On the dock of pay

HROne

This relates to the January edition of the Employment Law Letter that included a Q&A on docking an exempt employee's pay. We are not clear whether or not to apply Paid Time Off (PTO) hours when an exempt employee has a partial absence. Let's say an exempt employee tells his manager he will be taking a 1/2 day on Monday for personal reasons. He has PTO available, could we apply 4 hrs of PTO to his partial absence? The second part to this is that we automatically rollover unused PTO into a "catastrophic medical account" at the end of each year. Would applying PTO to partial absences be considered "docking" this type of sick leave bank?

Geno

HROne,

We do. To the extent available, exempt employees are required to spend down accrued paid leaves for both full and partial day absences. Conversely, exempt employees who have exhausted all paid leaves are subsequently paid for partial day absences but are docked for full ones.

Geno

System

If you have a definitive policy that states how PTO is to be allocated for both exempt and non-exempt employees, it is permissible to require PTO for partial day absences. For exempt employees, I wouldn't require anything less than 1/2 day of PTO to cover partial day absences. As a matter of opinion, I think if an exempt employee works at least a half a day, they shouldn't be required to use PTO to cover the remaining part of the day. Of course, this may be abused, and you find yourself back at requiring 1/2 day PTO for half day absences. One more thing, I would stipulate that non-exempt earn PTO "hours", which must be used in increments of 2,4,6 or 8 hour increments (whatever increments you wish to allow), but with exempt employees, do not use the term "hours" of PTO, rather use "days" of PTO eiligiblity, to be used only in full or half day increments.

HROne

Thanks for your reply. You brought out some very good points to consider. Our current policy refers to PTO "hours" and we do not distinguish between exempt and non-exempt. Appreciate the help!