from above decreed that expense spending had to be cut by a substantial margin it was the employees doing expense work who got let go, rather than the contractors.
The problem is that the financial arms are really good at making sure the accounting is correct, but they don't understand how their requirements impact productivity or the actual business, because they only see dollars and sense. It doesn't matter if entire departments are barely able to function as long as it's not a big hit to the bottom line.
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six of one, half dozen of the other...
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good discussion
thanks Mike.
thanks commenters.
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My 2 best paying jobs....
The other was hourly with a union. Again an insane environment, with management pulling all kinds of dirty tricks to get a little more work out of everyone, and the union trying to resist. That left the workers not only trying to get the work done, but also being pawns in a huge chess match. Again there was a report card, but daily with the bonus being not getting fired, and the punishment being getting a trial in a kangaroo court & threatened with termination.
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Firstly, it's cheaper to pay me an hourly rate (even though it equates to a higher annual income than colleagues) because there's no sick pay, pension or annual leave.
Secondly, governments (where I work) want to lower headcount. Hourly (contracted) staff don't count towards headcount.
Thirdly, productivity is often a lot higher among contracted staff. They know they're on a week's / month's notice, so they have to deliver. I've never taken a sick day in four years of cotnracting. Permanet staff are there to stay. Improving their performance (or firing them) is like pulling teeth out... with your fingernails.
There are many, many more reasons. To frame the debate for hourly-rated contractors purely in terms or working hours vs overtime is too narrow.
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Re: hourly != contract
So let's be clear about what is really being discussed.
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the majority of jobs (by number) are still going to be fine with hourly rates. if people have to call a cashier or burger flipper off the clock, it's usually something like, "bob is sick, can you come in and help?" besides, many state laws require that you're either paid on commission or you manage at least 2 people before your company can switch you from hourly.
and i do agree that mike is overdoing this article. some people have labeled mike the o'reilly/olbermann of the tech/law blogosphere, and it looks like they're right. if you want someone who is paid to be right, go get a subscription to BNA. if you want someone who is entertaining, well... here's mike for you.
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Another perspective
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Reason being that they are still "at will". They can be terminated at a moments notice.
Employees may not like having to respond to things off the clock... but there's no reason why they can't loose their job for not doing it.
It's a major management win.
Until we get to the point where there are more jobs than people willing to do them... which doesn't seem likely in the US for at least 20 years with the expected growth of the workforce and now a shrinking economy... I don't see why this would change.
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If you look at the US, a country with one of the least amount of employee protections in the western world (outside of unionized industries, which go completely the other way), where it is common for permanent employee's to work overtime/weekends unpaid, where law mandated sick/holiday payments and benefits are minimal, then no I would say hourly does not make that much sense
But if you take rest of western world, with vastly greater employee protections/benefits in comparison to the US, lack of culture/expectation of the employee "working overtime for free" outside of most industries, then yes in many cases it makes sense for companies to hire hourly
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Results
While I agree with the general notion of pay for contribution, I would disagree that the amount of hours a person has to work equates to individual performance.
Particularly for team environments, such as large IT organizations, I've had to spend an extraordinary amount of after-hours time correcting other people's catastrophes.
SME's are a highly taxed, often troubled lot because of the demand placed on them at all hours. There has to be balance in compensation of some form, and it is frustrating that many SME's are compensated along the same lines as other staffers who only work after hours to send pointless e-mails and 'look good'.
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hourly is the only way to keep corps honest
I understand the desire to having more freedom about when and how you work, but if you open people up for abuse by the powers that be, they will be abused by those with power.
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I Managed Several Small Company's In
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Re: I Managed Several Small Company's In
My dad had a large property, and Saturdays were work days. He would lay out the days work, & state that after it was accomplished I could go play. At first I worked with gusto, to accomplish the work, so I could join my buddies who had less responsibility. He then developed the habit of adding chores to the list, since the first few were accomplished with relatively little time. I soon developed the habit of stretching the work to fill the available time.
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Re: I Managed Several Small Company's In
The solution to this problem is for managers to be open about what is expected from employees between projects. This is what you've done, so kudos to you. Such success isn't based on lazy employees, though, it is based on employees needing some sense of job security. After all- what's the point of rushing to finish projects, leading to downtime, if the team thinks that quick progress shows management that there are more employees than necessary?
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Re: I Managed Several Small Company's In
The solution to this problem is for managers to be open about what is expected from employees between projects. This is what you've done, so kudos to you. Such success isn't based on lazy employees, though, it is based on employees needing some sense of job security. After all- what's the point of rushing to finish projects, leading to downtime, if the team thinks that quick progress shows management that there are more employees than necessary?
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Corps can go F-themselves
Then about 3 weeks later, there was 1 guy who was quitting and had given notice. The DAY before he was to leave, they fired 3 other people over bullshit reasons (like one guy had stepped away to go to lunch, and when a manager came around and he "wasnt where he was supposed to be" he was fired on the spot. lunches were supposed to be taken whenever you want.) Each of them had 50-70 orders that now had to be spread around. They did hire a few more people, but the job is so complex it literally takes 3 months to learn it enough to be functional, so those people werent up to speed yet. The entire department was only about 25 people, with a few thousand orders to fill at any given time. And that side of the business was growing fast.
Then, ONE WEEK after those guys left/got fired, they shut down a call center in Serbia or somewhere, and dumped all that on us too. They KNEW that call center was being closed for weeks, but never told us until a few days before they dumped all this on us. I had 120+ orders and no way in hell, even working 55 hours a week, to keep up with it all.
So, they let me go saying *I* had poor work performance and wasnt keeping up. NO ONE was keeping up at that point. I talked to some friends later and it was well over 6 weeks before some of my orders even got LOOKED at, let alone worked on or completed. How many of those orders that I had canceled their service due to the delays?
Within 4 months I heard almost all the original people I worked with were let go or quit, and they moved the entire dept. to another state to save money. Worst management I have ever seen at a "professional" company. This is the sort of thing that people have to deal with with large corps that are poorly managed and dont give a shit about their employees worth or productivity, and only care about max dollar TODAY.
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scope
in fact, the scope and priorities are constantly shifting, and if you don't set a metric, that means you'll be forced to renegotiate at every turn.
When I charge per hour, I make clear my client pays for his indecision, not me.
Re: interruptions, turn it off and buckle down. It's the correct thing to do, when you're working on the clock.
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It's about more than just the work
By looking at the tracked time for an hourly employee, it gives accounting and management a better grasp on the needs of the business. If they are paying a lot of overtime to the hourly staff in IT support, that could be indicative of an underlying infrastructure issue. The company can then budget for upgrades, employee training, etc, to eliminate the underlying cause.
I am hourly, almost always have been. As a result, my employer does not try to contact me after hours except in the cases of a real emergency. Having to pay overtime is a great deterrent of frivolous calls and emails.
It is far too easy to take advantage of a salaried employee by treating them as if they were on the clock 24/7. There is good reason that lawsuits were opened in many cases. Salary pay is an excellent idea when you deal with flexible work schedules. Hourly makes much more sense in the cases in which people have a set workday or in support roles to prevent abuse.
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If employer forces employees to check emails during off-hours, employees should get paid. I work in the IT industry and I am exempt, I voluntarily check emails and I don't complain about it; but those who do want to complain have a justified ground to do so.
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So long as the work role permits it and the IT staff does some McGuyvering, this isn't impossible to imagine.
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ABC News writer interested in interviewing hourly workers about this topic
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Re: ABC News writer interested in interviewing hourly workers about this topic
I have never been a salaried worker, but I've seen what they put my bosses and indirect bosses through where I used to work.
A national reform on labor laws is really necessary, these are the following problems that should be fixed.
Salaried workers should be considered flex time. The salary should be for a fixed and previously specified quantity of work, or option for such, over a given period of time. This should be flexible, but it should be required that all those values are specified in the contract. Contracts should also specify the minimum rate for over-time/unit work that both employee and employer agree to in writing before it is allowed.
For hourly workers medical coverage should be pro-rated and should be applicable to -any- plan that the employee desires (thought the company need only pay based the rate of the plan they pick for the '20' hour workers). Examples; if a customer service location (store of any kind) schedules 5 hours of work a week for an hourly employee they are required to pay 5/20 (25%) of the cost for their default medical plan to be disbursed to a health insurance plan of some type. A worker is scheduled for 30 hours of work each week, they would then have 30/20 (150%) of the cost of the default 20 hour health care plan to disburse to coverage. There should be specific national and optionally local requirements for health care plans, A baseline of 'full' medical (general health and vision/etc benefits).
All workers should also have their schedule set at least six weeks in advance. Any last moment changes should be considered at least time and a half, and not -required- work by the employee.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head in about 15 min. Unfortunately this is one of those massively interlinked can of worms subjects.
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Re: Re: ABC News writer interested in interviewing hourly workers about this topic
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Re: American Labour Laws aren't an exemplar to the world.
BobinBaltimore:
The US Productivity stats you linked to are for PPP, Productivity Per Person. If you work twice as many hours per week as I do, and your salary is only 50% higher than mine, I don't call that "being more productive". I call that reduced productivity.
Using your link to Nation Master and this chart, compare the annual figures for USA and France:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yearly_working_time_2004.jpg
USA $74,624.70 / 1777 hrs = $41.99/hour
France $59,438.90 / 1346 hrs = $44.15/hour
With the extreme examples:
Japan $50,593.70 / 1828 hrs = $27.68/hour
Ireland $74,266.60 1541 hrs = $48.19/hour
All that work, and is the American population getting any benefit?
Well, some, but a number of others do better, and consistently do better year over year - and with a much lower ecological impact on the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index#External_links
h ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
The American model is one of, if not THE least sustainable model.
(I can't wait to see what the figures for 2009 will look like, after the economic crisis...)
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For instance, I currently work tech support for a large computer company. I'm paid hourly and I can see how it makes sense — even in my small, specialized team there's almost no reason to contact one of the techs outside of work. We've got an internal wiki to document stuff, minimizing specialized knowledge, and generally don't need to be responding to customer questions outside of our normal working hours–we manage staffing levels to cover it.
That said, anyone who is a manager is an exempt employee and I see the benefits there, too. Primary point-of-contact, etc.
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Extra Hours
In an average week i work 45-47 hours but dont get any extra money.
The question is if i contract the store manager about this and ask them to reduce my hours can they sack me???
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