City has no policy on tracking overtime

By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express

The lack of any consistent policy to track staff overtime at the city has led the municipality’s auditor to push for further investigation and the implementation of a system to log workers’ extra time spent on the job.

The internal audit completed by KPMG found that overtime was being tracked five different ways in five different departments across the city and that reasons for overtime were not “routinely documented on an individual basis in some areas,” the report reads.

Audited departments included Human Resources, IT, Building Services, Finance and Park Services, and while investigators found that there are many causes of overtime, there were several factors impacting the city’s workforce. A general trend of increased overtime at the city has been seen over the last three years.

In particular, the report found that a lack of staff and increased workload were the main factors. With the exception of HR, the auditors suggested hiring more contractors or more staff to ease the workload. In HR, KPMG suggested automating some tasks could help reduce overtime.

Auditors also found that gapping, the process of leaving positions vacant to save money, could also be impacting the city’s workforce, and may be having the opposite impact that the city is hoping for.

“In some cases, (gapping) can lead to increased costs when overtime is incurred,” the report reads.

Along with recommending the city implement an electronic system to track overtime across departments, KPMG also suggested further analysis to get to the root of the problem.

“Further in-depth analysis is needed as the data that was provided for this audit was not possible to summarize in a consistent way and concerns were raised over data quality,” the report reads.

Speaking before the city’s finance committee, Nick Rolfe, a senior manager with KPMG, said the audit was “relatively high-level” and a more in-depth study “would greatly benefit the organization.”

City staffers have agreed and, along with developing a new policy to be in place by June 30, 2017, staff will also be looking to determine the scope of a further investigation to get to the bottom of the increased overtime and presenting a plan to council as part of next year’s budget deliberations.

For Mayor John Henry, the overtime problem is one the city is constantly dealing with.

“All the jobs in the city have some speciality to it from our waste operators…to someone who drives a truck, a loader, a plow or any of our other equipment, there’s specific training that takes time,” he says.

“It always takes time to get someone to that spot and that’s safe to say for every department in the city.”