Back from the dead! and HR's role in controlling employee schedules.

Hello world!

After having taken a nearly full year sabbatical from the blog while I focused on work, I am very happy to be back. Part of my return can be accounted for by my decision to pursue my CHRP designation, starting with writing the NKE in November. I'll be posting study tips as I go along since I have found that there doesn't seem to ever quite be enough of that when you're in the midst of studying.


With that out of the way, we might as well jump right back in with some news from across the pond. A young man was found dead in his shower last week. Early reports indicate that this may have been, in some part, brought on by his working hours at Merrill Lynch.

Image courtesy of imagerymajestic/
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This has brought on discussion about industries where working hours are less regulated and where the expectation is that the employee essentially devotes themselves to the company until they have earned their stripes, so to speak. This practice is fairly common place here in Canada too. Fields such as medicine, finance, and law have implicit (and sometimes explicit) expectations of their employees that they put in 60, 70, 80, even 100 hours in a given week.

In Ontario, there are strict regulations around how many hours an employee is required to work, as well as how many hours they can be asked to work. That number never exceeds 60 hours a week and anything above 48 requires ministry approval. The Ministry of Labour website is very clear that the onus is on the employer to submit the appropriate documentation and follow the laws, but that it is the responsibility of the employee to come forward if the rules aren't being followed.

The fields where the violations are the greatest tend to be either the ultra competitive, well paying positions such as the young man who's death is now sparking a controversy in the UK, or the type of low paying, low skilled work given to people with little agency over their choice in job.

The question is, since inherently, the types of people who end up in these roles are the least likely to come forward (the fear of losing a hard-fought job being too much for most), how do we as HR professionals play our part?

What would an HR person working in a law firm that mandates 3,000 billable hours (per year) from their associates do? How about simply rewarding the lawyers who pulled in the greatest amount of hours?

Where does an HR person step in if an hourly employee is being encouraged to work more hours than there is ministry approval for? This is especially troubling since in many situations like this there is no HR person involved.

At the end of the day, there is only so much HR can do if the employee isn't willing to come forward, but where do we draw the line?

Follow this link to learn more about Moritz Erhardt and the UK controversy on the Guardian.