Employee salaries constitute almost half of your monthly business expenses. The bigger your business, the more people you need to employ to run its day-to-day operations. Every business owner understands that to be able to sustain a business, they need to invest in people. This is absolutely fine. What’s wrong is having to pay employees extra hours when they shouldn’t even be at the office anymore. Employee problems, like unauthorized overtime, can be very costly to your business.

Rendering overtime work is inevitable. During a business’s peak season, the workload can get really crazy. Demanding employees to stay extra hours just to make sure operations run smoothly and continuously is somehow a universal practice. These authorized overtime hours are all compensated by the organization, sometimes with provision for meal allowances and night differentials.

On the other hand, there are also employees who stay behind in the office to render unauthorized overtime work- even if there’s no need for it. Yes, these are your employees, and they slack off during official work hours either so that they have reason to stay and complete unfinished work, or they simply stay behind and pretend to work on something. Either way, they charge you overtime pay for something totally unnecessary. This employee problem can cost you a lot and guess what; you really have no choice but to pay them for these unauthorized hours.

So what’s a manager like you to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again? Encouraging a culture of productivity is essential in every organization. Having to work extra hours means not being able to maximize work time to finish the day’s work. Gossiping, chitchatting, and taking extra breaks can kill staff productivity. Make sure you rid the workplace of these useless exercises to lessen the cases of employee problems and unauthorized OTs. Also, encourage your staff to build a healthy work-life balance. After office hours should be spent at home with the family or out socializing with friends. If a staff is secretly rendering unauthorized overtime for financial purposes, assure him the organization can help with his financial needs; offer a salary loan or better yet, give him another project to work on.

Now, if the suggestions above still don’t address certain problem employees, then the tips below just might help:

• Call for a team meeting and give a gentle reminder to all that overtime work may only be done when authorized by their supervisor.

• Send out a memo specifically to those who still fail to follow the rules as a second reminder.

• Send out a second memo with a warning of disciplinary action such as a suspension, should the unauthorized overtime happen again.

• Enforce the suspension should a third offense happen despite numerous reminders.

• If the employee still fails to adhere to office policy despite disciplinary action, then termination may be seriously considered.

Note that in the entire process of dealing with employee problems, you need to document in writing everything that takes place so that you are protected against possible employee allegations.

© 2013 Incedo Group, LLC