The organization I work for has started making our morning "huddles" mandatory for each unit. In case you aren't familiar, it's where the charge nurse tells us a little about what to expect that day like pts with anticipated discharges or if a patient has blood or chemo ordered... They can be really beneficial or a complete waste of time, depending.
Most units have their huddles after they get report so the nurse knows more about the patient and can add to the info the charge shares. My unit, however, has them at 6:40, which is 5 minutes before you are required to clock in, & consequently, you are not paid for this 'mandatory' meeting.
Yes, it's only 5 minutes, but here's the thing- now our annual raises are based on several different factors, having 95% attendance at huddles is one of them. EVERYONE has to be there for the unit to meet the goal. One person missed today so, the whole unit's score for today is only around 80%. Yesterday 3 people missed so our unit's score was even lower. BUT, none of those people were late clocking in.
Can we really make anything mandatory before the time you are required to clock in? Wouldn't we be required to pay people to be in a mandatory meeting at any time? I want to be upset with the people who've missed, but I can't really justify being mad when they came to work on time & just didn't show up to a 5 minute meeting for free.
If you skip it then you are affecting everyone's end of the year bonus/raise ! Unless the unit has 95% or greater attendance, the whole unit misses out on that point for a raise.
I am not at work for "everyone," I am at work for me and my patients. You are attempting to guilt your co-workers into attending unpaid meetings which is manipulative behavior. I could care less how my attendance affects anyone else's paycheck. If a meeting is mandatory it need to be paid time, period. And until EVERYONE gets on board with that, pay raises will be affected. Like another poster said, this type of behavior would never fly at a union hospital. Instead of trying to guilt your co-workers into attending mandatory meetings off the clock, why not support them by not caving to unreasonable demands from management? Sorry if I sound harsh but I absolutely cannot stand being manipulated. I don't stand for it in my personal relationships and I don't stand for it in my professional relationships either.
I am not at work for "everyone," I am at work for me and my patients. You are attempting to guilt your co-workers into attending unpaid meetings which is manipulative behavior. I could care less how my attendance affects anyone else's paycheck. If a meeting is mandatory it need to be paid time, period. And until EVERYONE gets on board with that, pay raises will be affected. Like another poster said, this type of behavior would never fly at a union hospital. Instead of trying to guilt your co-workers into attending mandatory meetings off the clock, why not support them by not caving to unreasonable demands from management? Sorry if I sound harsh but I absolutely cannot stand being manipulated. I don't stand for it in my personal relationships and I don't stand for it in my professional relationships either.
I'm not sure where the misunderstanding occurred, but it was never my intention to manipulate or guilt anyone into anything... I was just replying to another persons comment that they would deliberately miss the meetings because it was unpaid time.
I don't disagree with your comments about working for free, & that's why I took my concerns to my manager. She's handled the issue & moved huddles to 0645 so everyone is appropriately compensated. Hopefully our unit will now have a chance to meet our 95% attendance goal & get our raises at the end of the year.
Specializes in Nurse Leader specializing in Labor & Delivery.
Bless your heart. It doesn't have to be quite so dramatic. All it took was asking the nurse manager if we should all start clocking in by 0630 to ensure everyone was compensated for their time in the huddle or if she would prefer we scoot huddles up to 0645 like most other units. (As I said in my original post, we were one of the few units that planned huddle for 0640) She thought 0645 would be more appropriate.
I genuinely think she hadn't really thought about it the way we did & apologized to everyone for her mistake.
Go figure. It didn't have to be a whole "anonymously call so and so" or get anybody else involved and it certainly did not involve pride. Sometimes just asking gets the job done.
Standing up for what's right in nursing shouldn't be such an act of heroism or anonymity.
Well, that was certainly a tempest in a teapot. I guess I assumed you had already tried discussing it with the manager and had received pushback.
I'm not sure where the misunderstanding occurred, but it was never my intention to manipulate or guilt anyone into anything... I was just replying to another persons comment that they would deliberately miss the meetings because it was unpaid time.
I don't disagree with your comments about working for free, & that's why I took my concerns to my manager. She's handled the issue & moved huddles to 0645 so everyone is appropriately compensated. Hopefully our unit will now have a chance to meet our 95% attendance goal & get our raises at the end of the year.
i think it's wonderful that you took your concerns to your manager and that she agreed to adjust the start time so that the mandatory meetings would be on-the-clock, paid time. That's the way it should be, IMO (and according to the labor board, state law, federal law, but I digress). I didn't mean to come off militant and angry, I just don't like it when I perceive that I'm being made to do something "for the good of the group" or "because you should" or reasons of that nature. I really would want everyone to get their raises and would work towards that goal together with my coworkers, just not as unpaid, volunteered time.
Whew, glad that's settled, LOL!! Back to our regularly scheduled programming í ½í¸˜í ½í¸˜
I'm not sure where the misunderstanding occurred, but it was never my intention to manipulate or guilt anyone into anything... I was just replying to another persons comment that they would deliberately miss the meetings because it was unpaid time.
I don't disagree with your comments about working for free, & that's why I took my concerns to my manager. She's handled the issue & moved huddles to 0645 so everyone is appropriately compensated. Hopefully our unit will now have a chance to meet our 95% attendance goal & get our raises at the end of the year.
i think it's wonderful that you took your concerns to your manager and that she agreed to adjust the start time so that the mandatory meetings would be on-the-clock, paid time. That's the way it should be, IMO (and according to the labor board, state law, federal law, but I digress). I didn't mean to come off militant and angry, I just don't like it when I perceive that I'm being made to do something "for the good of the group" or "because you should" or reasons of that nature. I really would want everyone to get their raises and would work towards that goal together with my coworkers, just not as unpaid, volunteered time.
Whew, glad that's settled, LOL!! Back to our regularly scheduled programming 😘😘
Semantics regarding the true definition of a martyr aside, there certainly is a time & place for the solution SummitRN proposed, so I don't think it's necessarily a bad attitude to have... Had things not gone as well with my manager as they did, reporting the situation to a higher power would have been the next step. And I'm not so sure I'd be as brave at that point to slap my name all over a topic my direct supervisor told me to squash.
Oh i agree with that. Always try the most civil approach first, then save the federal agencies for when truly needed.
The organization I work for has started making our morning "huddles" mandatory for each unit. In case you aren't familiar, it's where the charge nurse tells us a little about what to expect that day like pts with anticipated discharges or if a patient has blood or chemo ordered... They can be really beneficial or a complete waste of time, depending.
Most units have their huddles after they get report so the nurse knows more about the patient and can add to the info the charge shares. My unit, however, has them at 6:40, which is 5 minutes before you are required to clock in, & consequently, you are not paid for this 'mandatory' meeting.
Yes, it's only 5 minutes, but here's the thing- now our annual raises are based on several different factors, having 95% attendance at huddles is one of them. EVERYONE has to be there for the unit to meet the goal. One person missed today so, the whole unit's score for today is only around 80%. Yesterday 3 people missed so our unit's score was even lower. BUT, none of those people were late clocking in.
Can we really make anything mandatory before the time you are required to clock in? Wouldn't we be required to pay people to be in a mandatory meeting at any time? I want to be upset with the people who've missed, but I can't really justify being mad when they came to work on time & just didn't show up to a 5 minute meeting for free.
What are your thoughts??
No, they cannot. Unless you are on salary, any meetings, training, education, you are required to be paid.
You are required to clock in between 631 & 645, but you are not actually paid until 645, which is when the shift is considered to begin. If we were to clock in before 631, the organization would be required to pay us for that 15 minutes from 630-645.
This is not exactly true. If you clock in at 6:31, you get paid the full 15 minutes. If you clock in at 6:36, you get paid the 15 minutes.
If you clock in at 6:37, you DO NOT get paid until 6:45.
So if your organization was requiring you to clock in at 6:31 and you were not getting paid until 6:45, you were getting screwed out of 15 minutes of pay. Those are the state and federal regulations for hourly workers.
Here is a little story: I once worked a job where they stopped paying employees outside of facility posted hours but we were expected to be there early and stay late to close up. It added up to 15min per day unpaid. I went to the owner and diplomatically explained why that was neither fair nor legal. I figured he'd listen since it was no secret I was his favorite employee. He said he would consider what I said. About 15 minutes later I was informed my services were no longer required.
I hope to God you filed a lawsuit against him. You legally cannot be fired for being a whistleblower, which is exactly what you were.
I would think that there would be some legal implications to base annual raises on attendance at meetings that you are not getting paid for. You don't say if your hospital has a union or not, but I can't see how a union would stand for something like this.
nurseactivist
247 Posts
It is called Wage Theft!