Time theft is one of the most common and costly forms of employee theft. It happens when employees are paid for time they did not actually work, whether through buddy punching, long breaks, time clock manipulation, or low productivity while on the clock. Left unchecked, it drives up labor costs, reduces accountability, and hurts customer service.
This guide explains what time theft is, whether it is illegal, and how employers can address it effectively. It covers 9 common types of time theft, real-world examples, and practical prevention strategies. It also shows how Solink helps businesses detect and verify time theft by connecting video with time-clock, POS, and operational data.
Key takeaways
Time theft means getting paid for time not actually worked.
Common examples include buddy punching, extended breaks, falsified timesheets, and intentionally slow work.
Time theft is not usually a crime on its own, but fraud-related cases can lead to termination, lawsuits, or criminal charges.
Employers must still pay employees for hours worked and cannot withhold wages to recover suspected losses.
Clear policies, consistent enforcement, and strong documentation are the best ways to reduce time theft.
Solink helps verify time theft by linking security video with labor and operational data.
Time theft happens when employees are paid for hours they didn’t actually work. It often goes unnoticed, but it can quietly drain productivity and profits.
This guide explains 9 common forms of time theft, shows the worst-case scenarios for each, and answers whether it’s legal.
Solink will also present specific ways to fight against time theft via your security system and security cameras.
Most businesses treat product theft seriously, with disciplinary action or even law enforcement involvement. Yet time theft is often overlooked, despite costing just as much over time.
For example, with the average U.S. wage at $34.69/hour (March 2024, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), an employee arriving 15 minutes late every day can cost nearly $2,000 a year in lost time.
Stop time theft with video intelligence
Solink connects your existing cameras to your operations data so you can detect, verify, and address time theft across every location.
Time theft is when employees are paid for hours they didn’t actually work.
Like other forms of employee theft – from stealing inventory or office supplies to giving unauthorized discounts to friends and family – it can quietly hurt the business. This could mean not working while on the clock or being absent when scheduled. It ranges from “shirking” responsibilities to deliberate fraud such as falsifying time cards and buddy punching.
While some time theft is intentional, other cases stem from low morale or unclear expectations. It can be harder to detect and prove than physical theft, but with the right monitoring and policies, businesses can reduce and even prevent it.
In most cases, no. Time theft is not typically a crime under federal law, but it is considered fraudulent and unethical, and it can lead to disciplinary action, including termination. Whether it’s explicitly illegal depends on factors like company policies, employment contracts, and applicable labor laws.
In many cases, time theft violates employment agreements or workplace rules, which can result in termination or, in rare situations, legal action. Proving it can be challenging, especially without strong evidence.
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employers must pay employees for all hours worked. You cannot withhold wages to offset suspected time theft, doing so could be classified as wage theft and even viewed as retaliation if the employee files a complaint.
While it’s possible to sue an employee for time theft, the process is often costly and time-consuming. Most employers find it more effective to prevent time theft through clear policies, training, and monitoring, and to address confirmed cases with warnings, retraining, or termination.
Employee time theft cases
Whether employee time theft is too difficult to prove in court varies greatly depending on the case. Here are four real-world examples that show the range of outcomes:
In British Columbia, Canada a court decision in January 2023 ordered an accountant to reimburse their company for over 50 hours of employee time theft, court fees, and interest owed on the outstanding wages received.
Counter to this case, in another recent ruling by British Columbia’s small claims tribunal, a trucking company based in the Lower Mainland attempted to reclaim wages from three former drivers over allegations of “time theft,” but the tribunal dismissed the company’s claim.
Lastly, following an investigation by BART’s Independent Office of the Inspector General, three employees were found responsible for time theft, with one now facing charges. The report revealed instances where the employees falsely claimed to be working 10-hour shifts but were actually spending significant portions, or even the entirety, of that time at home
In the United States, a US Postal Service employee in Washington, D.C., received $31,000 in wages for jury service claimed to last 144 days. An investigation later revealed forged court papers, making it a clear example of deliberate time and payroll fraud.With new technologies, such as Solink, making it easier to prove when employee time theft has occurred, it is possible that restitution will become easier to obtain. We’ll need to wait and see if similar lawsuits are brought across North America successfully.
How to best deal with employee time theft
By law, employees must be paid for all hours worked – even if you suspect time theft. If you want to recover losses, you must pay their wages first, then pursue restitution through a lawsuit.
This may be worth considering if a high-salaried employee has been stealing time for months or years. In most situations, however, it’s more cost-effective to issue a warning or terminate employment and move on.
That said, it’s still smart to conduct a full investigation to document evidence and show the termination is for cause. When handling time theft cases, keep these three points in mind:
Have an employee time theft policy in place before you start looking for violations
Perform a thorough investigation with an impartial investigator
Consider your options carefully – legal action isn’t always the best path
Definition and stance: Explain what your business considers time theft.
Types with examples: Outline the behaviors that violate the policy.
Monitoring methods: Describe how you monitor time theft.
Staff expectations: Clarify what employees are expected to do while on the clock.
Consequences: State the disciplinary outcomes for time theft.
If you have a clear employee theft policy, then you need to enforce it consistently. Weak enforcement creates two risks: employees take their cue from management behavior, and inconsistent enforcement can weaken future disciplinary or restitution efforts by making the unofficial practice look like the real policy.
Perform a thorough time theft investigation
Appoint an impartial investigator – the person who discovered the theft cannot investigate it.
Collect evidence carefully – gather documentation, witness statements, security footage, and any other relevant materials lawfully and ethically.
Give the employee a chance to respond – provide a formal opportunity to be questioned, preferably with witnesses present.
A well-documented investigation not only strengthens your position if the case escalates, it also promotes trust and confidence within your workplace.
Consider your options
Time theft isn’t like other types of theft. It can be harder to prove, and it is not always better for the bottom line to seek compensation.
While a reprimand, training, or termination is often the result of an investigation into time theft, suing the employee for the damages caused by their fraudulent behavior isn’t. It can be hard to prove, and the publicity might damage the reputation of the company more than the value of any financial settlement.
Should you go after employees for stealing company time?
It depends on the situation, and the answer isn’t always obvious. Unlike shoplifting, time theft doesn’t always have a clear-cut response. In some cases, cracking down too hard can backfire. Here’s an example:
Your restaurant has two distinct busy periods, a lunch rush from 11:00 to 1:00 and the dinner and night crowd from 4:30 to close. The early shift and late shift overlap from 3:00 to 6:00. The staff know they need to get the place looking presentable for the dinner rush and prep everything for the evening shift. This ends up taking two hours, leaving another hour where you’d really like them to be more productive but they aren’t. This is a situation where employees are committing time theft during the lull. However, it could be great for team building, sends the morning crew home happy, and gives the evening crew the high spirits needed to give excellent service to the customers coming in for dinner.
You might be able to save some money by cutting hours on the schedule in the afternoon, but a hard hand with the staff could reduce morale and hurt the bottom line elsewhere. During the current labor shortage, it could even lead to an exodus.
While not every example of time theft will be clear in what you should do regarding the specific situation, pros and cons both exist within the scope of the issue. Going after employees has both a positive and negative side to the decision.
How to uncover employee time theft with Solink
Late punch-ins, long breaks, buddy punching, and poor customer service are all common signs of time theft. Solink helps you detect and verify these issues by connecting your existing cameras to your operational data – no hardware overhaul required.
Clock-in verification and buddy punching detection: By linking video with your time clock system, you can confirm the person punching in is the scheduled employee and quickly review exceptions.
Zone tracking for activity monitoring: Set up alerts when staff enter or stay in certain areas outside of scheduled times. For example, if employees use the staff entrance after their shift should have started at 9:00, you can receive a notification for movement at that door after 9:05.
Break time tracking: Use video activity to match when employees enter and leave the break area so you can verify actual break lengths.
Customer service monitoring: Use transaction and video data to flag low-engagement moments, such as single-item transactions, and review whether staff offered assistance.
Opening and closing compliance: If a location that normally processes a transaction every two minutes suddenly has a ten-minute gap, Solink can alert you. You can then check cameras to see if the store opened late, closed early, or was understaffed.
See how Solink fights time theft with video intelligence
Employees steal time from their company in many different ways. Here are the types of time theft we’ll describe below:
Left unchecked, time theft leads to inflated labor costs, reduced productivity, and a culture where honest workers feel penalized for doing their jobs.
Time clock theft
Buddy punching
Taking long lunches and breaks
Having fun and socializing
Using the Internet
Hiding from the manager
Sleeping at work
Slow working for overtime pay
Bare minimum Mondays
1. Time clock theft
Time clock theft happens when employees manipulate timesheets to get paid for more hours than they actually worked.
This usually takes three forms:
Rounding handwritten timesheets: An employee works from 9:07 to 4:52 but records 9:00 to 5:00, ensuring they’re paid for a full day. Paper timesheets are the simplest way for employees to steal time because there’s minimal oversight.
Exploiting time clock rounding rules: With automated clocks, if 5:07 rounds down to 5:00 but 5:08 rounds up to 5:15, an employee might linger near the clock to gain extra paid minutes.
Outright falsification: An employee claims 40 hours on their timesheet when they only worked 30, or logs time for a shift they didn’t actually work. This is the most deliberate form and can cross into payroll fraud.
2. Buddy punching
If a person is waiting to punch in and notices their friend is running late, they might be inclined to punch them in as well to “help them out.”
Even if you use swipe cards or employee codes, employees may share them. This can get out of control, with early employees scanning in their friends and employees working late reciprocating. This could lead to lots of overtime being paid out that was never worked.
Common countermeasures include biometric time clocks and mobile tracking with geofencing, but the most effective approach is pairing your time clock system with video intelligence to visually confirm who punched in. See how Solink’s video management system helps verify clock-ins.
3. Taking long lunches and breaks
Long breaks and unscheduled breaks are major forms of employees stealing company time. This includes smoke breaks, coffee runs, and extended lunches, which can affect the productivity of employees.
An employee who comes back from lunch 10 minutes late, takes two extra 15-minute breaks, and spends 5 minutes chatting with a coworker has used 45 minutes of company time in a single shift.
Across a team, that kind of lost time multiplies quickly and can create major labor costs without adding any productivity.
4. Having fun and socializing
Work can absolutely be fun, but that’s not what we are talking about here. This is spending time chatting with coworkers, playing games, or otherwise ignoring work responsibilities. Some employees may even find time to take a nap at work.
5. Using the Internet
Having access to everything in your pocket can be amazing or aggravating, but it’s usually both. Phone notifications can lead employees to waste time at work. Once they take their phone out to check the newest message, they may find themselves pulled into other apps.
Employees who work further away from their managers might tend to be less productive. This is especially true for employees who work on their own far away from the business.
This leads to some people trying to get extra sleep while on the clock. This is one of the most audacious ways employees steal time from work.
This is most common during overnight shifts, in stockrooms, and in areas without regular foot traffic.
Video monitoring of low-visibility areas is one of the most reliable ways to detect this kind of time theft, especially across multi-location operations where managers can’t be everywhere at once.
8. Slow working for overtime pay
A job that looks like it will take four hours isn’t finished by the end of the day. While unforeseen issues do come up that delay projects, it could also be time theft.
Some employees steal time from their employers by working slowly during the day. The hope is that the boss will authorize overtime pay to get the needed work finished.
One of the best ways to detect this is to compare time logged against productivity output, such as transactions processed, tasks completed, or customers served. When video and operational data are connected in one platform, those discrepancies become much easier to identify.
9. Bare minimum Mondays
If you haven’t heard about bare minimum Mondays yet, be prepared to see it everywhere from now on. Some online communities have politicized time theft by declaring it a labor movement. In their eyes, productivity has soared while real wages have stagnated. The only way to combat this trend is to be less productive, a lot less productive. Here is where bare minimum Mondays come in. Employees aim to do as little as possible (“the bare minimum”) on Mondays while at work.
For a retailer, this might mean going to work and checking out customers at the POS but not engaging them while they shop, ignoring loss prevention procedures, not stocking shelves, and not cleaning. For restaurants, poor service and mediocre food might be a result of bare minimum Mondays in the front and back of house, respectively.
Thankfully, integrated cloud-based video security can help combat bare minimum Mondays. Solink can help you set up employee dashboards to track, for example, sales by employee by day of the week. If you notice consistent dips by certain employees every Monday, then they may be engaging in bare minimum Mondays.
Uncovering employee time theft with Solink is easy
You suspect employees are stealing time during their shifts. The most common red flags include late punch-ins, long breaks, and personal phone calls instead of helping customers. Solink’s time tracking software can help identify all of these issues, and more, by combining your business security cameras with smart analytics for comprehensive workforce management.
Clock-in verification and buddy punching detection: By integrating cameras with your time clock system, you can confirm the person punching in is the scheduled employee, preventing proxy clock-ins and buddy punching fraud.
Zone tracking for activity monitoring: Set up alerts when staff enter or stay in certain areas outside of scheduled times. For example, if employees use the staff entrance after their shift should have started at 9:00, you can receive a notification for movement at that door after 9:05, improving attendance tracking.
Break time tracking: Use motion search to match when employees enter and leave the break area to confirm actual break lengths and detect unauthorized breaks.
Customer service monitoring: Single-item transactions can indicate a lack of customer engagement. Event-based reporting can flag these transactions, allowing you to review video and see whether staff offered assistance.
Opening and closing compliance: If a location that normally processes a transaction every two minutes suddenly has a ten-minute gap, Solink can alert you. You can then check cameras to see if the store opened late, closed early, or was understaffed.
Biometric time clocks integration: Connect biometric time clocks with video verification to ensure accurate identity confirmation and eliminate time fraud.
Time theft frequently asked questions (FAQs)
What is an example of time theft?
Time theft ranges from outright fraud to “shirking” duties. Time theft examples include everything from using your smartphone during work hours to having a colleague punch in for you to manipulate your timesheets.
What does stealing company time mean?
Stealing company time, or time theft, is when employees are being paid for hours that they aren’t working.
Is time theft illegal?
If an employee is committing time fraud, for example, faking timesheets to bill more overtime, then their actions are absolutely illegal. Long breaks, using your smartphone, and other ways to shirk are generally not illegal. However, there is case law supporting claims by employers who try to get payments reimbursed.
Is time theft illegal in the US and Canada?
Unless there is a fraud component, time theft is not illegal in the United States. That said, American businesses have successfully sued former employees to recover wages. Time fraud – such as falsifying timesheets or payroll records – is a form of payroll fraud and can leave an employee criminally liable.
Is time theft illegal in the UK?
Time theft in the UK is not covered by a single specific law. However, employers have several legal tools – including employment contracts, company disciplinary procedures, and general employment law.
Minor time theft: Usually handled through internal disciplinary processes.
Deliberate fraud: Can be treated as gross misconduct with potential legal consequences.
As always, consult legal counsel before making decisions based on a specific case.
Is time theft hard to prove?
Yes, time theft can be difficult to prove, especially for subtle behaviors like slow working, extended breaks, or personal phone use.
Timestamped clock records
Video footage
Productivity data
Written policies
Solink links security camera footage with time-clock and POS data, giving managers a clear, timestamped record that’s far easier to act on than manual logs alone.
Can a company sue you for time theft?
Yes, a company can sue an employee for time theft, but it’s not common.
Wages must be paid first: Under the FLSA, employers still have to pay for hours worked before pursuing restitution.
Evidence matters: Courts look for documented proof, not suspicion alone.
Recovery is possible: Case law exists in both Canada and the US.
In most cases, employers find it more effective – and less costly – to address time theft with clear policies, monitoring, and termination for cause rather than pursuing legal action.
Can you go to jail for time theft in Canada?
It is unlikely that you will go to jail for time theft in Canada. However, large payroll frauds could be prosecuted.
Can you go to jail for time theft in America?
It is unlikely that you will go to jail for time theft in America. However, large payroll frauds could be prosecuted.
Is time theft a form of employee theft?
Time theft is absolutely a form of employee theft with similar costs to businesses.
What is buddy punching?
Buddy punching is having a colleague punch your time card. It is a form of time fraud and can lead to criminal and civil legal liability.
