Keeping in mind that attendance is voluntary, does you office pay you for your time when a vendor comes in to introduce/demonstrate a product or are you expected to make up the billable hour during the week? What about if AIA credits are offered as part of the demonstration?
I know some firms schedule these over the lunch hour and let the employees know it's voluntary to attend but it's not considered company time.
Let me know...
Cheers
Steve
Non Sequitur
Jul 24, 19 2:20 pm
My office covers salary (at a set hourly wage) for 30min for vendor demo/lunches and salary for time off due to cont-ed stuff.
Bench
Jul 24, 19 2:22 pm
No compensation for lunch-n-learns.
Its voluntary with lunch provided by the vendor, out of your lunch hour.
atelier nobody
Jul 24, 19 3:18 pm
Nope, free lunch and CEUs are your payment.
My current employer does have some budget for attending conferences & seminars, but there are some hoops to jump through to get approved.
Everyday Architect
Jul 24, 19 3:53 pm
Most recent former office: There was a job number that was created just for lunch and learns so staff could "bill" their time to that number in their timesheets. It counted toward your total required hours for the week, but as overhead and not as a billable hour. The understanding was that you could attend, but you needed to keep your utilization/billable rate above a certain threshold. So while you could "bill" that hour to the firm, if you were billing too much overhead time, you still had to make up the time elsewhere or risk reprimand (not really an issue unless it was excessive, or you asked for a raise they didn't want to give you). Result was a mixture of some people billing their time to the special job number, and the others not putting the hour on their timesheets at all.
Current office: It's not tracked in timesheets and it's on your own time.
---
My preference is that the time is tracked and the employee has the responsibility for remaining billable. I never had an issue maintaining a reasonable work week and meeting my billable hours so I liked to be able to count the time as office time instead of needing to make it up elsewhere. I think making employees make up the time elsewhere serves as a disincentive to attend. It's difficult to say there is a large benefit to a firm based on attendance to lunch and learns alone, but I think it plays a part in a positive culture of the firm.
Funny thing is, the current office wants to know how much time is spent for in-house continuing education (for Just Certification if I recall correctly ... maybe for other rankings, or polls), but they have no way of easily tracking it so they estimate it or make it up (not really sure).
Non Sequitur
Jul 24, 19 4:05 pm
We have a payroll code for any education related things. I used to manage our library and set up the L&L in the office. I was the free lunch gate keeper and you needed to impress me first with the presentation before I allowed you to disturb the staff. This kept the quality of the information worth the cost IMO... I've given up this role to the junior staff some time ago and now any wanker with an agenda and sandwiches gets a time slot. It took until the boardroom was booked twice per week until management stepped in. I mean, what's the point of these if only junior staff attend anyways? It's not like they are in a position to specify the products.
atelier nobody
Jul 24, 19 4:14 pm
We are expected to be 100% billable - any overhead time has to be pre-approved, and often they only open a code for the event, then close it again the next day.
On the other hand, this is the first place I've ever worked that'll pay for registration, travel, and lodging, as well as a number to bill the time to, for conferences. It baffles me why they're so stingy about the one thing but not the other...
Everyday Architect
Jul 24, 19 4:42 pm
100% billable ... where do you bill your archinect time? ... coffee breaks? ... bathroom time? ... updating office standards? ... managing the binder library? ... installing software updates?
How big is your office? I've never worked at an office where that was the expectation. I've had some that have said in the high 90s (depending on your position) but never 100%. There is usually some type of office staff meeting that isn't directly billable at least once a month unless your office is a few people.
atelier nobody
Jul 24, 19 4:51 pm
It is understood that "general office" time, including that staff meeting, will get rolled into project time. I think this is silly, since all it accomplishes is making the overhead look artificially low and the projects look artificially high, but the bottom line is still the same.
It is a very large international company, of which the architecture group is pretty much the redheaded stepchild.
Everyday Architect
Jul 25, 19 11:44 am
That is interesting. I've never understood the mindset some offices and managers have that encourage employees to "lie" on their timesheets in order to make the numbers look different than they actually are. I had one PM try to subtly get me to not record hours on one of his projects because he hadn't accounted for this extra work in his work plan. I just played stupid until he went away. He was smart enough to not tell me directly to stop billing the time I was working, but dumb enough to imply it.
Bloopox
Jul 24, 19 5:04 pm
We compensate this time, even if it is during lunch. Our attorney and insurance company both say that, for hourly (non-exempt) staff, these kinds of activities must be paid if there's any hint that they're mandatory or even "encouraged" - so if there's any chance that we might judge an hourly person's job performance in part on how involved/motivated they are about continuing ed or learning about products, then we have to pay them for that time. Salaried (exempt) people of course are not paid extra for attending these sorts of things, but we do have everyone record the time as training and development, in order to be able to track the time devoted to that, firm-wide.
bowling_ball
Jul 24, 19 9:40 pm
We're paid for everything, with the catch that we don't book more than two L+L per month, and "product info" sessions last no more than about 20 minutes. Just keep it reasonable, really. If we go to an external Con Ed session, that's also paid and we're not expected to make up the time. It's understood that this is part of the job.
Non-managers are loosely expected to be 95% billable on an average week, but that's not sustainable over the entire year.
Steeplechase
Jul 25, 19 12:40 pm
Don’t get paid for lunch and learns but there is a sizable budget dedicated to education expenses that will pay for staff attending different learning opportunities.
Flatfish
Jul 25, 19 3:37 pm
There's a firm near me that has a bad reputation for treating its employees like children and nickel and diming them for everything. I never really understood the extent of it until I went there for an event they were hosting. They have a huge pegboard on the wall of their lobby, with hooks and big plastic name plates for each employee - kind of like those giant key rings that stores attach to bathroom keys so people don't walk off with them. There are a bunch of colored rectangles painted on the board, labeled things like "lunch", "vacation", "continuing ed", "personal appointment". They have to tell the receptionist when they're leaving and where they're going so she can put their name in the right box. The biggest box is "working", so the implication is that if you're doing anything outside of the office then you're not working - and everybody can look at this board and see who is not in the "working" box at any given moment. If I worked there I'd be scared to ever go to a continuing ed thing. The most ridiculous box is "AWOL" which hopefully is a joke - but seriously if I worked there I think I'd end up in that box because I'd just go to lunch one day and not be able to stand to come back.
Just wondering by a show of hands...
Keeping in mind that attendance is voluntary, does you office pay you for your time when a vendor comes in to introduce/demonstrate a product or are you expected to make up the billable hour during the week? What about if AIA credits are offered as part of the demonstration?
I know some firms schedule these over the lunch hour and let the employees know it's voluntary to attend but it's not considered company time.
Let me know...
Cheers
Steve
My office covers salary (at a set hourly wage) for 30min for vendor demo/lunches and salary for time off due to cont-ed stuff.
No compensation for lunch-n-learns.
Its voluntary with lunch provided by the vendor, out of your lunch hour.
Nope, free lunch and CEUs are your payment.
My current employer does have some budget for attending conferences & seminars, but there are some hoops to jump through to get approved.
Most recent former office: There was a job number that was created just for lunch and learns so staff could "bill" their time to that number in their timesheets. It counted toward your total required hours for the week, but as overhead and not as a billable hour. The understanding was that you could attend, but you needed to keep your utilization/billable rate above a certain threshold. So while you could "bill" that hour to the firm, if you were billing too much overhead time, you still had to make up the time elsewhere or risk reprimand (not really an issue unless it was excessive, or you asked for a raise they didn't want to give you). Result was a mixture of some people billing their time to the special job number, and the others not putting the hour on their timesheets at all.
Current office: It's not tracked in timesheets and it's on your own time.
---
My preference is that the time is tracked and the employee has the responsibility for remaining billable. I never had an issue maintaining a reasonable work week and meeting my billable hours so I liked to be able to count the time as office time instead of needing to make it up elsewhere. I think making employees make up the time elsewhere serves as a disincentive to attend. It's difficult to say there is a large benefit to a firm based on attendance to lunch and learns alone, but I think it plays a part in a positive culture of the firm.
Funny thing is, the current office wants to know how much time is spent for in-house continuing education (for Just Certification if I recall correctly ... maybe for other rankings, or polls), but they have no way of easily tracking it so they estimate it or make it up (not really sure).
We have a payroll code for any education related things. I used to manage our library and set up the L&L in the office. I was the free lunch gate keeper and you needed to impress me first with the presentation before I allowed you to disturb the staff. This kept the quality of the information worth the cost IMO... I've given up this role to the junior staff some time ago and now any wanker with an agenda and sandwiches gets a time slot. It took until the boardroom was booked twice per week until management stepped in. I mean, what's the point of these if only junior staff attend anyways? It's not like they are in a position to specify the products.
We are expected to be 100% billable - any overhead time has to be pre-approved, and often they only open a code for the event, then close it again the next day.
On the other hand, this is the first place I've ever worked that'll pay for registration, travel, and lodging, as well as a number to bill the time to, for conferences. It baffles me why they're so stingy about the one thing but not the other...
100% billable ... where do you bill your archinect time? ... coffee breaks? ... bathroom time? ... updating office standards? ... managing the binder library? ... installing software updates?
How big is your office? I've never worked at an office where that was the expectation. I've had some that have said in the high 90s (depending on your position) but never 100%. There is usually some type of office staff meeting that isn't directly billable at least once a month unless your office is a few people.
It is understood that "general office" time, including that staff meeting, will get rolled into project time. I think this is silly, since all it accomplishes is making the overhead look artificially low and the projects look artificially high, but the bottom line is still the same.
It is a very large international company, of which the architecture group is pretty much the redheaded stepchild.
That is interesting. I've never understood the mindset some offices and managers have that encourage employees to "lie" on their timesheets in order to make the numbers look different than they actually are. I had one PM try to subtly get me to not record hours on one of his projects because he hadn't accounted for this extra work in his work plan. I just played stupid until he went away. He was smart enough to not tell me directly to stop billing the time I was working, but dumb enough to imply it.
We compensate this time, even if it is during lunch. Our attorney and insurance company both say that, for hourly (non-exempt) staff, these kinds of activities must be paid if there's any hint that they're mandatory or even "encouraged" - so if there's any chance that we might judge an hourly person's job performance in part on how involved/motivated they are about continuing ed or learning about products, then we have to pay them for that time. Salaried (exempt) people of course are not paid extra for attending these sorts of things, but we do have everyone record the time as training and development, in order to be able to track the time devoted to that, firm-wide.
We're paid for everything, with the catch that we don't book more than two L+L per month, and "product info" sessions last no more than about 20 minutes. Just keep it reasonable, really. If we go to an external Con Ed session, that's also paid and we're not expected to make up the time. It's understood that this is part of the job.
Non-managers are loosely expected to be 95% billable on an average week, but that's not sustainable over the entire year.
Don’t get paid for lunch and learns but there is a sizable budget dedicated to education expenses that will pay for staff attending different learning opportunities.
There's a firm near me that has a bad reputation for treating its employees like children and nickel and diming them for everything. I never really understood the extent of it until I went there for an event they were hosting. They have a huge pegboard on the wall of their lobby, with hooks and big plastic name plates for each employee - kind of like those giant key rings that stores attach to bathroom keys so people don't walk off with them. There are a bunch of colored rectangles painted on the board, labeled things like "lunch", "vacation", "continuing ed", "personal appointment". They have to tell the receptionist when they're leaving and where they're going so she can put their name in the right box. The biggest box is "working", so the implication is that if you're doing anything outside of the office then you're not working - and everybody can look at this board and see who is not in the "working" box at any given moment. If I worked there I'd be scared to ever go to a continuing ed thing.
The most ridiculous box is "AWOL" which hopefully is a joke - but seriously if I worked there I think I'd end up in that box because I'd just go to lunch one day and not be able to stand to come back.