Holiday Pay for Salary employees

KarenDavis

We have salary exempt employees that work for our company. During holiday weeks they receive their salary based on 40 hours. For example. Employee #1 works during the week 30 reg. time and has 16 hours holiday for that week, and his salary earning are $400. This equals to 46 hours total. During this week we pay him the $400 (40 hours). The salary employees feel like they do not get pay for time worked during the holidays, (comparing themselves to how hourly employees are paid).

Any advice and examples of other ways to compensate salary employees during the holidays would be appreicated.

Thanks

dbutton111

If this is a single employee complaining, explain to him that when he works 38 hours he's still paid for 40 - them's the breaks for being salaried exempt.

If it's a company wide problem, you can pay additional. For example, if an employee must work on the holiday he'd be paid his salary for that day plus for the holiday.

So . . . in your example I'm going to assume that the employee worked on one of the 2 holidays for 6 hours, and 8 hours each of the other 3 work days. By paying holiday plus work time, the employee would be paid an amount equal to 48 hours of work time - pay for the 2 holidays (16 hours) and pay for 4/5 of his weekly salary (32 hours).

HRQ

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Are these newly placed exempts, meaning they've been paid hourly/overtime prior to this position? Sometimes it just takes a little more time to educate them about how this type of compensation works.

If an employee meets the qualifications to be exempt, they also have a certain level of responsibility to meet, whether it takes 6 hours a day or 12 hours a day. That's the "joy" of being in such a position.

I agree on making the point:
"You had to work 30 hours in 3 days this week - that's how it goes sometimes. You get paid the same if you work 30 hours in 4 days or even 5 days, too. Next time plan your work a little better so you aren't stuck working those longer days." (This would be the pot calling the kettle black, in my particular case... x;-) )

Edit: another thought - did they CHOOSE to come in on the holiday, or were they scheduled to work? In my past life, we were open 24/7/365 and the exempts rotated holiday duty. We were still paid our regular weekly salary, no more, no less.

If they worked because they were scheduled, maybe rotating holiday duty would help. If they chose to come because they needed to get caught up, tough cookies.

Another edit: I left my previous employer 5 years ago and forgot - they didn't offer "holiday pay". It was added to PTO, so if we didn't work a holiday, we used PTO for pay. Not apples to apples, for your question.

NaeNae55

Another option would be to pay a bonus. You can look at the exempt people who worked on the holiday and figure out a compensating bonus. Caution: between precedents and possible disagreements about how much the bonus should be you might be sorry you went this way. I would only use it if it is really an unusual occurrance for exempt people to have to work on holidays, or if you can set up a good system that is reliable and fair for all.

Good luck!

Nae