exempt time off with no pay

clarkbar

My first question is regarding exempt employees only. Our company policy allows exempt employees five personal days per year in addition to paid vacation. Our policy states that an employee must use all personal time before they can request a day off with no pay. Once personal time has been exhausted an employee may request a day off with no pay to save vacation days for future use. If an employee has exhausted all of their personal time and requests a half day off with no pay we must still pay them for the full day. I have a problem doing this as an employee could technically request half days off with no pay, get paid for the full day, and never use any of their vacation time.

My next question is regarding exempt and non-exempt salaried employees. We also allow employees to "make up" time when they need to leave for a half day, a few hours, etc.

What do others do? And do you see any problems with our policies? Thank you.

Rockie

The biggest change you could make is NOT to allow time off without pay if they have vacation days. We don't allow LWOP as long as there is time in the bank as this is the result of that practice.

Hatchetman

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 12-15-03 AT 04:35PM (CST)[/font][br][br]An exempt employee who works for part of the day must be paid for the full day (unless on reduced FMLA or in the public sector). This is to be done even if the company's practice is to charge accrued vacation time for the partial day's absence to cover. If there is no accrued paid time benefit to cover the PARTIAL day's absence, then the full salary still must be paid for the day.

Of couse, the employer is always free to disicpline an exempt emplyee for taking too much time off or for being absnt from work when needed, etc. But under FLSA the full salary must be paid for the full day.

System

"My next question is regarding exempt and non-exempt salaried employees. We also allow employees to "make up" time when they need to leave for a half day, a few hours, etc."

We just addressed this same situation recently. Exempt employees "make up the work" while non-exempts "make up the time." The nature of exempts is that they are paid the big bucks to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Therefore, when our exempts take a day off, for example on an inclement weather day, one of the options they have to get paid for the day is to "make up the work." This can be accomplished by working to catch up their duties from home, on a Saturday, staying late a couple of evenings...etc. You get the idea. However, with non-exempt salaries and hourly employees, we require them to "make up the time". If they are off for 4 hours, they make up 4 hours, etc.

HRinNH

I'm glad you asked this because I'm new in HR and have been troubled by this subject. Our exempt employees work at least 40 hrs as a rule but there are a couple who take "personal" time now and then. I have been told to charge it to sick time for payroll records but mark it as excused in their attendance record. We do not accrue personal time here. Our company has only 30 employees. Is the FMLA applicable to us? I think you have to have 50+ employees. Does it boild down to what is written in our handbook?
Looking for answers too...

Hatchetman

Firstly, if your workforce in the company is only 30 people, then your company would not fall under FMLA (but check New Hampshire law for an FMLA type law that may your company may meet).


Let me understnad...

in your company, employees do not accrue vacation or personal time off, but do receive some type of sick pay benefit?

If that is the case, you may still dock full day absences for peronal reason or vacation time (as that does not require that there be a fringe benefit to cover the absence for that reason). And you may dock full day absences due to illness or injury since your company, if I am understanding you correctly, does offer a sick pay benefit to cover the full day's absence for that purpose.

You may not dock an exempt's salary for partial day's absences.

I'm not sure what you mean by charging personal time off to illness for payroll purposes.

HRinNH

I guess I didn't make myself very clear... sorry )

Our employees (Non-E and EE) do accrue vacation time but not personal time. They also can take sick time as needed but it is at the discretion of the management as to the limit.

I've learned that the same rule of 50+ employees to qualify for FMLA applies in NH too.

When an EE takes a few hours off here and there for personal reasons other than vacation or sick (say a kid's doctor apt or a PTA meeting at school), does that get charged (coded) in payroll somewhere/somehow? or is it sufficient to just note it in their attendance record that it was personal time or an excused absence?

I'd like to be sure that our records are sufficient...but I don't want, or have time, to go overboard.

marc

You have management discretion for sick time? That sounds pretty unusual to me. I would have large concerns about the ability to prove consistent treatment with respect to protected classes of people. You might want to consider a set limit applying to all employees. They can be different for exempt and non-exempt. Then write a leave of absence policy that requires management approval. You still need to be consistent with it's application, but that may be a safer way to manage sick leave than 'management discretion.'

As to your other time off question, if you do not have a policy addressing these issues, perhaps you should write one. That said, you can charge the leave banks for exempt employees to make up for partial days worked, but you must pay them for a full day if they worked any part of the day, even if their leave bank has been reduced to zero.

Whether or not it is an excused absence depends on your absenteesim and tardiness policy. If you do not have one, this is another good research project for you. There are lots of ways to approach this area. You will find several discussions on this forum that can get you started with the thought process that will help you determine what will work for your company.

As to coding and tracking in payroll, that depends on the capabilities of you software. I believe it should be tracked. You need a detail record regarding how you are paying people. If it is not tracked in your software, you should put together some systems to track all of this. If you ever have to prove any of this, you need records, otherwise you are generally at the mercy of any employee or agency that has records - in other words, they win.

Good luck.

HRinNH

Thanks Marc. I have some work to do in getting our payroll company to set up the "banks" for EE time off. I'll also look into policy templates to find ones that will work for our company.
You've been very helpful...Happy Holidays!

moneyman

Our company used to do "management discretion" for sick time too. It was crazy when I heard about it (but they used to be a small company and no written policies were in placed when I began). After I was there for about 2 years, I pulled out all of the logged paid sick time for about the last 5 years and showed to the new Director (we had both stepped into the rules in place). We had a few people who took 0-1 days, most in the 3-6 day range and a one person at 14 and one at 21 days in one year! Looking back at calendars, I noticed that the 2 people with the highest days logged a lot of friday and monday sick days, hmmm... It was so unfair that the people who never took a sick day were on the same status as the others. We put a sick day policy into place that allowed for 6 days a year (basically accruing 1/2 day a month). But we also changed to a PTO system which then gave those people who never took time off sick an additional week of leave. We thought that this was a good trade off and sort of rewarded the non-sick people with more PTO.

Hunter1

I agree with Rockie: Don't allow LWOP until an employee's leave bank is exhausted. The only other question I'd have concerning your 'make up the time' policy for non-exempts is that you do have them make it up in the same week, right?