Dear Reader,

In my years of heading a security and housekeeping agency, I have seen that a lot of clients insist their facility management staff sign the attendance sheet and at times get it stamped and approved, post which the service provider company submits the attendance sheet for bill processing. I will try to give my perspective on this, in this letter.

What the rule says

As per the labour law, for a security guard or a housekeeping staff, 8 hours of duty is allowed 26 days a month. Anything more than this time period, the staff member is to be paid double the rate and a maximum of 52 hours overtime is allowed in 3 months. Apart from this, guards or the housekeeping staff are entitled to 12 days of casual leaves, 15 days of earned leaves, 3 days of national holidays, and 7 festive holidays which totals to 37 holidays in a year however this may vary a bit based on the state in which they are deployed.

Situation on ground

However, in the current situation, for most of the clients, guard’s work for 12 hours and housekeeping staff also does more than 8 hours. Even if they are working for 8 hours, guards work for all 30 days and guards / housekeeping staff rarely gets all the leaves mentioned above. Furthermore, I hardly know of any company where the security /housekeeping staff does not do an hour or two of overtime every once in a while. However, they are never paid at double the rate.

Implication

These signed documents where all the out sourced man power is signing or even where the other staff members are signing act as strong proof where each is certifying others attendance and genuineness of the document. These over time rules may not apply for staff but they completely apply for this minimum wage paid workers.

Recently we did face such a problem, when one of our clients insisted on keeping the attendance register despite our strong recommendation against it. Both of us are now running pillar to post to handle the case in the labour court.

Recommendation

It is strongly recommended that you should not maintain any sort of an attendance record of the security guard or the housekeeping staff. If you still want, kindly ask your service provider to provide the attendance over the mail so that it remains confidential between you and your service provider.

I hope it helps. Feel free to connect with me if you need any further help and information.

Regards,

Ravi Kapur