Cleaning lady misreporting hours worked

Question

We've had a cleaning lady/housekeeper for over 2 years now. She's a hard worker and very trustworthy, but her time reporting always bugged me but I didn't have any proof.

We moved to a new house that has security cameras that trigger a recording when movement is detected. She's aware of the cameras, and I have also proof of informing her about them over a text.

I completely trusted her till now, but today I went over the recordings comparing the times she reported in December and I see a lot of discrepancies.

For example, one day she reported that she arrived at 10 AM and left at 5:30 PM (a total of 7 and half hours) and the recordings were triggered at 3.10 PM when she arrived, and at 5:30 PM when she left (total of 2 hours 20 minutes). Another time she reported 9:30 AM to 2:30 PM (5 hours of work), while she came at 11:50 AM and left at 4 PM (~4 hours of work), so again incorrect. 

My question is, how do I approach this with the utmost tact, since I'd rather not lose her. Finding a good housekeeper is a drag but also I'd rather she didn't steal from me.

She's paid by the hour.

To add a bit more info regarding the big discrepancy of the 7 hours window. We have someone looking after the cat and during that day when he went to feed the cat, he reported not seeing anyone and he went to the house at 2pm (1 hour before the camera picked up the housekeeper arriving).

Edit: added some more info and the fact she's paid hourly.

Answer 1

Why not do as I do with my cleaner?

Draw up a list of tasks to check and execute. Eg. mop kitchen floor; any clothes in washing machine, take out and hang them

If the cleaner does all the tasks in 1/2 hour or takes 5 hours - I do not care - as long as it is done. The cleaner gets the set amount of money.

I am happy, cleaner is happy. All is good.

So, even if your cleaner only worked for 1.5 hrs and you are happy - why worry?

Answer 2

She's a hard worker and very trustworthy, but her time reporting always bugged me

So it looks like time reporting is the only issue with her, and she's great in every other respect.

how do I approach this with the utmost tact, since I'd rather not lose her.

Try to find out why is she doing it, and then see if it's possible to eliminate the reason for time stealing.

You may start with asking her if she's happy with the payment and the contract terms. Explaining that you're happy with her great work and may consider other options (pay-per-task, pay-per-visit, flat monthly rate) if she feels that the current conditions aren't quite working for her. Hopefully she may voice some issues you weren't aware of (e.g. no downtime payment).

Just guessing: you said the family was out during December (the whole month?). That may well have reduced the amount of cleaning hours required, but obviously hasn't reduced her cost of living. She may have perceived such downtime as an unfair situation.

Answer 3

Stealing isn't being trustworthy

As AdzzzUK mentioned, while small discrepancies aren't necessarily a big concern, billing you for 7 hours work when you're confident she only did 1.5 hours work is a big integrity issue. I would say that someone behaving that way is not trustworthy, no matter how nice they are to you, no matter how good a job they do. I can't imagine keeping someone in my employment who I knew was stealing from me, because I could no longer trust them to act in my best interest.

Answer 4

If you're satisfied with her work/payments, don't change anything. If not, look for another cleaning lady. If you do not want to "catch" her wrong reporting - set a payment per work and not payment per hour.

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I'm not really satisfied with her misreporting the hours though. If you noticed, she wrote down 7 hours when she worked only 1,5 hours.

She's not happy with the payment. As mentioned above, you can negotiate payment per work with her, so she won't have to cheat, and you'll be fine without misreporting. Or find another lady.

Answer 5

Im a self employed cleaner over 10yrs in the business built mainly on word of mouth. Being employed in someone's home,you must be fastidious in honesty, trust and respect. Any other employee in any business is accountable to someone for their time and resources when they are being paid,whether hourly or otherwise. Seems to me your cleaner is definitely taking advantage and has been doing so until the system change. I would probably explain whats happened and that you had been so disappointed as you were delighted with her work until then and now you feel betrayed and unable to feel relaxed keeping her in your employ.

Answer 6

If there were a few instances of just an hour here or an hour there, it would be fairly reasonable to let it slide. As you said, you believed her to be trustworthy and had no issues with her work.

However, the instance where she's over-reported by a considerable margin is a cause of some concern. Can you be absolutely certain that the cameras were operational and there is no possibility of an issue in the morning (for example, could there have been an internet outage in the morning which knocked everything offline, but then was back up and running when she came back from say a lunch break or a trip out to pick up some supplies)?

Ultimately there is no easy way to tackle this. If there is no evidence to support an outage, she's stealing from you by over-reporting the hours. New cleaners are easy to find. You need to call her out on this one specific incident and see how she reacts. If need be, you need to be prepared to let her go and find another housekeeper. The reality is - you don't know how long during the last 2 years she's been inflating the hours worked to get more money out of you.

Answer 7

This has two aspects.

Quality of work

Whether or not you are happy with the housekeeper depends on the quality of work they provide. Since you want to keep her, I have to assume her quality of work is at least decent. In this case she provides what you have paid for, however she does so in less time.

As you, the employer, are then happy and the employee is also happy, there is no reason to change anything. Other answers have expanded on this and I won't further.

Relationship to employee

Oftentimes on this SE we do not only discuss salary negotiations or proper office email headers, but rather social dynamics occuring in the workplace. In fact, I'd like to argue that such dynamics are a major player in where issues arise from. This is true for this case as well.

While you can argue that your cleaner provides the work you are looking for, this behavior, at least from what you described, does seem deceitful. You yourself seem concerned enough to open a thread regarding the issue, so the damaged trust is a problem from your viewpoint.

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Now considering these two sides of the situation, ask yourself a few questions before you decide:

• Is the quality of work provided in the shorter amount of time indeed satisfactory? Possibly quality of work suffers due to the cuts in hours, but you have other reasons for not willing to end the work relationship, some of which are in the bullet points below.
• Do you trust this person otherwise? It takes time to trust someone in your home, so this is a really compelling reason for keeping your cleaner.
• Is the hassle of finding a new cleaner the real reason for why you do not want to find a new cleaner, rather than trust and satisfactory work? If so, I think this is not a compelling one.
• Obviously, w.r.t. social dynamics, the relationship is indeed damaged. You decided to make an effort and post the question on the web, so it seems to be something on your mind. Try to weigh this aspect against the other ones, such as trust and quality of work. I could understand being this the sole reason for letting the cleaner go. I could also understand the relationship you developed over the years being worth enough, that this deceit does result in terminating it. This depends a lot on context.

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So what would I personally do?

Well, you can tackle this situation like any other work environment. Imagine you have a sysadmin. They are familiar with you and with the work environment. You trust them in the work environment and know they can handle problems on your own. You also find out, they have been handing in false timesheets over long periods of time.

Should I replace this person? My work environment may not be hard to get into, but that doesn't mean there is no cost in teaching a new person or even multiple new people, if the next person does not meet my expectations. Maybe I overestimate the value this employee puts on the table, because a new person might be able to achieve the same after two weeks training. Maybe I vastly underestimate the value this employee puts on the table, because we have developed a level of trust and I know, even though hours were not put in fully, whenever there was an actual issue to solve, my employee dealt with it. All of these are things to consider.

At least I wanted to confront them. Not necessarily in an offensive manner, but I would want to know, why the cleaner decided to put the wrong times on their sheet. I will also say, that the discrepancies in time are much too large for my taste. Anyone has cut an hour at some point, in many workplaces this is even no exception and not even frowned upon. Yet agreeing to being paid by the hour, then putting in 1.5 hours out of 7 - that is pretty bad, this is at least my opinion.

Ultimately no one here can make the decision for you, but I hope these points give you something to consider when you evaluate the situation.

Answer 8

I'd like to answer the "utmost tact" part of the question.

Assume good intentions, and approach it as if you're confused by the discrepancy and are wondering whether one of you might have made a mistake.

If there's been a mistake, everything's good.

If there was intention to deceive, she's now aware that you have a method of confirming the hours she's working. This may be enough to change behaviour.

Either way, you'll have made her aware that things are not adding up, and you'll have done it without directly accusing her of anything (side note : if she acts as if you're accusing her of something, that may be an indication of dishonesty - someone making an honest mistake will usually assume that's what others are doing).

If you're happy with everything about her work except the apparent oddities in timekeeping, this approach is likely to result in a good outcome.

Answer 9

1. How frequently these misreports happen? May they be attributed to honest mistakes?

2. How trustworthy your CCTV system is? Is it possible not all her presence being recorded (e.g. not triggering the first time she enters in the morning and only the second time after she was going to the dumpster)?

After considering these possibilities, talk to her once.

Stealing is prone to escalation and an adult person is rarely going to improve even when confronted abouth their misbehaviour. Penalties are another matter, but you are in no position to apply them.

Answer 10

I would come clean with her. Tell her you've found out that she doesn't work all the hours on her timesheet, but offer a compromise;

• You do the tasks that need doing.
• You get the house clean.
• You take as long as it takes.
• I will pay you the same amount of money each week, provided the house is clean.

Then if she's fast, she gets paid. If she's slow, she gets paid. As long as the work is done, she gets paid and you're both happy.

Surely it's better to know exactly how much you're going to pay each week / month anyway?

The whole idea of paying people by the hour is backward, archaic and dumb, and encourages people to work more slowly and "look busy".

The system was invented by the rich, in order to keep their workers in line and to squeeze everything they could out of them. The idea was that if you owned a factory, and as a result of putting in a brand new machine that boosted efficiency, this would result in your workers doing more work more than usual. If you paid by the piece, this meant you'd have to pay more. If you paid by the hour, you didn't. It's a hangover from the days of lords and ladies, serfs and peasants. It's utterly ridiculous that we still use it in the 21st century.

For most of us who go to work, we're still trapped in this system by virtue of the fact we have to turn up to a room of other apes, and sit staring at each other and being jealous, wishing that we were the ones that got to just get up and go home whenever we feel like it.

I work in a big office with a lot of people in it, so there's no way on earth that I can say to my boss:

"Look, I do my work in half the time of my colleagues (which is true), and I'm getting paid the same as they are, I should be able to go home early."

The real answer is that I should just slow down. I should work around the same pace as the slowest person in my department, otherwise I'm just wasting my effort (and no, nobody notices that you're faster, it won't get you a promotion any quicker).

If you do raise this issue with your cleaner, that will be her only option as well. She's not about to cut her own hours, she needs that money to live, so she will just work more slowly and pad out the time.

Who does that help? Nobody.