Overtime pay diminishes with seniority

While managers allocate overtime, they seldom benefit from it, the Employment Review survey shows.

Instead, paid overtime diminishes with seniority, while many in professional, managerial or executive roles are paid salaries that reflect the expectation that they will need to work the hours required for the job in hand.

One in five respondents had a clearly defined earnings cut-off above which they would not pay overtime. These cut-off figures ranged from £20,000 annual salary to £50,000.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

Email(Required)

OptOut

From time to time, we will send you emails about selected products, events and services from Personnel Today and OHW+ - but you can choose to opt-out at any time. If you do not wish to receive these emails, please tick this box.

Name

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Δ

Three out of five organisations (59%) also required staff to work a certain amount of overtime before making payments. These were most commonly set at 30 minutes (23%) and 15 minutes (17%). One organisation began overtime payments only after a 10-hour qualifying period.

However, many organisations pay retrospectively for all overtime worked once the qualifying time is reached.