Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock, Stealing Time From The Company Clock

(Published July 15, 2008)

Reprinted from MANAGER'S LEGAL BULLETIN, a widely read employment law newsletter that communicates legal guidelines to managers through scenarios based on real-life cases. Click here to view a sample issue, get more information, or sign up for a risk-free subscription.

Employees who pad their time sheets should be sent packing.  After all, time is money.  But before dropping the termination axe, investigate.  There might be legitimate reasons for time discrepancies.  Uncovering these reasons, however, takes more than an investigation; it takes an impartial investigation.

Suspicions Raised

Employees recorded their hours on time sheets, which were verified each week by their immediate supervisor and then submitted to department manager Dirk Mason.  In the absence of an immediate supervisor, Mason verified hours worked.  To confirm the hours worked by Mick Cooper, whom Mason suspected of falsely reporting his time, the manager looked at the security gate log.

To enter and exit the premises, employees needed to swipe an ID card through the security gate.  The security gate log showed that Cooper swiped his card on the previous Wednesday at 8 a.m. and again at noon, so Mason assumed that Cooper worked four hours that day.  Cooper, however, recorded working eight hours.  Mason confronted him.

"I really did work eight hours," pressed Cooper.  "I left at noon to grab some food with the guys.  We came back together at 12:30.  I left for the day with the guys, too.  That's why I didn't need to swipe my card."

"You always need to swipe your card," admonished Mason.  "What good is the security system if it doesn't record the comings and goings of all employees?"

"Piggybacking happens all the time when there's a group going through.  No one's ever had a problem with the practice before."

Suspicions Confirmed?

Mason next looked to confirm his suspicions by comparing Cooper's time sheet and gate log with the time sheet and gate log of a co-worker with whom Cooper often carpooled.  Mason figured their records would match, but they didn't. 

Convinced Cooper falsified his most recent time sheet, Mason compared several of the employee's older time sheets against gate logs.  When some of the time sheets didn't match gate logs, Mason again confronted Cooper.  Cooper couldn't recall whether he was working or not during those times since they occurred months ago and during a time when his mind was preoccupied with the recurrence of his son's cancer.  

The next day, Mason fired Cooper for intentionally falsifying his time sheets and defrauding the company for a total of 40 hours.  Cooper fired back with a lawsuit, claiming the real reason he was terminated was because of the health care costs associated with his son's cancer. 

The case was sent to trial, where Mason will have to defend why he:

• Relied on atypical and unreliable methods to verify his suspicions.  Gate logs had not been previously used to verify hours worked.  Plus, the gates were intended as a security measure, not a method of tracking hours worked; such a method was unreliable because it was possible for employees to enter and exit the premises without swiping their ID cards.  Also unreliable was comparing the time sheets of employees who were assumed to have traveled to and from work together. 
  
  
• Failed to interview key witnesses.  He never spoke with Cooper's immediate supervisor, even though he was the one who signed off on the time sheets, and it was a common practice for each supervisor to have their own method of managing time sheets.  Also, had Mason interviewed Cooper's co-worker, he would have learned that they did not always carpool. 
  
  
• Used the evidence to Cooper's detriment only.  Mason assumed Cooper fudged this time sheet when it didn't match the records of the co-worker with whom he carpooled and indicated that he there when his co-worker was not.  But the manager ignored the assumption that Cooper was there when the co-worker was.
  
  
• Failed to consider the outcome of similar investigations.  Other employees were not terminated for similar infractions.
  

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