My Week: Work Practices
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It doesn't shock me that this happens. It will only happen for as the long as the employees allow it happen, however.
I know of a large regional practice that forces staff to attend networking events on evenings and weekends, unpaid of course.
The employees ought to join a union so that they are represented in the workplace.
In the long term the talented will leave and the calibre of staff retained will diminish, if they want to keep good staff they need to treat them decently.
At the end of the day they will hopefully regret how they operate as eventually it is likely to come back and bite them.
In my younger days I worked daft numbers of unpaid hours but it was never forced upon us, we did it because, in the round t,he firm were decent employers and there was a quid pro quo if say my kids got measles and I had to take time off at short notice. (My wife at the time was a stockmarket analyst and her employers were far less forgiving re her calling in to say she needed a day off re similar so I did a fair bit of emergency child cover)
If the employer merely takes with no give eventually staff will walk to a better employer.
The bottom line is surely the level of salary that they are paid.
If that is high enough to compensate in their minds for the "unpaid" overtime, then people will stay. Traditionally professional staff were paid a fixed salary with no additional payments for overtime. You were expected to do what was necessary for the success of the firm. If you couldn't stand the heat, you knew where the kitchen door was..