Sick leave, exempt employees

GJohnson

Our company has a sick leave policy where exempts and non-exempts earn sick leave either at 80 hours for the year on January 1 (if they have been employed 1+ year) or at 6.66 per month (if they have been employed < 1 year). Our policy was changed about a year ago so that employees are paid for 1/2 of their unused sick leave at year end.

For a number of years, we have not charged exempt employees for medical appointments against their sick leave if the appointment was less than one day. Non exempts are charged sick leave for medical appointments.

Over the past 6 months, we have had a couple of exempt employees with excessive "medical appointments". One employee has taken 2 weeks off for medical appointments in 2-3 hours increments. Our EVP would like medical appointments for exempt employees of less than one day to be charged against the exempt employee's earned sick leave. She does not feel that it is right that they should receive any compensation for unused sick leave after being out for so many appointment during the year.

It is my understanding that there is no problem docking the exempt employee for a full day's pay once the earned sick leave is exhausted.

Are there any issues that I should be concerned about?

Down_the_Middle

I think the issue of trying to treat exempt staff like non-exempt is the core problem. They're not the same. I had a similar problem awhile back----------
the sick leave policy entitled ALL employees to be paid for medical appt's and required ALL employees to be paid until their accrued amounts were exhausted. Once that was done, exempt staff were still permitted to be absent for less than a day and not have their salary reduced. I think that solves the problem. Time off for exempt staff is different that time off for hourly folks. The fact that an exempt employee takes alot of time off (less than a day) is probably an issue with their work performance. It's not likely that this can continue for any period of time w/o job performance suffering. This also sounds like an FMLA issue, but since you didn't raise the issue, I'm not going there!!

GJohnson

Fortunately, this is not an FLMA issue as we have less than 50 employees.

Down_the_Middle

Amen! Then I think the only issue is having a policy that all employees will be charged sick time for MD appt's and paying attention to the work performance of the person who is absent alot. Good luck......

TheCol

Please remind the employees, all, that sick time with pay is a privilege and a "gift" by the employer and not a birthright!
For exempt (of course that includes the fact of a salary) pay may be docked in full day increments when the sick day or personal day benefit has been exhausted. The amount of money deducted is computed by dividing the days in the work week (5? 6?) that the employee normally works into the gross salary giving a "day's wage".
Additionally, docking of pay is not permitted on the occasion of jury duty, trial witness, or temporary military leave, if they have worked ANY hours in that work week.
Another approach would be to allow a negative sick time balance to carry to the next year at the discretion of the supervisor. Your policy manual, which says "this is not a contract" and "can be changed at the sole discretion of management as good business practices dictate" can put this in place.

PMI

My advice is simple: with exempt employees, focus on performance. You pay them to perform a job, and you expect certain performance outcomes. Theoretically, if the person is not present for a significant amount of time, then he or she will not be able to meet the established performance outcomes. Zero in on that. If the employee is meeting all expectations even though he or she is working fewer hours, you either have a superstar on your hands (& you should count your blessings), or your expectations are too low.