Manager gets a day of overtime pay for answering employee text when HR refuses to acknowledge their work-life boundaries, HR tries to get them fired, they counter with their own warning: ‘[If] they wanted to punish me for it, they could see me in court’ – FAIL Blog

Using your cell phone to take work calls and respond to messages can start innocently enough, but before you know it, you’re managing staffing issues on your private messages, attending to workplace matters outside of hours, and eventually even handing out your private phone number to clients. Eventually, the organization decides that you do not need a work phone because you’re not using it anyway, so you might as well just use your personal one. 

While being flexible is always important, especially when you are receiving flexibility in return. It’s equally important to have your own boundaries and to stand on principle. Knowing when to make the right call, decisively, and move forward without stewing on it is an important skill. 

It’s equally important for managers and HR representatives of an organization to recognize when this is happening and  be across all of the local laws. There are plenty of pitfalls that can be fallen into, and it’s important to make sure that compliance is a number one priority in order to properly do your job, keep things operating smoothly, and protect the organization’s interests. 

This experienced General Manager ended up in hot water with HR when they made the fact that compliance with the legalities of work-life separation was important to them. When the boundary was repeatedly crossed, and they claimed the time that they had worked at home on their hours, they ended up with an overtime payout that HR was not happy about. When HR tried to retaliate, they stood firm on principle, forcing HR to back down.