Changing an employee from salary to hourly

Maggie A

We have a very good employee who has been with us for 11 years. About 3 years ago she was diagnosed with a degenerative illness. For the last 6 months, she has been missing more and more time from work due to Doctor appointments or fatigue. She is salaried, and is part of the Accounting Dept. We do not have a sick or leave policy at our company. She recently asked if she could work in the office part time and at home the remaining four hours a day, so she could rest in the afternoon and work at her own pace. That kind of arrangmeent would not work for our company so we suggested that she go to hourly and work as much as she could each day. She says she cannot afford to reduce her income and will just stay on salary. Problem is that she is continuing to take off alot of time. Bottom line: Can we "make" her go to hourly? If not, how can we deduct for the excessive time off she is taking?
Thanks,
Maggie

Theresa Gegen TX

You need to start her on FMLA intermittant leave. Once she is on FMLA, the FMLA regs (I believe, but you need to check the regs to make sure) will allow the employer to deduct for partial days absence for a salaried employee. Without FMLA you cannot deduct for partial days absenses.

I would want to be very sure that the reasons that the employee cannot work at home part time are very sound and documented by a strong business necessity. There is atleast one ADA case that I know about (out of CA of course) where the court said that allowing an employee to work at home was a reasonable accomodation of her disability.

Good Luck!

Pork

Without her request or application for FMLA, I suspect you will have to come to the realization that business necessity and consistent handling of employees will bring you to the decision that your comapny can not afford to treat one person differently without difficulty. Been there and done that. With physician's certification we had to force the employee into a hourly part time position with limited duty restricted to office work. We set her rate of pay at an hourly rate when physically worked in 40 hours she would net the same amount of pay. Physically she could not do the management activities but could do the book keeping and computer activities. Decision making and travel to remote sites for inspections, audits, etc. were no longer a piece of the exempt requirement. For once the FLSA worked in our favor and got us out of a terrible situation. Once she got well, she began and is often making more money than before and never wants to be responsible for anything other than what she can produce herself. She does not want to be exempt!