Working up time due to having to eat and maintain good control.

Do they ask someone who has a cold to make up time for blowing their nose?

Diabetes is a condition recognised by disability discrimination act - think its now called the equality act. Employers are required by law to make reasonable adjustment for disability. You may get assistance through your union, ACAS (0300 123 1100) or Access to work (0345 268 8489). Your employers are not making reasonable adjustment.

@Jamesgib22, you should make your employer aware of the Working Time Regulations and the DDA as @zebs says, unfortunately they don't have to give you paid time off for appointments and this is usually done on a goodwill basis.

As for dealing with stress and increased bg levels, in the book Think Like a Pancreas the author covers this subject in detail if I remember right.

I think you need to take specific advice, perhaps from ACAS, or alternatively a suitable lawyer. You may have legal insurance cover with, say, your home insurance?

As far as time off for appointments, they are obliged to to allow you time off for an appointment, but not obliged to pay you for that time.

Your additional wrinkle is your employer's expectation of saturated chargeable hours. What is your required chargeable saturation; surely not 100%, of every single day you work?

noblehead said:

@Jamesgib22, you should make your employer aware of the Working Time Regulations and the DDA as @zebs says, unfortunately they don't have to give you paid time off for appointments and this is usually done on a goodwill basis.

As for dealing with stress and increased bg levels, in the book Think Like a Pancreas the author covers this subject in detail if I remember right.

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The reasonable adjustment would be in relation to working back time when she is hypo in this case

Are you contracted to work 9-5? Is your target really to charge 7.5 hr per day with an hours lunch? that seems like a very high target, as in you should be charging half an hour more than you are actually contracted to work for! Can you not record on non chargeable codes for training/admin etc. if your target might be to record 7.5 hours rather than charge that might be a bit more reasonable (still v high though to be honest).

What is the impact of not making your target? Are you staying to make up the time to hit bonus or to not get sacked?

It does sound like a reasonable adjustment would be to reduce your target, but I don't really know how realistic/achievable that is. Or if your target is to record 7.5 they might consider giving you a code to record dealing with diabetic stuff - I'll sometimes record 5 units dealing with IT failures when that has impacted on my day so I can show I haven't just been sat twiddling my thumbs. [edit: I mean when I actually have been on the phone to IT for half an hour, I don't just make it up lol]

It is worth speaking to ACAS and seeing if you can get any proper advice. And it is worth doing it now as (as I'm sure you are aware) if you are going to get adjustments made to your target you have more chance of success well before the new financial year starts.

So no one in the office spends 10 mins checking their personal phone/emails or have a normal person to person chat about the weather or last nights football whilst 'charging' a client?

Your health is the most important thing in all this, I wouldn't worry about charging the clients I'd be worried I can't go all morning or afternoon without having to take time out to sort my sugar levels out - how much time on a daily basis are you having to make up?

So a couple of suggestions, if seeking advice doesn't result in any helpful changes, although I do believe that your employer is acting unreasonably in expecting 100% of your time to be chargeable on a weekly basis. When I worked in a consulting role, my target was that over each three month period I was chargeable to clients 90% of my contracted hours and achieving >100% was how you got paid more.

You have an 8.5 hour day but have to charge 7.5 hours of this. Are there any rules that say you have to take an hour in the middle for lunch, or can your lunch time be reallocated by you to use as you wish? If you are having to allocate break hours to do work then you are in a position of being given too much work. This is where the working time directive kicks in.

It does sound as though you are being taken advantage of in this scenario. I think I'd look very carefully at my employment contract and determine what they are asking for versus what I'd signed. You sound like you are starting the initial stages of work related stress and I'm sure your employer doesn't want that on their record. It does seem rather more like a workhouse than a modern work place though.

Secondly, your meal preparation - I work considerably longer hours than you do - 6.30 am to 6 pm. It's part and parcel of the job and I accept that, but to have my own food, I prepare batches at the weekend and take them into work - it saves time during the week.

Jamesgib22 said:

You are paid to work 6.30am to 6pm you would be astonished at my wage as a trainee chartered accountant.

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No, I wouldn't. I was a graduate once!

Many many employers simply don't allow overtime for their professional staff, so you do get some at least. When I last worked for a large corporate, I spent some time working in the Finance areas, including Management Accountants, and all the other variants. At month end, Company year end and fiscal year end they worked ridiculous hours, and just had to suck it up. In fact they were also not allowed annual leave at these times, which made summer holidays a bit of fun, with everyone fitting them in without impacting on month end. Some things, unfortunately go with the territory.

One thing that does strike me though is that you appear to be working literally to the letter, whereas others you describe as working to the spirit of things. I am absolutely not suggesting you flaunt the rules and just do your own thing, but perhaps you should be considering how you manage yourself a little more comfortably in alignment with others in the office.

It could be your boss see you have made a rod to beat your own back, and he's just helping you along with the beating.

Perhaps, as Tim suggests, you could have shorter lunch break, thus allowing you, say 30 minutes to spread across the remainder of the day.

This, I think, requires a two pronged approach:
Firstly, seeking expert advice from ACAS or an appropriately experienced lawyer. This could be pretty specialised, so don't just pick anyone saying they do "Employment Law"
And secondly, you consider the bigger picture and how others manage their days.

In corporate life, I rarely manage to work my contracted hours. I always over-ran by a huge margin, and as I had direct reports in multiple locations, I also travelled a lot. At one nightmare stage, my commute was 4 hours each way (thankfully usually only once a week), and more routinely I did a 2 hour each way commute twice a week, with no time allowed for travel.

In my experience, getting to and earning the bigger bucks doesn't come without a fair amount of personal sacrifice. I used to think I would have an easy life as I "matured". That was another flawed conception on my part!

Good luck with it all.

Jamesgib22 said:

Sorry our working day is either 8.30 - 5.00 or 9.00 to 5.30 we always need at least 3 in the office from 5.00 to 530 to answer phones ect. No bonuses or points I just need to make up my 7.5 hours a day like everyone else in the office. (with the added time of testing monitoring eating extra toilet breaks) Again I feel it would be unethical to charge the clients I am working on the time for my disability why should they suffer extra time added on due to my disability? @zebs do you believe it is a reasonable adjustment then to make up my the same time as everyone in the office even tho I may go low have to monitor and eat ect??

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So prob didn't explain myself properly. So your work should not have an impact on your health and should not be punished for looking after your sugar levels by staying behind. Your clients do not pay for the adjustment but your employer does and if he needs to give you less of a caseload then this would be the adjustment. I have a caseload and have to visit by car. I was having up to 3 hypos a day for a few weeks and had yo wait 45 minutes before I could drive so delaying my visits. I got referred to occy health as

Cont from above... I went occy health because the new driving regs had made it difficult to fit on as many clients per day and constantly staying late as a result. Occy health requested my caseload was reduced as reasonable adjustment.

So you're at work 08:30 - 17:00 or 09:00 - 17:30 with an hours lunch break(?) - so 7.5 working hours, of which 100% of your time has to be chargeable to a client - when do you get time to keep up to date with company policies, procedures and working practices or have a management review or for your manager to tell you you need to make up time LOL!? Next time your manager comes and has a chat with you about anything company related, my parting question would be which client do I charge this meeting too?

As regards working hours, from your comments in #12, if your contract states set times and/or the number of hours worked then they are probably in breech of that regarding your non paid overtime, in all likeliness your contract will probably say something about number of hours to get the job done, which then leaves you at the mercy of your manager........who sounds a right bi*ch

As Tim has said, sounds very 'Workhouse' (I was going to say Dickensian in my previous post but refrained!)

Going back to your Diabetes, are you saying you work an extra hour a day to cover your 'Diabetic distractions'? Do you really take a whole hour during the day just to manage your D? I suspect, as you sound like a hard working conscientious person, of being overly sensitive on this time logging, although I'm still concerned you take that much time each day to keep on top of things. How's your control when you're not at work?