Work issue, seeking opinions.

In My Humble Opinion
1

This week, for reasons ‘apparently’ out of my company’s control, our pays were delayed by 24 hrs. This in itself is not necessarily a biggie (although for many families living pay-day to pay-day it would definitely have been hard), but we employees were not informed of the delay until the morning AFTER they were due to appear in our bank accounts.

Firstly, if the reason given by the company is to be believed, then they would have known on the pay-day itself that there was an issue, and in my humble opinion, they have a responsibility to inform employees as soon as they were made aware of the problem. This would give those employees who were ‘banking’ on being paid a chance to make alternative arrangements as needed.

And secondly, I wrote an email to HR basically saying the same as above, and the buggers haven’t even acknowledged my correspondence. :frowning:

It’s a large company with an international presence now, but only the Australian employees were affected. It’s also important to note that, apart from a small core-staff in HR, IT and Payroll, we ALL work remotely, so in some ways we’re just pixels on a computer screen to management and perhaps easier to ‘ignore’ than if we worked in a bricks and mortar office. (The management team is Aus-based btw and I have met most of them despite living 1000km away).

Basically, I’m thoroughly pissed off with their attitude though, and would like some input as to how far to take this. Should I call or send another email next week inquiring as to why the first one was not acknowledged? Raz them up a bit so that they take this situation more seriously than they obviously have up until now?

I’ve been with the company for 8yrs, so I’m not some newbie-trouble-maker, but this dismissive attitude is something that has been endemic for all my time there and I’m sick to death of it. They need to step up to the plate and apologise to the employees for not accepting responsibility for the pay stuff-up, apologise for not notifying us that there was going to be a delay, and make assurances that if there is a future problem, we will be notified as soon as the problem arises.

Or should I just shuddup now that I’ve said my piece?

2

Does this 24 hour pay delay happen often?

3

First time it’s happened in my eight years there. It’s not the delay itself per se, it’s the lack of communication that it was happening.

Sometimes shit happens, and I’m prepared to give the company the benefit of the doubt that this delay was out of their control (tbh, I’m not entirely convinced, but whatever). BUT, they would have known early on the pay-day itself that there was a problem, and I believe it should be incumbent on them to inform employees not to expect their pays to be credited that afternoon. All it would have taken was a quick email…

4

Pretty small blip. Assuming it was a mistake, perhaps also the company believed the problem would have been resolved in time for you to get paid on a normal schedule, but it didn’t and they didn’t let you know soon enough. So they fucked up but got the problem resolved with nothing but a 24 hour delay, you gave them a piece of your mind, what more do you want? If you expect them to rend their clothes and tear out their hair then you’re disappointing yourself by setting your own expectations to high.

5

Be polite. Don’t let your emotions drive this issue. But yeah, they behaved inconsiderately.

6

It sounds like your work are being a bit wankerish by not telling anyone, but at the same time, no good is going to come of following it up either - are they going to say “We’re sorry, Your Excellency, please, have a bonus pay as our way of making up for this egregious oversight on our part”? Of course not.

7

I was extremely polite in the email I sent, but also made it clear that their lack of communication was unacceptable in any professional workplace. Sure, yeah, 24hr delay in pay? No dramas, except for SOME people it would definitely have been a drama with auto-debits coming out etc etc.

I’m more miffed that they haven’t acknowledged my email. It’s all well and good to be a 21st century virtual workplace, but it’s vitally important to recognise your workers as real people with real concerns: ignoring my email is damned rude and doesn’t reflect well upon their business-practices in my humble opinion.

8

Anybody who is affected by a 24 hour pay delay has some serious budgeting problems. A slight delay like this should be anticipated and prepared for by everybody, it shouldn’t even be a concern.

9

Hah! Yeah, like THAT’S gonna happen. :smiley:

I just wanted to bring to their attention the effect this can have on workers, and an assurance that if such an event were to occur again, WE WOULD BE NOTIFIED at the earliest possible time. As mentioned in the OP, payroll would have known by 12.00pm on payday that there were going to be delays (pays normally hit the banks by 2-5pm that day). They didn’t alert us until 10am the following day that there was an issue.

10

Yes, nice… in your world.

Not everyone has the luxury of a decent income and/or a regular payday. The workers at my company are casual employees (we only get paid for the hours we work), and we get two pays per month. Sometimes shit happens and people run short at the end of the paycycle…being able to anticipate a payday can alleviate a whole shitload of stress.

But that’s not the point. The point IS that the company (for whatever reason) delayed the payday AND DID NOT NOTIFY STAFF. That alone is cause for concern, regardless of the economic situation of the employees.

11

…there are millions of people in the world who would be affected by a 24 hour pay delay. They don’t earn enough money to save “enough money”: so they budget as well as they can with what they have. They may well anticipate a problem with a 24 hour delay in pay: but there is no way to prepare for it because they simply don’t have enough cash flowing into the household to do anything about it. I know so many people who do their absolute best for their families on not a lot of money, and they are the best budgeters but you can’t do a lot when you don’t have a lot. Expecting their employer to keep their end of the bargain and pay them on time is the very least you should expect from your employer.

Your words are heartless and cruel: and really aren’t related to this thread at all.

To kambuckta: I’ve only ever experienced a company not paying their staff on time once in my life: and that was a company that was fast running out of cash. They were in the process of making me redundant at the time and it was my last day: the Director of the company paid me direct from his personal bank account, but everyone else had to wait until they “sorted out” their cash troubles. (Which they claimed were caused by “problems at the bank.”)

12

And here’s why I think you’re email was unanswered.
If your tone had been “I know stuff happens, it would be helpful to me to be able to plan if you could communicate with as much notice as possible” your odds would have been better.
But I’m guessing their boss, and their boss’s boss and probably their boss’s boss’s boss had been telling them not getting payroll out on time was unacceptable.
And having someone they don’t report to in any way start telling them what was or wasn’t acceptable didn’t make them immediately want to reply.

I wish the whole “that is unacceptable” theme would die. It’s used to cover everything from “I’m going to walk if I don’t get this” to “I don’t like it” with a skewing to the latter which makes it meaningless.

13

Agree this shouldn’t happen in a modern company.

Agree they should have been proactive in notifying the workers ASAP even if they hoped to resolve the problem before it became inevitable. Far better on payday morning to have mass e-mailed “Hey everybody, there might be a 24 hour delay in your pay. Something went wrong last night and we’re bustin’ ass to get this fixed in time today. But if we don’t it’ll be tomorrow before you see your money. We’ll keep you posted on our progress throughout today. Sorry.”

As to why the OP hasn’t gotten a response from HR to his mail: How many dozen / hundred / thousand Aus employees are there? How many of them made individual complaints? Some / most / almost all? As between explaining to upset (furious?) upper management about this problem, how many of these individual complaints did they receive that ought to be answered? And in what order of importance?

14

Once my (family owned) business was late with the paychecks. The granddaughter of the founder was handing payroll, and got all bent out of shape when people were pissed. It never occurred to her that the lower-wage employees might need the morning paycheck in order to have lunch that day, or gas to get back home.

15

Well, it has happened once in eight years. Maybe the employer had no idea on how to handle it. Hopefully they have learned.

But, it should be obvious. Don’t mess around with the payday. Never.

16

Are there penalties for paying employees later than promised in AUS? The company made one more day of interest on that payroll money, so if they have no financial penalty and no irreplaceable employee leaves due to it, they could not care less at the HR level or otherwise about how it adversely affected any employee.
It’s not as though anyone will refuse their paycheck now, so their actions are fully acceptable as far as everyone’s concerned and I doubt there will be any response to your HR email.
If this was in the US the employee could refuse the paycheck while filing a complaint w/ the state’s board of labor to show they do not accept it (I can’t think of a basis for it, but still); that would require a response from the company.

17

One of my coworkers quickly looked up the legislation, and apparently if your wages are payed by EFT (electronic funds transfer, which I’m sure accounts for 99% of all wages in this country) then nada, no penalty for the company and no recompense for the employee.

Not that I’d have gone that far for just a 24hr delay, but in principle…

18

Do you want to remain employed there? If so, drop it. They won’t fire you outright for bitching about it, but next time they have to let somebody go, they’ll check the “who’s been a pain in the ass” file, and can that guy. Don’t be that guy, unless you’re ready to find another job.

19

Nah, I’ve been a PITA before (different reasons) and I’m a sheila btw. If they wanted to dump my sorry arse they would have found plenty of opportunities over the last few years.

And my industry is performance-based, so while I’m meeting (and exceeding) KPI’s ain’t no way in hell they’re going to sack me.

:smiley:

20

Dupe post