To add to the other comments, my general experience has been that most companies have ben phasing out paid overtime, but the better companies offer some level of flexible working such that you can reclaim your hours.

Consider also the legal implications; they need to respect the working time directive [Maximum weekly working hours: Overview - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)]. If they ask you to opt out of the 48 hour week, I'd personally run away as you are not getting paid for overtime.

Additionally, you should do a calculation to make sure that you are always getting paid at least the minimum wage. Some sneaky companies will pay over the rate, but add extra hours such that you drop below. This would of course be illegal.

Mark

Mark Tickner said:

If they ask you to opt out of the 48 hour week

Personally when my employer-before-last asked us each to sign a blanket opt out of this I not only refused to do so but made sure that, as engineering manager, that the engineering team fully understood the implications and their right to refuse to sign with no impact on their employment. (As a responsible manager I didn't, of course, go so far as advising them not to sign it, I just thought it very loudly!!)

I was pretty cross with our parent company for even asking employees to sign this, particularly as we were working in a safety critical industry. (The company involved no longer exists in that form, so this is no reflection on any specific company operating today.)

I do appreciate that it is a pain for employers, as if their employees don't sign an opt-out then the employer needs to retain evidence of the employees working hours so that they can demonstrate (if an issue arises) that each employee is working an average 48 hour week over a 17 week period. But then I'd hope on H&S grounds (and just good human management practice) that they were monitoring that anyway.

Again, this helps with the time off in lieu discussion - the fact that the 48 hours is an average means that anyone can be asked to work longer one week, but they legally must (unless they've opted out) work shorter hours another week in that 17 week cycle. Not that 48 hours is an average technician working week in a medium-large company anyway.

Overtime payments (and the wider issue of out of hours working) are a really challenging management issue in engineering generally, it is reasonable to expect that when the employer requires extra effort then the employee shouldn't be disadvantaged. And I get quite passionate about the fact that not paying overtime can hide the fact that the company (or individual projects within it) are actually under resourced / under budgeted. But equally you do want to encourage staff to manage their work within the time where possible, any of us who've managed staff on overtime will have come across the odd one or two who are really good at creating extra work for themselves. But that's all down to good management.

Interesting subject,

Andy

Mark Tickner said:

Additionally, you should do a calculation to make sure that you are always getting paid at least the minimum wage. Some sneaky companies will pay over the rate, but add extra hours such that you drop below.

A close friend of mine worked in London for many years. She was paid more than myself (working locally) but when we worked out how long she was away from home for work purposes, it worked out that I was 'better off'. She would leave her house at 6am to get a 6.30 train to be in London and at her desk by 8am. She'd then leave her office at 5.30pm catch a train and be home for 7.30pm. Whereas I can leave home and be at the office in less that 30 mins and the same going homeward. She was away from home for an extra 4 hours a day whereas I was less than an hour. If you add that all up and spread out the day rate across the hours that you're either working or travelling to work then we were more or less paid exactly the same for our time. I however was better off with an extra 3 hours of my day to spend however I wanted whereas for her it really was sleep, work, eat, repeat until the weekend when she'd squeeze in the housework and shopping and back to the grindstone on Monday morning...

Money isn't everything, time is more precious...  

When I look at other roles, that is a calculation that I regularly do. What is the effective hourly rate when you factor in commuting.

But, even with that, I don't think I'd be happy with a role that pays huge amounts of money (or other benefits) but impacts my work-life balance.

Being terribly old (i.e. children have left home, gone through uni, and are now foraging for themselves) I've just gone down to a 4 day week at 4/5 of my previous salary. It's wonderful!

Also this discussion reminded me of when I moved from being an hourly paid technician to a monthly paid engineer - because of the huge amount of overtime I was working my then employer was worried about how they were going to be able to promote me without either a big drop in my salary or paying me disproportionately more than the other engineers. I had to explain that I was perfectly happy to stop doing 13.5 hour days and go down to 9 to 5! (Or indeed my extreme of the 24 hour day (15 hours of which was on my own in an empty factory), trying to get Paul McCartney's mixing desk ready for him - that was a baaaaad day. Our fault not his I hasten to add!) 

But of course there will be many others here actively who look for opportunities to do the Middle East or North Sea or similar thing working ridiculous hours but paying off their mortgages at an age where I was barely starting mine, and able to retire in their 50s, it's horses for courses.

Being terribly old (i.e. children have left home, gone through uni, and are now foraging for themselves) I've just gone down to a 4 day week at 4/5 of my previous salary. It's wonderful!

Also this discussion reminded me of when I moved from being an hourly paid technician to a monthly paid engineer - because of the huge amount of overtime I was working my then employer was worried about how they were going to be able to promote me without either a big drop in my salary or paying me disproportionately more than the other engineers. I had to explain that I was perfectly happy to stop doing 13.5 hour days and go down to 9 to 5! (Or indeed my extreme of the 24 hour day (15 hours of which was on my own in an empty factory), trying to get Paul McCartney's mixing desk ready for him - that was a baaaaad day. Our fault not his I hasten to add!) 

But of course there will be many others here actively who look for opportunities to do the Middle East or North Sea or similar thing working ridiculous hours but paying off their mortgages at an age where I was barely starting mine, and able to retire in their 50s, it's horses for courses.