Situation: A family-owned business has a family member on hourly pay who puts in excessive overtime. The cost of overtime significantly cuts into company profits. The CEO wants to cut back these overtime hours and get the employee to work more efficiently. At the same time, she feels that maintaining peace within the extended family is important. How do you cut excessive overtime for a single employee?

Advice from the CEOs:

• Situations like this within a family business are delicate because of relationships beyond the work place. Treat this individual respectfully, but make it clear that you have to act in the best interests of the company and all employees.
• Develop a job description with this employee that will help to get their overtime under control.
  • Communicate to the employee: “I don’t want to take advantage of you by requiring this much overtime.”
  • Let the individual know that you are looking for additional talent and want to more tightly define the roles.
• Develop a company policy on overtime that limits the amount of overtime that any one individual can accrue. If anyone starts to approach this limit, then have a process in place that shifts additional overtime to others.
• This is a serious problem for the company. It calls for company transformation. Enlist the employee as a champion for the cause of transforming the company. Keep this a positive vision.
• If the individual is not a keeper: start controlling hours, but don’t give a raise. Let them leave on their own time.
• If the individual is a keeper: give them raise, while cutting overtime hours.

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