Overtime Work or Compensatory Off Policy

If No-work pay guarantee is one side of the coin; overtime is the other side that poses the problem to the maintenance manager. Men must be warned that you are going to ask them to work over time or they will be free to refuse to stay. So, if overtime is anticipated the maintenance manager or the scheduler has to warn the foreman so that he can tell his men ahead. In maintenance department it is very often to see the situations that demand the overtime due to unexpected breakdowns and unsolved puzzles while repairing.

The maintenance manager should be very cautious while adopting this overtime policy, because there is every chance of the regular work getting slowed down intentionally by the work men with a view that they will get double pay in overtime work. The industries have realised this problem and thence found another formula called compensatory off. In this policy, the time that workmen who worked for more time after his regular duty is credited as a leave which they utilize on any other day. However, this will encourage the absenteeism and creates a problem if this absence occurs on a day when it is really needed. Therefore a maintenance manager is advised to set the labour contracts in such a way that these overtime and under time problems will not disturb the regular work.

Merits

• Workers are motivated to work more.
• Availability and Maintainability of the machines can be improved.
• Workers can get job satisfaction.
• A job (particularly repair job) if kept pending or transferred to another person (or group of persons), it gets delayed because the new person needs time understand the problem. Sometimes it may not be solved also. Therefore it is better to allow the same person to continue who started.

Demerits

• The workmen may take a chance to slow down the job intentionally so that they can get a compensatory off if it done in extra time.
• Sometime a little extra time over the normal time may be sufficient to complete the job, but the worker may demand full day compensation in lieu of this.
• It encourages absenteeism and may affect the normal day work because the workmen may take leave when it is really needed.
• It creates the conflicts among the workmen because a particular workman may get more compensatory offs while other may get less due to the nature of repair/maintenance work carried on the machines depending on the age of the machine, nature of the failure, criticality of the failure, etc.
• It may induce prejudices in the scheduler or even if the scheduler plans efficient workmen purposefully in the interest of giving the best to the organisation, it may give scope others to speak that the scheduler is partial. It affect the important principle of management, i.e. principle of equity.