Archived Paid Grace Time

[Michigan Mike]

I was wondering if anyone knew what the best practice for paid grace time is?

Just so everyone knows that is the name for the five minutes before and after you are scheduled when you are allowed to punch in/out without being considered early/late. The executive team at my store just made a change in regards to their stance on that time and I was wondering if anybody knew what the actual corporate policy is (or if there even is one)?

 

[REDRUM]

I believe that a long time ago you were paid in 15 minute intervals, and now it is pay to the minute. I think that it used to be 9 minutes before you were considered late, but that has since changed and I am not exactly sure how they determine lateness since I almost always clock in early. I know that if an ETL has a suspicion about your attendance, tardiness, or even the length of your meal breaks that they can manually go and look it up on MAX. As far as early goes, I believe that 5 minutes is the earliest the clock will allow you to clock in with out LOD override. Once again though SPOT pays us to the minute so whenever you clock in is when you get paid. Not to say that this is POLICY per say, some of these things can be decided by your STL and signed off on by your DTL. who knows....

 

[Ajax11]

If you clock in more than 5 minutes after the start of your shift you will automatically show up as late on the attendance report that is printed daily.

 

[Michigan Mike]

Sorry I should have clarified more, I am mostly referring to punching in up to five minutes early and up to five minutes after you're supposed to leave. For example say I am scheduled 8am to 4pm. Does anyone know if I would be in violation of best practice for punching in at 7:55 am and out at 4:05 PM?

The follow up to that is that can each store set their own policy for that or is it a corporate thing?

 

[3LetterDevil]

Legally speaking, if you're punched in, corporate has to pay you. Now, if you're saying your STL doesn't WANT people punching in at 7:55/4:05, that's a different story. Our store had a policy for a while where we had to report to the LOD if we were more than 5 minutes "late" punching out....well, the pharmacy techs who closed at night were almost ALWAYS reporting because it was rare that we would actually get out within that grace period. The pharmacists just started changing our schedules on MAX to reflect the time we were leaving to make it easier on everyone involved since we would have to find the LOD BEFORE punching out to explain to them WHY we were punching out late (otherwise it would be considered "working off the clock") and that would just make us later as they were rarely readily available.

 

[commiecorvus]

Sorry I should have clarified more, I am mostly referring to punching in up to five minutes early and up to five minutes after you're supposed to leave. For example say I am scheduled 8am to 4pm. Does anyone know if I would be in violation of best practice for punching in at 7:55 am and out at 4:05 PM?

The follow up to that is that can each store set their own policy for that or is it a corporate thing?

They don't give us a hard time about it at our store.
As long as you aren't doing it every day (making an extra 10 minutes on your shift), if you clock in a couple of minutes early and a couple of minutes late there isn't an issue.
I suspect that some stores notice a trend all of a sudden when most of the staff decide to pad their hours and get testy.

 

[tellmeaboutatime]

You will get paid from the minute you punch in until the minute you punch out. Your management team may be cracking down on people who are trying to gain the extra pay by clocking in min early and leaving 5 minutes late. Ultimately you want to punch as close to your scheduled time as possible. If you have 50 people in one day that clock in 5 min early and leave 5 min late that is 8 hours and 20 minutes extra. That could have gotten you 1 extra salesfloor person! You want to make payroll count and this is not the way to do it!

 

[mrknownothing]

Sorry I should have clarified more, I am mostly referring to punching in up to five minutes early and up to five minutes after you're supposed to leave. For example say I am scheduled 8am to 4pm. Does anyone know if I would be in violation of best practice for punching in at 7:55 am and out at 4:05 PM?

The follow up to that is that can each store set their own policy for that or is it a corporate thing?

Apparently my store doesn't like this, but they're passive about it. We sometimes have attendance contests where the goal is to have all your punches as accurate as possible with no punch corrections.

 

[Miguel]

I would recommend punching in and out EXACTLY at the time you are scheduled to avoid ANY problems.

I was wondering if anyone knew what the best practice for paid grace time is?

Just so everyone knows that is the name for the five minutes before and after you are scheduled when you are allowed to punch in/out without being considered early/late. The executive team at my store just made a change in regards to their stance on that time and I was wondering if anybody knew what the actual corporate policy is (or if there even is one)?

 

[wilwum]

Go with what your execs want you to do. That would be the easiest.

 

[dek067]

there's no official policy, but you have the five minute window for a reason. can you imagine 20 flow tm clocking in at exactly 4am? we went through this during christmas. our lod would not unlock the doors until 4am exactly. there were days we stood in line until 6 or 7 after just to clock in. after i had my team fill out punch corrections for the week, they got the hint.
you exec team needs to get over it. if they're missing payroll, it's not because of 5 minutes. it's because your logistics team can't push the truck quick enough, your lods aren't kicking people out on time, or you have tl/tm riding the clock because they can. maybe the time they spent discussing it would be better spent on the sales floor WORKING to help the payroll crunch.

 

[nib]

There is no perfect solution here. If you punch in early you'll get in trouble for negatively impacting the budget, if you punch in late it will be a verbal counseling for not starting on time, you can never satisfy corporate america, they are always trying to find reasons to fire you in case they want to, it's crazy but true

 

[wilwum]

I actually had a discussion with our STL about this yesterday. He said the main reason they don't like people punching in early or late is because of compliance issues. It can throw things all of out whack, especially if you clock out late.

 

[nib]

Again, presuming the employee is staying within the state break requirements, aside from that issue, the next is their simply enjoyment to micromanage the poor and low income employees

I actually had a discussion with our STL about this yesterday. He said the main reason they don't like people punching in early or late is because of compliance issues. It can throw things all of out whack, especially if you clock out late.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

But having that 5 minute allowance, let's you punch in up to 5 minutes after your scheduled time. You aren't considered late till the 6 minute on the clock.

 

[nib]

Actually employees are given a 15 minute window on each side of their start and end times, but if you go over that then your schedule will says "worked past shift" but the grade period is anything within 15 minutes, though your store/manager/etc might decide to be more strict than that general policy if they choose.

Again, presuming the employee is staying within the state break requirements, aside from that issue, the next is their simply enjoyment to micromanage the poor and low income employees