Hi! Everyone thanks for providing information in my last post. Please guide me if a company can go away overtime culture completely. Instead of providing overtime, can they give compensatory off. and change the pay head name to good work or other allowance. Is this practice is acceptable? If yes, please help me this sections and laws which allow us to follow this practice or if it is not allowed. kindly guide me on the appropriate way to manipulate overtime at the same time complying by the overtime rules laid by the government. I'm from Chandigarh. It would be great if you can write the sections & laws along with the answers.
From India, Ludhiana
4From India, Ludhiana
Dear Poonam,
The 2nd, 3rd and 4th sentences of your post are not just contradictory but confusing too. In the 2nd sentence, you write that you could do away with the OT culture completely. But then in the next sentence, you ask for the compensatory off (Comp off). But then comp off is always given for the overwork. Why the employees are doing overwork? If they are overworking, then how you could do away with the OT culture?
The 2nd and 4th sentence contradicts. You wanted to insert a new head in the payslip for "good work allowance". This is notwithstanding doing away with the OT culture.
I recommend you writing clearly the correct position and your request too. Substituting OT with some other code in the payslip does not serve any purpose. You need to do Root Cause Analysis (RCA) of the problem of OT. To do so, you may click here to refer to the reply of my past post.
Subsequently, you have written, "kindly guide me the appropriate way to manipulate overtime". Well, madam, this forum is not for providing suggestions on manipulations. This forum is of professionals and professionals do not suggest tricks or loopholes in the law. I request you to look for some different forum.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
The 2nd, 3rd and 4th sentences of your post are not just contradictory but confusing too. In the 2nd sentence, you write that you could do away with the OT culture completely. But then in the next sentence, you ask for the compensatory off (Comp off). But then comp off is always given for the overwork. Why the employees are doing overwork? If they are overworking, then how you could do away with the OT culture?
The 2nd and 4th sentence contradicts. You wanted to insert a new head in the payslip for "good work allowance". This is notwithstanding doing away with the OT culture.
I recommend you writing clearly the correct position and your request too. Substituting OT with some other code in the payslip does not serve any purpose. You need to do Root Cause Analysis (RCA) of the problem of OT. To do so, you may click here to refer to the reply of my past post.
Subsequently, you have written, "kindly guide me the appropriate way to manipulate overtime". Well, madam, this forum is not for providing suggestions on manipulations. This forum is of professionals and professionals do not suggest tricks or loopholes in the law. I request you to look for some different forum.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
From India, Bangalore
Dear Poonam,
We are expected to do things only as the law says and if we fail to do or do it in any other way that suits our own convenience, it is not compliance but sheer contravention that would be visited with penalty. Therefore no intelligent manipulation can substitute effective compliance. If over time work is the regular feature of an entity, it is indicative of managerial deficiencies such as inadequate man power planning, loose work schedule, improper supervision or control and the like. The restrictions on over time work should be understood by every employer in the right perspective. Firstly, the restriction on its duration per day/week/quarter is only to avoid excessive physical strain to the workmen and ensure them sufficient leisure after long working hours. Secondly, the enhanced rate of normal wages prescribed for over time work is to discourage the practice of extracting more work from the same workmen instead of engaging the services of additional workforce on normal wages thereby creating more employment. The provision for overtime work is only a concession to meet emergencies and not a privilege to defeat the purpose behind the concession.
From India, Salem
We are expected to do things only as the law says and if we fail to do or do it in any other way that suits our own convenience, it is not compliance but sheer contravention that would be visited with penalty. Therefore no intelligent manipulation can substitute effective compliance. If over time work is the regular feature of an entity, it is indicative of managerial deficiencies such as inadequate man power planning, loose work schedule, improper supervision or control and the like. The restrictions on over time work should be understood by every employer in the right perspective. Firstly, the restriction on its duration per day/week/quarter is only to avoid excessive physical strain to the workmen and ensure them sufficient leisure after long working hours. Secondly, the enhanced rate of normal wages prescribed for over time work is to discourage the practice of extracting more work from the same workmen instead of engaging the services of additional workforce on normal wages thereby creating more employment. The provision for overtime work is only a concession to meet emergencies and not a privilege to defeat the purpose behind the concession.
From India, Salem
Dear Madam,
It is presumed that your establishment is either a factory or commercial establishment. In which case you come within the perview of the Factories Act/ State Rules or States Shops and Commercial Establishment Act/Rules.
Under the respective applicable law, you are governed by daily/weekly hours, spread over, daily/ weekly/ quarterly limits of permitted overtime hours.
As regards overtime work done, the law only prescribes twice the rate of payment and no compensatory off in lieu of it. So legally it is not permitted. It is better you give up thoughts of doing something against the law.
To stop or control so called 'overtime culture', is entirely in your hands through better planning and scheduling of work flow, supervision and monitoring. Workers have no say it it. If you get your acts well together , OT culture will fade.
As regards, compensatory off, it is required to be given for working full day on weekly off day/ paid holiday as a substitution. If you are thinking of combining overtime work done on different days , and give compensatory off in order to wriggle out of double rate of payment, it would amount to violation of the legal provisions, inviting prescribed punishment.
You also want to scuttle the law by renaming OT payment by disguising it with diffent pay head.
Your intentions of doing what is stated in your post , either are unclean or arising out of ignorance of the prevailing law.
It is better you act within the ambit of law in the light of the views expressed on your post by the learned colleagues.
Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR and Employee Relations Consultant
From India, Mumbai
It is presumed that your establishment is either a factory or commercial establishment. In which case you come within the perview of the Factories Act/ State Rules or States Shops and Commercial Establishment Act/Rules.
Under the respective applicable law, you are governed by daily/weekly hours, spread over, daily/ weekly/ quarterly limits of permitted overtime hours.
As regards overtime work done, the law only prescribes twice the rate of payment and no compensatory off in lieu of it. So legally it is not permitted. It is better you give up thoughts of doing something against the law.
To stop or control so called 'overtime culture', is entirely in your hands through better planning and scheduling of work flow, supervision and monitoring. Workers have no say it it. If you get your acts well together , OT culture will fade.
As regards, compensatory off, it is required to be given for working full day on weekly off day/ paid holiday as a substitution. If you are thinking of combining overtime work done on different days , and give compensatory off in order to wriggle out of double rate of payment, it would amount to violation of the legal provisions, inviting prescribed punishment.
You also want to scuttle the law by renaming OT payment by disguising it with diffent pay head.
Your intentions of doing what is stated in your post , either are unclean or arising out of ignorance of the prevailing law.
It is better you act within the ambit of law in the light of the views expressed on your post by the learned colleagues.
Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR and Employee Relations Consultant
From India, Mumbai
If any claim is filed by ang workman claiming overtime under Payment of Wages Act, then it may warrant compensation upto 10 times.
It is better that you take proper advice, telling your specific query.
- S. K. Mittal
9319956443
From India, Faridabad
It is better that you take proper advice, telling your specific query.
- S. K. Mittal
9319956443
From India, Faridabad
Vinayak Nagarkar, Umakanthan.M, Dinesh Divekar.
Thank you all for your valuable advice.
Dinesh Divekar sir,
I myself is quite confused what exactly my HR head is willing to do. But i being responsible to keep my management updated and informed about the compliances. I want to have clear knowledge about what exactly we can do Or we can't. Our new payroll manager and HR head in the name of cutting down the cost of the company suggested few changes in the compliances and policies.
The foremost suggestion is to stop paying overtime to everyone employee. We will be paying overtime only to two departments after the implementation of revised overtime policy of the company that too they want to pay normal wages for the extra hours they will work, not as per law I. E. double of the wages. As we will not comply with the law, therefore,our manager suggested to change the overtime pay head to productivity incentive or other allowances. For rest of the employees, HR want to give compensatory off in lieu of extra hours an employee work instead of double wages.
I completely disagree with it. Because I know by law we have to pay double the wages and compensatory off plus normal wages for week offs and on the public holiday again double the wages.
Do administration and HR people get overtime as well?
From India, Ludhiana
Thank you all for your valuable advice.
Dinesh Divekar sir,
I myself is quite confused what exactly my HR head is willing to do. But i being responsible to keep my management updated and informed about the compliances. I want to have clear knowledge about what exactly we can do Or we can't. Our new payroll manager and HR head in the name of cutting down the cost of the company suggested few changes in the compliances and policies.
The foremost suggestion is to stop paying overtime to everyone employee. We will be paying overtime only to two departments after the implementation of revised overtime policy of the company that too they want to pay normal wages for the extra hours they will work, not as per law I. E. double of the wages. As we will not comply with the law, therefore,our manager suggested to change the overtime pay head to productivity incentive or other allowances. For rest of the employees, HR want to give compensatory off in lieu of extra hours an employee work instead of double wages.
I completely disagree with it. Because I know by law we have to pay double the wages and compensatory off plus normal wages for week offs and on the public holiday again double the wages.
Do administration and HR people get overtime as well?
From India, Ludhiana
Dear Madam,
It is not known what is your role/ position in the organization and even if you agree with our views , how far you will be influential in changing the mindset of murky HR/ Pay roll Manager.
However, it is heartening to see that you personally know and agree to toe the line of law.
Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR and Employee Relations Consultant
From India, Mumbai
It is not known what is your role/ position in the organization and even if you agree with our views , how far you will be influential in changing the mindset of murky HR/ Pay roll Manager.
However, it is heartening to see that you personally know and agree to toe the line of law.
Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR and Employee Relations Consultant
From India, Mumbai
Speaking with fair amount of success in tackling OT and in dealing with Compensatory Off, (C.Off) I want to share some of my experiences:
1. OT is a disease and soon it becomes a matter of right for employees, many many unhealthy practices develop.
2. Instead of OT we developed a practice of giving C.Off and that too degenerated over a period of time.
3. We are an engineering industry and there are certain standard hours fixed for each manufacturing activity (like machining, welding, fitting etc) . Every workman has to give output worth 208 hours in every month. Because of increased efficiency as well as slackness in the standard hours fixed, many employees started producing output in excess by 20-30% every month and there was demand for some compensation. Mind you the entire work was normally finished within the normal working hours. So we introduced an incentive scheme and gave attractive amounts for working at more than 100% efficiency. There was no formal record of the C. Off earned and it was managed informally, by marking them as being present while they availed C. Off.
4. But during month end, quarter end and year end employees used to work on weekly off days and used to be compensated with C. Offs. Although initially the rule was to avail the C. Off immediately thereof, over a period of time the workmen used to accumulate them and avail it at their convenience. Many times this created problems and employees created scenes many times demanding C. Off as a matter of right for every small piece of extra work. So you have to be very cautious in implementing it.
5. Although the Section 59 of the Factories Act 1948 makes it mandatory that OT wages are payable for working in excess of 9 hrs per day or more than 48 hours per week, there is a judgement of AP High Court which states that there cannot be both OT as well as compensatory holiday. ( I will have to search for it, probably óf mid 80's. ) So applying that logic it has been possible to argue that where compensatory holiday is given for working on weekly off day, there is no need for payment of OT. Fortunately for us this matter never got challenged seriously in a legal manner as the employees in general were happy and everybody treated OT as anathema.
From India, Mumbai
1. OT is a disease and soon it becomes a matter of right for employees, many many unhealthy practices develop.
2. Instead of OT we developed a practice of giving C.Off and that too degenerated over a period of time.
3. We are an engineering industry and there are certain standard hours fixed for each manufacturing activity (like machining, welding, fitting etc) . Every workman has to give output worth 208 hours in every month. Because of increased efficiency as well as slackness in the standard hours fixed, many employees started producing output in excess by 20-30% every month and there was demand for some compensation. Mind you the entire work was normally finished within the normal working hours. So we introduced an incentive scheme and gave attractive amounts for working at more than 100% efficiency. There was no formal record of the C. Off earned and it was managed informally, by marking them as being present while they availed C. Off.
4. But during month end, quarter end and year end employees used to work on weekly off days and used to be compensated with C. Offs. Although initially the rule was to avail the C. Off immediately thereof, over a period of time the workmen used to accumulate them and avail it at their convenience. Many times this created problems and employees created scenes many times demanding C. Off as a matter of right for every small piece of extra work. So you have to be very cautious in implementing it.
5. Although the Section 59 of the Factories Act 1948 makes it mandatory that OT wages are payable for working in excess of 9 hrs per day or more than 48 hours per week, there is a judgement of AP High Court which states that there cannot be both OT as well as compensatory holiday. ( I will have to search for it, probably óf mid 80's. ) So applying that logic it has been possible to argue that where compensatory holiday is given for working on weekly off day, there is no need for payment of OT. Fortunately for us this matter never got challenged seriously in a legal manner as the employees in general were happy and everybody treated OT as anathema.
From India, Mumbai
Dear Madam,
KK-HR 's post is an eye-opener in respect the legally departed practice of treating OT as C-Off and how it has degenerated into abuse and misuse beyond repair.
It is a great learning from live experience
worth not repeating by any organisation.
Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR- and Employee Relations Consultant
.
From India, Mumbai
KK-HR 's post is an eye-opener in respect the legally departed practice of treating OT as C-Off and how it has degenerated into abuse and misuse beyond repair.
It is a great learning from live experience
worth not repeating by any organisation.
Regards,
Vinayak Nagarkar
HR- and Employee Relations Consultant
.
From India, Mumbai
Hi All,
The act is made in 1948 and at that time worker is mostly not known about law, know a days all are know about law and worker are intentionally generating their OT which will be out of the Supervisor hand. let me provide a scenario:
For a shift 3 persons and one reliever has to be provided. Once the relay of the shift is set. know worker will mutually plan to earn more wages as follows: all workers will plan like this worker 2 will absent from duty and worker 1 has to continue which he will get 1 shit normal pay and extra shift OT as per the OT Rules. know the worker 2 will come on the other day and play same with worker 3 and this will continue. the relieving person will come for general shift which as the absence is unplanned or this will be done when one person will be on Week off.
From above we have to pay extra OT to the employees which is out of control of the supervisor as workers are intentionally doing either twice or thrice in a month.
shift planned and shift done are as follows:
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
worker 1 A A B B C C WO
Worker 2 B B C C WO A A
worker 3 C C WO A A B B
Worker 4 WO G A G B G C
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
worker 1 A+B A Abs B C C WO
Worker 2 Abs B C C WO A A+B
worker 3 C C WO A A+B B Abs
Worker 4 WO G A+B G Abs G C
as per the planning we have to pay 28 mandays in a week but in this scenario we have to pay 24 mandays and 32 OT hrs double wages. Here we are paying 32 hrs wages extra. This is for one week assume for one month and assume for other shift which increases the financials.
I agree that HR team has to control but the shifts are planned by supervisors and HR is at last point. which will be blamed for the cost of payroll increase.
Know to avoid what can we do with out taking compensatory off option. post draining lots of money implemented Compensatory off for the above which taken us under control by providing Compensatory off and call General shift in the shift of the CO person as follows.
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
worker 1 A+B CO Abs B C C WO
Worker 2 Abs B C C WO A A+B
worker 3 C C WO A A+B CO Abs
Worker 4 WO A A+B CO Abs B C
Still we have to provide8 hrs OT double wages and 27 Mandays.
Suggest me know if we should go ahead with Comp Off, if any one challenge what we have to do to address this unethical practice of worker in a shortage of workmen in the market.
Venkat.
From India, Kakinada
The act is made in 1948 and at that time worker is mostly not known about law, know a days all are know about law and worker are intentionally generating their OT which will be out of the Supervisor hand. let me provide a scenario:
For a shift 3 persons and one reliever has to be provided. Once the relay of the shift is set. know worker will mutually plan to earn more wages as follows: all workers will plan like this worker 2 will absent from duty and worker 1 has to continue which he will get 1 shit normal pay and extra shift OT as per the OT Rules. know the worker 2 will come on the other day and play same with worker 3 and this will continue. the relieving person will come for general shift which as the absence is unplanned or this will be done when one person will be on Week off.
From above we have to pay extra OT to the employees which is out of control of the supervisor as workers are intentionally doing either twice or thrice in a month.
shift planned and shift done are as follows:
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
worker 1 A A B B C C WO
Worker 2 B B C C WO A A
worker 3 C C WO A A B B
Worker 4 WO G A G B G C
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
worker 1 A+B A Abs B C C WO
Worker 2 Abs B C C WO A A+B
worker 3 C C WO A A+B B Abs
Worker 4 WO G A+B G Abs G C
as per the planning we have to pay 28 mandays in a week but in this scenario we have to pay 24 mandays and 32 OT hrs double wages. Here we are paying 32 hrs wages extra. This is for one week assume for one month and assume for other shift which increases the financials.
I agree that HR team has to control but the shifts are planned by supervisors and HR is at last point. which will be blamed for the cost of payroll increase.
Know to avoid what can we do with out taking compensatory off option. post draining lots of money implemented Compensatory off for the above which taken us under control by providing Compensatory off and call General shift in the shift of the CO person as follows.
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
worker 1 A+B CO Abs B C C WO
Worker 2 Abs B C C WO A A+B
worker 3 C C WO A A+B CO Abs
Worker 4 WO A A+B CO Abs B C
Still we have to provide8 hrs OT double wages and 27 Mandays.
Suggest me know if we should go ahead with Comp Off, if any one challenge what we have to do to address this unethical practice of worker in a shortage of workmen in the market.
Venkat.
From India, Kakinada
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Overtime.ppt
OverTime.xls
Overtime Form.doc