Accrued Vacation and Accrued Sick Time

Terri

I had read somewhere that accrued vacation time is looked at as wages. Would accrued sick time also be looked at as wages? And, if so, can it be taken away from employees without payment? Maine law doesn't come into play because Maine DOL doesn't care whether an employer offers vacation/sick time or not. Up to this point, our employee manual says that you can accrue vacation (how much depends on length of service) and sick time up to 1440 hours with the employer paying all accrued vacation time (up to 200 Hrs.) and 1/2 of sick time for anything accrued over 720. The employer intends to take away anyone's sick time that is over 480 hours without payment (to run in conjunction with FMLA). Those who have accrued over 720 hours of sick time will be paid for 1/4 of all time in excess of the 720 hours. It just doesn't feel right to me. Any help would be appreciated.

One more question. If you have hired a HR person, is there a way to check their qualifications? Needless to say, I wasn't in on the hiring, therefore, I have no idea what qualifications this person has or does not have. Her previous job was in payroll.

Theresa Gegen TX

If Maine DOL doesn't have any regulation about vacation time and sick days, the default will probably be a contractual right -- basically if your policy tells employees that they earn the days and tells employees that they will be paid the days on termination, the employees probably have a right to the days.

In Texas, which does not mandate vacation or sick days, the workforce commission will look at the employer's policy. If the policy expressly says that the days not used are forfeited on termination, then the employee has no right. If the policy is silent about termination, but talks about the days as earned, then the employee has a right to the pay.

Many employers in Texas will have a "use it or lose it policy", which will allow the employees to accrue and carry over only a set number of days (for example 10 days). So if the employee earns 10 days a year, but doesn't take vacation for 3 years, at the end of the three years the employee only have 10 days to carry over, not 30. This can help keep it in line. Otherwise you will end up with employees who accrue 6 months of leave.

Good Luck

Rockie

If the law does not mandate that you pay for accrued sick and vacation time, then you should make sure you have a written policy outlining this. If not, yes, I would say it would be considered a contractual right. I would suggest if you write a policy, that you put a "forfeiture" if you go over a certain number of hours or days. We only let employees accrue up to 45 days of PTO per year (we have sick and vacation rolled into one bank). If they go over that, the excess is forfeited on their anniversary date. We rolled all of our time off into one bank to keep people from using "sick" time as extra vacation time. If they have to really think before calling in to use a PTO day, they usually will be more judicious.

As far as HR qualifications, the first thing I would look for is number of years of experience and then what kind of experience. A payroll person would not make a good HR person (in my opinion). Another thing to look for would be the PHR or SPRH certification. This means that you have to have a certain number of years experience to qualify for this designation and you also have to pass a very rigorous certification test in all areas of HR. You also have to keep yourself educated in order to keep the certification or take the test over again (every three years). A "generalist" type person who has been exposed to a lot of different HR areas would be a good bet, especially if you are a smaller company. Hope this helps.