People are strange: 14 incredible things employees were caught doing on the clock

One of the great things about writing about HR is the unbelievable range of stupid stuff that human beings do during work time. Here’s a small sampling.  

If you’re thinking, “Oh, I bet this is another one of those CareerBuilder surveys,” you’re right. This one asked 2,175 hiring and human resource managers for examples of the most bizarre things they caught employees doing while they were supposed to be working, and the most common productivity killers in the workplace.

First, the most outrageous behaviors:

  1. Employee was taking a sponge bath in the bathroom sink
  2. Employee was trying to hypnotize other employees to stop their smoking habits
  3. Employee was visiting a tanning bed in lieu of making deliveries
  4. Employee was looking for a mail order bride
  5. Employee was playing a video game on their cell phone while sitting in a bathroom stall
  6. Employee was drinking vodka while watching Netflix
  7. Employee was sabotaging another employee’s car tires
  8. Employee was sleeping on the CEO’s couch
  9. Employee was writing negative posts about the company on social media
  10. Employee was sending inappropriate pictures to other employees
  11. Employee was searching Google images for “cute kittens”
  12. Employee was making a model plane
  13. Employee was flying drones around the office, and
  14. Employee was printing pictures of animals, naming them after employees and hanging them in the work area.

Less unconventional distractions

Thanks to smartphones, chatty co-workers and never-ending Twitter feeds, the obstacles that get in the way of actual work are seemingly endless, the survey indicated. Asked to name the biggest productivity killers in the workplace, employers cited the following:

  • Cell phones/texting: 52%
  • The Internet: 44%
  • Gossip: 37%
  • Social media: 36%
  • Email: 31%
  • Co-workers dropping by: 27%
  • Meetings: 26%
  • Smoke breaks/snack breaks: 27%
  • Noisy co-workers: 17%, and
  • Sitting in a cubicle: 10%.

The Consequences

With so many distractions around, it’s almost surprising any work gets done at all – and sometimes it doesn’t. Survey respondents listed  negative consequences for their organizations, including:

  • Compromised quality of work: 45%
  • Lower morale because other workers have to pick up the slack: 30%
  • Negative impact of boss/employee relationship: 25%
  • Missed deadlines: 24%, and
  • Loss in revenue: 21%.

Not too many surprises there.

OT lawsuits: When signed time sheets aren’t enough to protect you

When is asking employees to sign off on their time sheets before they’re submitted to Payroll for processing not enough to protect you from an overtime lawsuit? When this happens. 

Here’s when you can get nailed: A manager knows or should’ve known that an employee worked more hours than he or she claimed to have worked.

A recent lawsuit shows just how hard it can be to defeat employees’ claims that they weren’t paid proper overtime.

Never spoke up

Meet Jose Garcia and Raymond Sutton, two employees for SAR Food of Ohio, which runs several Japanese restaurants — under the names Sarku Japan and Sakkio Japan — that are located in shopping center food courts.

Both workers sued SAR. They claimed that despite their initial acknowledgement/certification that the work hours they were paid for were correct, they actually weren’t paid for all the time they’d worked.

SAR posted employees’ work schedules at the beginning of every work week. Often times, the schedules called for employees to work more than 40 hours in a week — and there was no dispute that when employees’ schedules and subsequent payroll submissions indicated that they’d worked overtime, they were paid for the time indicated.

But Garcia and Sutton claimed they frequently worked beyond their scheduled shifts and didn’t claim the additional hours on the payroll submissions. Garcia and Sutton gave several reasons for not claiming the additional hours — including not wanting “to seem petty,” feeling “intimidated” and not thinking it was worth pointing it out.

‘But our managers knew’

The court, however, appeared to give little weight to the flimsy reasons Garcia and Sutton gave for not speaking up about their hours.

Instead, it decided to focus on a bigger fish: The fact that their managers may have known they were working undocumented hours.

Garcia and Sutton painted a picture in which it appeared as though they worked side-by-side with their managers, and their managers had a pretty good idea of the true hours the pair worked.

SAR moved for summary judgment in an attempt to get the workers’ lawsuit thrown out. It said that they were given multiple opportunities to inform management that their time sheets were inaccurate and claim the additional work hours (again, there was no despite that SAR paid employees for all the hours they claimed).

On top of that, SAR pointed out that every paystub issued to the workers said “Any questions concerning your pay, please call … Sarku Japan Payroll Department.”

But in the end the court said that didn’t matter.

‘What would a jury say?’

The court said the plaintiffs’ testimony presented evidence that “could allow a reasonable jury to conclude that the store supervisors were aware that Plaintiffs were working after their scheduled shifts, but nonetheless knowingly submitted time sheets indicating that no such work occurred.”

Bottom line: The lawsuit was allowed to proceed.

But what about Garcia and Sutton, weren’t they culpable for failing to point out the unpaid hours? Not if management knew they weren’t paid for time they’d put in, according to the court.

The reason the court gave:

“If an employer with knowledge of uncompensated time could evade FLSA liability where the employee failed to follow procedures, an employer and employee could effectively contract around the FLSA by contriving for the employee to simply not report all time he worked.”

The court also said SAP and its managers, “cannot sit back and accept the benefits [of Garcia and Sutton’s work] without compensating for them.”

The ruling closely mirrors another ruling earlier this summer in which a court allowed an employee’s unpaid overtime claims to proceed based solely on his testimony that he’d worked overtime and hadn’t been compensated for it. (In fact, the Garcia v. SAR court cited this case in its ruling).

In that case, the court asked itself the very straightforward question:

“Where Plaintiff has presented no other evidence, is Plaintiff’s testimony sufficient to defeat Defendant’s motion for summary judgment?”

The answer: Yes.

What can employers do?

Both of these rulings set a high bar employers have to meet to get employees’ unfair pay claims thrown out of court.

So, naturally, the best thing for employers to do is avoid the courtroom altogether.

There are two steps you can take to do this:

  • Step 1: Tell your managers that they cannot turn a blind eye to the hours employees work — no matter the hours an employee signs off on having worked. Managers should be reviewing time cards and engaging employees in conversations if they believe time cards are inaccurate.
  • Step 2: Discipline employees for performing unauthorized work or failing to follow your procedures when it comes to reporting work time. As long as employees are paid for all the hours they work, it’s within your rights to punish workers for these actions.

10 dumbest mistakes employees make when planning for retirement

Granted, it’s not your responsibility to make sure employees have a smart retirement planning strategy. But if you provide a company sponsored retirement plan, you’re the first place employees will look for guidance. And here’s a list of common mistakes that will be a healthy addition to your communication materials.  

The 10 worst retirement planning mistakes employees tend to make:

1. Not eliminating debt

Car loans, personal loans, credit care bills — get rid of ’em. These quickly eat into savings.

And aside from the principal itself, it’s easy to overlook the damage the interest on these loans can do to retirement readiness.

The best plan of attack for employees is to try to enter retirement with no debt and a relatively new car that’s paid off and can last for years after they stop working.

2. Underestimating health costs and inflation

According to U.S. News and World Report, a typical 65-year-old married couple without any chronic medical conditions will need $197,000 to cover out-of-pocket health care expenses in retirement. And that number can balloon to close to $350,000 when you take into account inflation and the potential need for nursing home care.

In addition, a separate study by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that those on Medicare spend an average of $38,688 in out-of-pocket costs during the last five years of their lives.

Bottom line: If near-retirees think insurance will shield them from big-ticket expenses, they’re likely in for a rude awakening.

3. Saving at the default level

The most common default contribution level for a company sponsored 401k is 3%, and many employees think that’s enough. It isn’t.

The most common school of thought among financial advisors: Individuals making $50,000 or less should be saving at least 10% of their pre-tax income — and that’s if there’s a company match involved.

A more ideal retirement planning strategy would be for employees to set their contribution rate at or near 10% and try to increase it by at least 1% every year.

4. Forgetting about a previous 401k

Changing jobs can be a hectic time. In the midst of learning new skills, working with new people and possibly even moving, it’s easy for employees to forget about that 401k they left at a previous employer.

The danger in that is the investments in an old account may reach a point where they no longer meet an individual’s investment goals. Then when it comes time to withdraw, the account’s a little smaller than it could (or should) be. If management of the plan changes hands, the funds could be turned into conservative investments or cash options where they fail to keep up with inflation.

5. Bailing on stocks after a bad quarter

When it comes to investing in the stock market, which a lot of company sponsored 401ks do, it can be tempting to pull investments when the stock market appears to be on the downswing.

This can be a dangerous approach, especially for young investors who are likely robbing themselves of the opportunity to buy cheap and let those investments grow when the market rebounds.

On the other hand, older workers who aren’t as likely to be able to withstand a downturn in the market will want to think about selling high when the market is up and putting their money in something less risky than stocks — even if it doesn’t have the same growth potential.

6. Playing catch-up

Employees who don’t start saving in their twenties and thirties because they think they can make up for it later in their careers — when hopefully they’re making more money — are shooting themsleves in the foot in two ways:

  • They’re robbing themselves of the potential returns they would’ve gotten on money invested earlier, and
  • They’re exposing themselves to more risk by investing aggressively later in their lives.

7. Not having any insured income

If employees fail to select some type of guaranteed payout option — like an annuity — they risk running out of savings before the end of their lives.

Sure, annuities can’t guarantee employees can maintain a high standard of living, but they can at least guarantee retirees will always have some income.

8. Thinking traditional retirement savings is enough

While saving in an annuity, 401k or some other tax-advantaged plan is obviously great, employees also need to focus on establishing a healthy savings account — or some type of rainy day fund.

This will make sure a large expense — like a car or medical procedure — doesn’t wipe out the retirement savings they’ve been planning to pull from in the years ahead.

Employees don’t want to have to tap their 401k every time an unexpected expense pops up. That reduces the pool of money they’ve hopefully built a budget around.

9. Withdrawing funds too soon

As we just stated, it’s important to have some sort of rainy day fund so employees’ 401ks don’t become their go-to spot for a bailout.

Pulling money out of a 401k before age 59-and-a-half is bad on two fronts:

  • The money gets taxed in the bracket they’re in now (which may be higher than the bracket they’d fall into in retirement), and
  • It can get hit with a 10% early distribution penalty.

10. Collecting social security early

If possible, employees want to try to do without Social Security until their “full retirement age” — which is the age at which a person becomes eligible to receive unreduced retirement benefits. An employee’s full retirement age is dependent upon the year they were born.

If an employee elects to collect benefits before their full retirement age, their benefits will be paid out at a reduced rate for the remainder of their life.

For example, if a retiree elects to receive Social Security benefits at age 62 (the earliest allowed), and their full retirement age is 67 (which is the case for anyone born after 1960), their monthly payment is reduced by 30%. That will add up over the years.