Exempt Salaried Employee Pay Deduction

BJP

I have a salaried exempt employee who has vacation time available but does not want to use it at this time. She has requested an unpaid entire day off for personal reasons plus another half day in the same week. Her Director has approved this request and has instructed me to deduct all these hours from her salary.

Only 10% of our employees are salary exempt and I have checked our Employee Handbook and there is not any policy for deducting the vacation bank first for this situation. In another discussion I understood that partial days cannot be deducted but full days can, and I'm assuming deducting time off from accrued vacation is just individual company policy.

Getting to my question - can I deduct the full 12 hours from her pay or just the full 8 hour day and not jeopardize the exempt status.

seeleyhr

It is my understanding you cannot deduct money for partial days; however, it does not state you cannot charge vacation or PTO for time off. If a salaried position requests personal time off and has PTO (or vacation) we charge it against their PTO. There is no deduction because you are still paying them their full salary.

pork1

I agree, that is the reason PTO was started. "Personal time off" to do something other than work is most appropriate. Otherwise, it would be called "compensatory time off" and everyone knows that only the government has this legal and smart way of handling this very issue.

PORK