Are you guilty of time theft on the job? Experts say issue is on the rise

Working at a place like a movie theatre, employees can run into a lot of down time.

"You can't just have them sitting in the office twiddling their thumbs, so they might as well be in there watching the movie," says Kevin Marshall, owner of the O'Brien Movie Theatre in Arnprior, Ont.

Despite the laid-back nature of the job, Marshall has never thought his employees were stealing time from his business while on the clock.

"At least they can check the movie while in there, make sure everything is okay, the sound quality is okay, nobody is causing a ruckus."

But as workers transition back to the office after working from home, employment experts say the concept of time theft is on the rise.

"When an employer is paying an employee for time they ought to be working," says employment lawyer Alex Lucifero, partner with Samfiru Tumarkin.

Lucifero says time theft occurs when that employee is not working, not being productive, or doing personal tasks instead.

"Maybe the classic example of time theft is where an employee is either punching in or punching out either early or late and not working those times."

Human Resources consultant Lisa Kay with Peak Performance HR says time theft needs to be defined in each individual workplace and that there is a difference between a small distraction and stolen time.

"The line gets drawn in consistency," Kay said.

"If a behaviour becomes habitual and somebody is doing it all the time; so every day they're spending two hours of their day on Netflix, that's a problem. Or somebody who spends most of their day surfing the internet or on dating websites instead of doing their work."

"If my staff want to do homework or work on another project or something like that while they're here and there's nothing left to do, everything else is done, I definitely do not have a problem with that," Marshall said.

Recently, a British Columbia accountant was ordered to repay $1,500 to her employer for more than 50 hours of wasted time. 

In Ontario, any employer with at least 25 employers must now notify their workers if they are being monitored electronically.

Lucifero says to punish employees, employers must be able to prove that time was stolen.

"It's hard for an employer to prove cause for termination," says the employment lawyer.

"However, I do believe time theft may be one of those situations if it's significant."