Retroactive Policy Changes?

PolarKat

Our company is revising one of its benefit policies. The question has come up whether or not to make the effective date retroactive to the first of the year or the date the changes were decided.

There are good arguments for doing it either way.
We want to be generous with our employees, but are we setting a precedent that could come back to bite us?

What do you guys think?

POPEYE

Most of the time policies should begin at the announcement date or a specific date set following the announcement depending on what the policy is. Unless there is a "record keeping" aspect that would require you to retro back to the first of the year, I don't see a reason to do so. Without knowing what your policy change is, that's about the best advice anyone will be able to give.

HRCalico

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 03-09-05 AT 09:29AM (CST)[/font][br][br]Indeed, without knowing specifically what the change is, I agree with Popeye. It's better to let people know beforehand - hold meetings, post notices, put notes in with paychecks, send e-mails - anything you can do to make sure the word is out that there will be X change that is effective MM/DD/YY. (Even if you're small - we're only 75 people and I ALWAYS get someone who says I never told them)

It sounds like the change is in employees' favor, which is much easier than the other way, but I still wouldn't retro.

If you want to give us specifics, perhaps we can get more specific. :>)

PolarKat

The issue is Jury Duty. Currently we pay the EE's wages while on jury duty up to 80 hrs, and they sign over any money the court pays them. After 80 hrs. are used up, they can use VAC hrs. This is for EEs that have completed at least 1 yr. of service with us.

Recently, 2 EEs who were very close to their 1 yr. anniversary, were called to jury duty. It created a financial hardship for them to serve (we did try to get them off).

We have decided to change policy to pay up to 40 hrs. after only 90 days instead of 1 yr, and to let them keep the court pay. If we make the policy retroactive to accomodate the 2 EEs, are we setting a dangerous precedent? What about another situation that affects EEs monetarily that we choose not to make retroactive?

(Sorry for the length of this post.)

POPEYE

Given your scenario, I would have a difficult time approving a retro aspect to this. Why does your company feel the need to set a service limit on how much time you will pay? We encourage all of our employees to fulfill their civic responsibility by serving when called. We pay full wages for whatever time they are gone and only ask that they forward whatever is paid them by the court to us. We do not limit it to only those with XXX amount of service time, nor do we limit the amount of time we will pay.

pork1

POPEYE: And I thought we were liberal on our "jury duty" encouragement program. We pay for the time physically missed by the participation in jury duty, if they want to get paid at all they must turn over the jury duty allowance. The ee is not allowed to keep both. Most of our jury duty is circuit court and most do not stay beyond one day in a week. Once released for the day's activity, they are to go to the work site and clock in. If they do not report back to work, the ee gets "no pay due for the hours available, but did not sit for the actual jury nor did they clock in at the work site".

PORK

ritaanz

Hey Pork! You call that liberal? I don't see it.