Hi Joe - almost totally disagree with you. Whilst I think a senior manager taking an hour TOIL because they did an hour extra is petty in the extreme, the jist of your post appears to be that charities and their employees should ignore the contracts they agreed to and instead create a culture of working addititonal unpaid hours simply because it 'looks good' and satisfies trustees/donors. I genuinely can't think of a more damming example of how bad the sector can appear. Charities, in my opinion, should be exemplary employers and respect things like work-life balance and fair days pay for a fair days work. If someone is contracted to work until 5.30 then, apart from an emergency, they should be able to leave the office at that time. It doesn't matter what grade they are - senior managers create the culture through their actions. If a charity needs 45 hours of work doing each week, then they need to resource accordingly; not employ someone for 37 hours a week and expect them to make up the difference. Creating a long hours culture makes organisations lazy for cutting their cloth accordingly, or finding innovative solutions to resourcing (eg new technology to make tasks quicker) or cut pointless meetings. Far from an employee getting TOIL questioning whether they should work for a charity, should an organisation that expects it staff to systematically work beyond their hours deserve the benefits of charitable status?

Toil and bonus to paid employees of a charity remain a bit of a cultural mystery to me.

Not that toil or bonus are necessarily perversions but they both seem to contradict the notion that people who work in charities are charitable by nature.

Just sign here... thank you, we now own your soul.

If charities expect workers, regardless of their position, to work an extra 500 hours + a year for free then they should advertise this when putting out their job adverts.

If toil is a major issue then pay them for their extra time like most other employers. Or if an extra 10 to 30 hours a week is required from employees then create the extra jobs that are obviously there.

If an employee is happy to donate their free time to the organisation in extra hours this is fine, but to just expect it is wrong. Even when they do so how often is this recognised by the charities, or other NFP organisations? Just for easy calculations if one worker paid £10 per hour works 10 hours a week above their contract time over the year they have donated £4800 (assuming they do get 4 weeks holiday) to the charity in kind. 10 employees doing the same £48000 in kind. Yet this is rarely recognised, more likely a worker will face disciplinary action for turning up late, being too tired to concentrate etc.

Being a charity should not be an excuse to being a poor employer, or to abuse their employees rights.

Hi Joe, I know the ringing phones have troubled you for some time but try changing your sentence to this "I know that there are many charities where if I phoned somebody WHO HAS KIDS AND HAS GONE TO PICK THEM UP FROM SCHOOL at 6.30pm, or even 5.30pm, the phone would ring and ring." I've worked for charities where such people are seen as lacking commitment and it worries me that you share this view. Personally I only take TOIL when my work demands that I am away overnight or at weekends. I don't see it as a reward but as compensation for being away from my home and my family. Thankfully my employer tries to foster a positive work/life balance and doesn't demand that we wear a hair shirt to convince our donors, you or the public that we care.

Hi Joe.
it is interesting that for some reason so many people such as yourself seem to think that people who work for charities should somehow have or deserve less compensation for the work that they do. Charity employees have mortgages, families to support and bills to pay the same as everyone else. we consistently work for less money as our career choice dictates that we are likely to earn less than our counterparts in public or private sectors. your view is not only archaic but it is in itself dmamaging to the sector as a whole. We should be projecting the image of a professional business and you suggest that anyone working in the charitable sector should freely give of their time. How is it good business sense to have staff that are paid 40 hours a week to routinely work 60 or 70 hours, I would be serioulsy questioning the business skills of any organisation that considers that to be either sustainable or professional. Charitable organisations are unique in the sense that they are lucky enough to employ staff that WILL take TOIL, if this was not the case then most charities would not be able to afford to provide the level of service that they do. in the real world we would be paid for the work that we do so taking TOIL is the least that we deserve. This does not make us less charitable, it makes us more charitable , we are prepared to give our extra time for the simple return of that time being given back to us, nothing more, nothing less.

I agree with George above: let's put it in JDs if it's expected that you work more than you're paid for. Or maybe put it in contracts "you will work 40-50 hours a week, but if any funder asks, you shall put on your best Dickensien face and say with a sigh, Ah, my contracted hours are only 37 but I work the extra because I am just so committed."

OR, turn it around and put it the other way: how about pay people less? Hey, why not both? "Drive" that idea and you'll earn a place at Cameron's table.

If you have one job that is paid at a level to give you flexibility in your life, e.g. can afford childcare, and have no other commitments, then there's no harm you 'donating' some extra hours to the charity. This is old-school charity - a fun hobby for the rich to play at.

But if you look you'll find lots of part time, low-paid people (hey, didn't a charity you're close to recently force people to go part time?) who often have to rush off to another job (or two) in order to support their family, pay their bills and keep their house.

I think funders want to know that the charity is committed, passionate, and can deliver. If they use stressed, burnt-out, underpaid staff as an indicator for achieving this then we're back-sliding fast. But actually I have come across funders who take a much more holistic and enlightened view of achieving change, who are looking for sustainability.

I do agree that charities/NGOs need to be full of fired-up people, and that if it becomes a grey, low-energy jobsworth sort of sector then we're not going to change the world.

But we ARE going to change the world. Starting with your attitude to unpaid overwork.

Joe I couldn’t agree with you more. I have seen this utilised by staff to cover a range of bad habits from inefficient working to downright laziness or even dare I say it an opportunity to gain a long week end. I have also seen where roles cannot operate within the “office” working times, and the only way to square this with the HR teams was to complete the TOIL forms every week to demonstrate that they were indeed working to their contract. To some degree this does apply to Senior Management where the cross over between personal time and work time can be very blurred, sometimes from necessity but not always, so I do have a little sympathy when a number of evenings and weekends can be taken up with what is after all work, so a degree of flexibility should be allowed, however this too can become an over used excuse.

As a charity that is very proud of it's Investors in People status, it would absolutely go against the grain to expect/demand our committed team to work 60/70 hours a week without some TOIL.

Expecting staff to work many hours unpaid would only send a message that senior staff neither value or appreciate the work they do.

Workers MUST have a good work/life balance. A team who are valued, appreciated and recognised for working additional hours will be more happy to work additional hours when needed.

Expecting charity workers to work additional hours with TOIL is damaging to the profession and a step backwards in trying to raise the profile of having a career in fundraising.

Disappointing article, glad to read that many in my profession feel the way I do.

Well done Jo! Now that i realise your were having a laugh posting such an outlandish propostion just to illicit a string of outraged responses. Great tactic - seems some people actually thought you were serious!

Instead of bemoaning the fact that people aren't prepared to work every hour under the sun, perhaps we should thank people who are prepared to be flexible about their working pattern. Of course there will be some who want to record every minute and get it back, but in my experience many staff will give up a good part of a weekend and then take a morning or afternnon during the week back to help them catch up with the chores they would have done had they not been working.
"I have no problem where TOIL is taken after working a 60 or 70 hour instead of a usual 50 hour week". The normal working week should be no more than a maximum of 48 hours according to the working time directive which applies just as much to NFP workers as to private sector.
As for the comment "Equally, I know that there are many charities where if I phoned somebody at 6.30pm, or even 5.30pm, the phone would ring and ring" - at what time do you think it is acceptable for there not to be a member of staff waiting for your valuable phone call? 8.30? 10?

I understand both sides of the argument. The most important aspect of work is of course whether people are effective and achieve good results during their core hours, and there should not be any unwritten expectations of regular unpaid overwork. However, going that extra mile occasionally helps organisations grow.

In my organisation some members of staff have filled out TOIL forms claiming xh and 5 minutes, and similar petty claims. In previous charities I would fly overnight to Asia and Africa, and I would be entitled to a TOIL day for a weekend day. If travel or extra work involved up to 4h, we would be entitled to half a TOIL day.

I don't mind doing routine overtime (which I have nearly always done in charities - particularly in my present role as Chief Executive where I regularly work 50-55h - and yes, it would be good to have support staff, but we cannot afford it), but I do feel I should take TOIL for attending Board meetings on the weekend.

Unfortunately pay is low, but I just don't think a 9-5 mentality belongs to the charity sector. I am not British and I believe the work mentality is somewhat different (perhaps more committed?) in some continental European countries.

Fascinating hornet's nest...

Taking an alternative view - based on the adage that 'Charities exist because donors want a problem solved'

Therefore a few generalisations to consider:
- Charities don't exist to give paid employment.
- Charities don't exist to pay for all hours worked by paid staff

They need to solve the problem the donor wants solved.

However, for those that employ staff, they need committed and talented staff. Staff who offer discretionary effort - staff who volunteer their talent, their time, their intellect and creativity, and their commitment and loyalty. They need staff who offer all of this because they consider it's not work, it's life!

If TOIL can be used to support this wider talent management strategy, all works well.
If TOIL inhibits the strategy to encourage staff to offer discretionary effort then it needs looking at.

For example, if staff perceive a breach in the ‘psychological contract’, they are likely to do one of four things (according to Herriot and Pemberton): Get out. Get Ahead. Get Even. Get Safe.

Not of these responses are congruent with the offering of discretionary effort, and if flexible-working practices (TOIL or otherwise) can help here, then they need to be considered.

So should Chief Executives, or senior managers claim TOIL?

If the charity hasn’t recruited senior managers that have the “It’s not work it’s life” mentality, then probably yes!...and then they should recruit better next time…

I think where the argument is getting confused is between the personal choice of the employees and the legitimate expectations of the employer. I agree with the point that charities should strive to be exemplary employers - but equally I would expect anyone who chooses to work for a charity (particularly in a leadership role) to have some kind of commitment to it and be willing to go above and beyond from time to time. That's a personal choice - while I like the idea of it being recognised as a donation, I'd be concerned about it becoming an expected behaviour.

A charity employer should be setting best practic in duty of care and making sure sure, as is commented above, that people don't burn themselves out. How many organisations with TOIL policies have it as part of a work-life balance policy?

One point I'm surprised hasn't been made is that if charities should expect their staff to work additional hours for free, when do we expect them to do any voluntary work of their own? The sector makes great play of the notion of corporate social responsibility and private and public sector organisations encouraging their staff to get involved in volunteering - just because an organisation is a charity it doesn't mean its corporate social responsibility is already filled because of its charitable purposes.

I am in favour of TOIL as our charity would not be able to afford to pay staff overtime for the extra hours they work and I would rather they were available when needed. If staff routinely work extra hours for no TOIL then you are fooling yourself about the true cost of the organisation.

As the manager of our charity, I regularly work during my holidays and attend evening meetings etc and regularly cancel personal events to ensure that the work I need to do is done. That is my choice and part of my personality. I do not expect others to have to put in extra work free of charge! We donate enough by the lower salaries we get! I have a far more responsible job than I did when I worked in the private sector and am paid about 33% less then I was on when I left 5 years ago!

The Guardian and NFPSynergy are really fuelling debate about this one:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/2012/aug/17/voluntar…

http://tinyurl.com/9sfwo3q

It seems to me that each sector (Profit, Not for Profit and Public) has its own culture:

Profit making companies can reward staff with perks like bonuses, career development, expense accounts, lavish Xmas parties etc.

Public sector organisations can offer excellent pension schemes, relative job security, and other benefits.

The Not for Profit sector often uses money that is made up of membership fees, grants from the public purse (ie taxpayer money), benevolent donations and so on and can't usually offer bonusus for excellent performance or generous pension schemes, or expense accounts, or company conferences in 'nice' locations. Often the pay IS lower than a person could get in the other sectors. But the benefits in the Not-for -Profit sector are often flexible working arrangements, being able to influence the way as ervice is delivered because you care, making a difference in local or national communities and on local or natioanl agendas. So yes, TOIL is a benefit and why not?

That's not to say that the approach to TOIL should be not be relevant to your post.If you are apoointed CEO of a large charity and on a decent salary then I see that it is petty to accrue the extra 15 mins here and there. But for someone much further down the 'food chain' in an organisation, why shouldn't they count those extra half hours ( I do think that counting the 15 mins' is petty and don't encourage that myself - I work to the half hour 'rule' with my team).

Besides that it is very poor organisational management to plan to deliver services with stated funding that then depends on everyone putting in another quarter of the time they are paid for. Funders think you can achieve more than is actually possible with the funding and staff can become demoralised and high staff turnover can result (I am currently dealing with a situation in a third party organisation to dow ith exactly this issue - someone is paid for 18 hours a week and is expected to work full-time!). Franfly an employer is guilty of exploitation - methinks that was abolished with slavery.

Debate!!
This post was originally posted at the social action network ivo.org:
http://ivo.org/volunteercentreenfield/posts/the-toil-discussion-is-real…

My employer abolished TOIL and introduced a managed flexitime scheme to resolve this problem. Now all staff hours are monitored and have a limited amount of flexitime off (2 half days a month):knocks through most of these problems. Should be simple but it hasn't quite worked out!
1. Managers got taken off flexitime early on as they worked far more than contractual hours and the only way to resolve that was cutting frontline services they struggled daily to avoid doing. The additional hours are however voluntary. Ish.
2.Supervisors lie about the time they work to avoid facing the reality that we have vastly more demand than resource to meet it.
3. Junior level paid staff generally work their hours flexibly and without unpaid overtime.
4. Volunteers, well despite a misplaced notion of imposing minimum hours still just volunteer. Thank goodness.

Point: its a mixed bag; Cameron can get stuffed: he didn't invent philanthropy he just thought of a crude idea for exploiting it; unpaid hours do have consequences - managers (especially) do have stress breakdowns at high cost to the organisation.

We all of us work HARD to change the world, but we start with our clients miserable capitalist state imposed problems rather than voluntary overtime.

Hi Joe

Apart from agreeing with my colleagues above, I think you are missing another point here. Many charity workers work weekends and evenings because that is the time that events take place or donors are available. Try not to look at it as overtime; rather, that our work is spread out over the whole week so we take time off when we can. Sometimes it is as simple as that.

Having said that, taking the odd day or afternoon off is not much compensation for missing a weekend with family. Furthermore, in these days of smartphones we are all constantly on call anyway.

Joe, in your self-appointed role as the thought-police of the charity sector, you're sounding distinctly uncharitable. We have a responsibility to our employees and a sensible, workable TOIL policy is a part of that. This is particularly true in small charities with few staff where peak periods of activity necessarily require staff to work significantly longer hours in order to achieve demanding goals. In these cases TOIL is not just about fairness, it's also about demonstrating institutional recognition and gratitude.

Hi Joe -I think this issue is all about trust, and trust is generated by good leaders investing time and effort in their team. Have a happy, well motivated team who are engaged, feel empowered and loved and watch the TOIL issue become a non-issue.

Our fundraising focuses heavily on events, so as an example we regularly have breakfast events that start at 7:30am. For this, the team would arrive at our head office at 5:30am; load the taxis with all the event paraphernalia and set up ready for the guests. Whoever works can claim TOIL from 5:30-9am. Similarly - An evening event may not see a return to head office before midnight.

Do the team claim TOIL? Yes, however some claim every hour and some forget, and some are in the middle - but I trust my team to work out between them when they think its best to take TOIL, depending on their own, and the team’s workload. I don’t have the time or inclination to check their TOIL logs.

When I worked with a different team within a different culture, TOIL was accumulated by people volunteering to work any event at which TOIL could be claimed. TOIL- full bank accounts were converted into week-holidays. However those people I don’t think are still in fundraising.

I know the work load of my team and I know the hours they work - if they need to come in late, that’s fine with me.

As a senior manager I don’t claim TOIL, as I know if I needed flexibility my peers are happy to let me leave early or come in late – we’re all in the same boat. I can understand that junior colleagues, and those who many be cultivating their after work social lives may want to claim back the lost evenings at the pub with their friends.

I have young children, and am fortunate with childcare arrangements, so for me, the evenings are perhaps less of an issue, but working at the weekend, for those with families (and trustees too) is more of an issue. We now have a rota among senior managers and trustees to spread the Sunday events around.

On a similar point, a new colleague who has joined from a city accounting firm mentioned that one of the biggest changes to her life now she works in the NFP sector is to be able to leave at the end of the working day when she has finished her work and not to wait until her boss leaves. Are we looking at the black dot on the white paper or the white paper?

Commitment and passion - 100% agree these should be at the crux of every charity team.

Taking advantage of passionate employees, expecting them to become 'corporate slaves' for relatively lower rewards - 100% disagree.

Lazy clock-watchers expecting 5 minutes 'off' every time the clauses they've memorised in their contracts can be invoked - 100% think you should get back to the 1970's when you could down-tools all you liked...

The 21st century is a very different place than society of even half a generation ago. It's been said above but the sector needs to lead by example and that means individuals AND the organisations behaving flexibly and respectfully towards each other, no?

Not only would I echo what many others have said about confusing flexi-time and TOIL, I would go even further and suggest that the author of this piece is just using anything he can conveniently 'hang his hat on' to vent his thinly veiled contempt for charities and the people that work for them

This is evidetn throughout the article in both the general tone and choice of language.

Mr Saxton starts with an example of something he finds poor practice that was not observed in a charity, but in a local authority. He then suggests (after a brief disclaimer that I don't entirely believe) that any instance of taking TOIL is on a par with these 'lazy' local authority staff.

Further in the article he states, "I know that there are many charities where if I phoned somebody at 6.30pm, or even 5.30pm, the phone would ring and ring."

This is a ridiculous statement. Would Mr Saxton go to a branch of Sainsbury's (well, probably more like Waitrose in his case) an hour after closing time and bemoan the staff for being lazy for not letting him in? Office hours are generally agreed as 9-5 throughout the country and across industries. Just because he may demand someone talks to him at 6:30pm, it doesn't mean they should. Moreover, given the sneering condescension Saxton shows to charity workers I wouldn't be surprised if these people he's calling are at their desks, yet take one look at the caller display and think better than to answer.

This is peculiar given that Saxton's organisation NFP Synergy presents itself as committed to the needs and interests of the charity sector. Indeed, when the website boasts that, "Our Monitors allow charities to discover the opinions of vital groups...", it is laughable, because They are clearly so out of step with charities themselves.

I was reading through the various responses, getting engrossed in the points and weighing up the different perspectives, when I found myself reeling from Taxiarch's broadside about "Cameron can get stuffed!".

It was so unexpected, and out of context with the points being made, I had to explain to the rest of the office why I had suddenly burst out laughing - it was like an outbreak of Tourette's in the middle of a blog!

We then got distracted from our work for a bit, and our collective punishment is to stay at work for an extra 15 minutes...(well 30 for me for also typing this up).

I haven't read the whole chain- I'd have to take TOIL if I did. But, a couple of points strike me:
One: many charity workers start out as volunteers and/or working for a decade or so on part time and low wages. They then try to struggle through the middle of their career with the same ethos of hard work, fire in the belly, intractable issues to tackle, and little pay (albeit this is always relative). Now, a lot of the communities that charities work to support are worse off. But that doesn't licence creating health issues and family issues amongst charity workers expected to accept tacit unlimited demands on their time and energy. People have metabolisms, lives, and loves beyond their vocation.
Two: TOIL is not, as implied in your post, a means of reducing the excessive hours some people work: In my experience, the people who work excessive hours are the ones who accrue obscene amounts of TOIL AND NEVER REDEEM IT. Most of these folk do not have families, or if they do, sadly, they lose them.
Three: So, it comes down to organisational (and personal) culture. So attention to an applicant's work culture during recruitment is important, and the generation of a balanced cutural ethos amongst existing staff is crucial. Here's a few proposed tenets:
1) embrace a performance-based culture aimed at delivering sufficient outcomes frugally, diligently, purposefully and sustainably,
2) Model respectful human relations through work practices- do not fall prey to the poisonous culture of disrespect which pervades many corporate and government organisations,
3) Train, coach and manage staff to avail themselves of flexible working arrangements without risking their health or family, disguising resource gaps from the Board, and without dishonouring the generosity of donors and supporters, the contribution of volunteers or the circumstances of those we serve,
4) have the guts to tell those working long hours beyond their alloted role that they may not do so- that their busy-ness is not aligned with the business and it's strategy and budget, and so they will have to find another place to do whatever it is they are doing (which is not cetral enough to organisational strategy to actually fund). Management has to have the courage of the Board's convictions in that regard.
And as to petty misuses of TOIL (which are certainly irksome, even nasty), simply codify that they may not occur.
There's some stuff.
Thanks Joe for your service, it's wonderful.
Cheers

I'm in Australia and things might be different in UK - but has anyone considered that there could be a need to be clear, for insurance purposes, about when a person is working as an employee for the charity, and when they working as a volunteer for the organisation.

As a trustee it seems to me that TOIL creates ill-feeling and disputes of the sort that its proponents would argue that it is designed to prevent.

That it exists at all is only because we do not have adequate tools to measure employees' inputs, let alone outputs.

If charity employees want to embrace a timeclock mentality then good luck to them. Out here in the private sector we're rather proud that we abolished clocking on and off years ago.

Agree with much of what you've said. But it's a fine line, in the private sector staff are almost always expected to work more hours than they are paid for - and the junior rankers usually don't benefit financially from as it's all part of the work ethic. Likewise in government, there are many staff that put in way above what they get paid for, and of course the same happens in the charity sector too.

Joe's view is more about the work ethic and his comments are aimed at those staff, who exist in all sectors, that down tools on the dot at 5pm and head home. Yes of course they are entitled to, but I think it says more about their level of job satisfaction than anything. Staff that love their work, are motivated and get high degrees of satisfaction from their work are far more likely to stay for as long as the job requires.

But of course if someone does put in extra un social hours then they should be allowed to claim it back and to expect otherwise is just plain unrealistic, not to mention probably illegal!

Joe raises an interesting issue, but in the wider scheme of things I reckon there are more important things out there to worry about :o)

I think this article is a bit disgusting. Of course it is a beautiful thing for anyone, staff or member of the public, to give their time to a cause they believe in. But a work culture that pushes an expectation of free labour is both morally and legally dodgy and undermines any 'giving' of the time for individuals who are also employees. An act of volunteering should be just that: voluntary. I've often spent a Saturday or an evening volunteering for the charity that employs me, but that feels completely different to how it would feel to be told to work beyond the hours in my contract, and prevented from being able to take these back elsewhere. It's dishonest and underhand to advertise one set of hours and expect another - not the values of an organisation I'd want to work for.

All in all, I am incredibly surprised and frustrated by this article and have unsubscribed from nfpSynergy email alerts.

Work is more than time/money, but if you describe it as time and money then you get what you pay for. Rules then become carrots and sticks to influence behaviour. If you have abusers of the system, its your fault if you designed the system, hired the staff or manage the staff. Don't judge other people's motives, value them as people, and you will be surprised what can happen. If you value someone, then you will not demand more than has been agreed, and you will respect their right to give more than you ask - and be thankful. We have to have transactions (contracts and stuff) because of the legal system, but you can still work in a relationship based way that respects one another and look together for the personal and organisational win-wins.

If you say you value people (and most charities will say this), but misuse or abuse your relationships with your staff, you are going to come unstuck sometime.

Have a great day. Typed in my lunch hour.

I am somebody who has worked for several years in the sector in both very low paid and recently comparatively well paid roles. I also did so as a single parent with childcare respobnsibilities. I have never counted the number of extra hours I have given at weekends and evenings, but it's fair to say that for long stretches of my working life I've average 50-60 hour weeks, while being paid for 35, taking the odd bit of TOIL but not so as to be commensurate with hours worked by any stretch. Nevertheless I do usually leave the office at 5.30pm because I have a child to care for. Hence most of my extra hours are worked on the blackberry, on the laptop, during interrupted evenings, hard-working train journeys, ruined family weekends.... I am fortunate that my colleagues are not as quick to judge me for leaving the office at a time that fits with family life, nor unable to recognise the contribution I make to the charity.