Overtime anyone? 

Employers and employees in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors around the world are struggling with increasing work demands that often spill into personal time outside the office.

While the notion that work life and personal life are blending into each other has been around since the explosion of e-mail access and the internet made it possible to work from home (or the Muskoka chair), the expectations by employers and employees of how much overtime work is necessary continues to dog many.

This is evident in the nonprofit sector, where managers and frontline employees are often motivated by more than their paycheques to work above-and-beyond the 40-hour work-week. 

What’s in a number?

Canadian workforce laws, governed by provincial employment standards and the Canada Labour Code in certain sectors, state that, generally speaking, the standard hours of work are eight hours in a day and 40 hours in a week. The maximum number of hours of work for a week is 48 hours. 

And those extra eight hours should be paid at the overtime rate of 1.5 hours (or “time-and-a-half” as it’s commonly referred to).

Keep in mind however, that most nonprofit organizations operate under the employment standards governed by individual provinces and territories For more detailed information about how these regulations apply to you in your own jurisdiction, the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector has a webpage with links here.

But let’s face it, for most employees, leaving the office after eight hours on e-mail or the phone, or researching on the internet doesn’t mean going home to completely abstain from the web. Instead, it means following up with pending e-mails on your smartphone or desktop or Skyping with clients overseas that are just beginning their workdays. And most of the time, this overtime goes unreported because it’s just the way of the world now. The question remains: should there be compensation for these extra hours and how would they even be recorded?

Habitat for workology

Stewart Hardacre, president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity Canada (HFHC) takes a pragmatic view of the situation.

“While we do have a lieu time policy when staff are required to work certain non-business days, we do not consider overtime and work in non-business hours as eligible for compensation,” he told CharityVillage. “Overtime and work in non-business hours is expected working in a nonprofit sector where meetings and discussions involving volunteers often occur in non-business hours.”

Does HFHC staff have a problem with this managerial position?

“The staff who typically do the off-business hours work, whether using technology or in actual meetings, are manager level or higher and understand this contribution is required for the organization to be successful.  Boards and committees are all volunteers, so our work with them has to recognize they have daytime jobs and are making their own personal contribution of time,” Hardacre said.

He added that the morale of his staff is “very high” and that its likely the extra uncompensated hours they work is a small price to pay for being able to fulfill their personal mission to assist with the humanitarian needs of the population.

It should be noted that for the most part, overtime rules apply differently at the managerial level. Managers generally do not receive compensation for overtime work, as their pay is based on an inclusive annual salary. Front line staff, paid by the hour, usually are the ones eligible for overtime pay.

But what do human resources experts have to say?

It’s all in the “H” & “R”

Gay Hamilton, executive director of the HR Council, said while her organization doesn’t advise nonprofit clients on how to compensate employees – “We all come under legislated employment standards,” she said – there are numerous resources on work practices and HR models for compensation, such as lieu time, available on the council’s website for all to use.

However, lieu time and other flex compensation strategies are available for employers to offer employees.

Lieu time is described by the HR Council as “time that an employee earns by working in excess of their scheduled hours due to the demands of the job/day/situation. Lieu time is typically calculated as hour for hour. Example: an employee is required to work an extra two hours to complete an urgent project. They accumulate two hours of ‘lieu’ time to be taken off work with pay at a time negotiated with their immediate supervisor.”

A recent “Global Overtime Survey” commissioned by The Workforce Institute at Kronos, sheds some light on how employees worldwide feel about their overtime situations.

The survey’s results, culled from employees earning hourly wages in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, India, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It found that overall, employees believed their employers were in violation of overtime and compensation pay rules. However, the majority was also very happy at being offered overtime.

While the report itself is a cautionary document for employers to beware of abusing employees’ work hours and risk lawsuits over unfair work demands for overtime, the flip side is a situation where employers create a work environment that considers its employees and promotes a less autocratic work culture.

Maytree, Maytree not

Markus Stadelmann-Elder, manager of communications at the Maytree Foundation, shared his experiences managing his staff and being managed in an environment that has shifted away from being constantly connected and working excessively outside office hours.

“It’s funny, we just went through two crazy weeks of [workload], but we’re always talking about this subject,” Stadelmann-Elder said.

He clarified first that a distinction must be made between manager-level employees and hourly staff. The former sign contracts that permit extra hours as they are salaried, while the latter are governed by stringent labour laws regarding overtime.

For he and his staff though, there’s recognition that there are times where you go beyond the nine-to-five, because the work is nonstop, “Yes, we sign a contract that says ‘35 hours’ a week, and we just smile. It’s not different between the for-profit and nonprofit workforces. There’s the expectation that you go beyond those hours at some points,” he said. But that hard work comes with a reward.

“For example, we plan some of our events on weekends that we get lieu time for. So we wouldn’t come in on the Monday following a weekend work event. For some of us like me, that arrangement wouldn’t work. But we do close the office between Christmas and New Years. This is kind of seen as a form of compensation, as there’s an acknowledgement that we all worked really hard during the year. For me, this is a huge [bonus] as it’s an extra week of vacation.”

Asked whether working the extra hours is made more tolerable at a nonprofit because there’s a humanitarian cause motivating him, Stadelmann-Elder said that didn’t factor into it.

“We’d like to think this would be the case, but I don’t think so. For me and the nature of my work, whether in a for-profit or nonprofit, I tended to work really long hours before. Then I stopped doing that. It became acceptable, expected and the norm to work extra hours at home or through breaks at work. On a personal level, it was no longer acceptable to me to do this. I used to take work home. Have dinner; then go back to work on the computer. I don’t do this anymore. I’d rather stay an extra half hour at work or realize I have a lot of work to do that day and just focus to finish it.”

He said Maytree employees have talked about this phenomenon and collectively decided to implement a non-official policy to stay away from work outside of the office, except in extenuating circumstances.

The new paradigm occurred just in the last year, when it became exceedingly burdensome to many of his colleagues when they kept receiving e-mail and BlackBerry messages on weekends until one finally demanded they cease and desist.

“We said ‘this is just stupid, let’s stop doing this.’ In our communications team, we monitor this activity now and we also know the world won’t come to an end if… some of the things wait until Monday,” Stadelmann-Elder said. “We work hard during the week. We know if we have to meet a deadline, we work. It’s a given. It’s not even the expectations of our [superiors], it’s our own expectations to do a good job. But we also know, if we work without taking a break, we are not going to be effective. For a lot of us, this is the ideal job. But then the borders between your passion, your work and [personal life] become a bit shifty” if you overwork.

He said while nothing is written in policy, there is recognition even from the board level and Ratna Omidvar, Maytree’s president, that the smartphones or BlackBerries must be shut off once one leaves the office.

As a result his staff has become less stressed and happier.

“There’s much less communication coming in the off-hours now,” he said. “Our boss even turns off her BlackBerry on vacation now. And you no longer get into trouble if you’re not reachable on weekends. This is a huge change” in work culture.

“Yes, we still look long hours. And nine-to-five is an ideal we aspire to, though mostly only happens in the summer when it’s quieter. But there are now times that are off-limits. As an organization, we’ve shifted, and that I think this is really healthy.”

Take a (non-overtime) minute to respond

What do you think? Are employees in the nonprofit sector more susceptible to working uncompensated overtime than their counterparts in the public or private sectors? 

Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf is president of WordLaunch professional writing services in Toronto. He can be reached at andy@wordlaunch.com.

Photos (from top) via iStockphoto. All photos used with permission.

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