Limit to making up time?

HR Hazel · December 2004

We have a policy that allows employees to make up time missed from work due to personnal business, emergency, etc. within the same workweek (Sat - Sun). Our policy used to limit the number of hours employees could make up to 3 hours per week. As it stands now, there is no limit to how many hours an employee can make up in a week, as long as it is approved by the employee's supervisor. Our Accounting (who oversees payroll) department has been questioning timesheets approved by the managers who's employees have made up entire days (8 hrs) within the same week and are requiring that they use PTO time for their absence and that we pay OT for the extra 8 hrs. To me this is ridiculous... why pay an employee OT if they CAN adn WANT to make this time up??

My question: Do you have any limits to how many hours employees can "make up" within the same week at your company? Is making up entire days (8 hrs) unheard of?
Are there any FLSA/Labor laws I need to be aware of?
Am I way off base thinking employees should be able to make up time?

Am I missing something here? Thanks for you help!!!

Balloonman1 · December 2004

I do not know about all of the legal aspects, but we only pay OT based on hours worked. So vacation, holiday pay or any other paid time off does not factor in.
My $0.02 worth,
DJ The Balloonman

HRinGA · December 2004

I've experienced this before and we found out that limiting ours to 3-4 hrs for our office personnel works best. If someone needs 1/2 day or full day, then they should take a PTO day. For example, in my office, we work 8-5. When would they have time to make up 8hrs? No lunch? Saturday? late evenings? Nobody else is here and it just doesn't work for us/me.
Besides, employees should manage their own time. I would think you could end up with folks taking a lot more time off than their entitled to. I know we all have emergencies, and we work around those, but if this is a common occurance, you could have trouble brewing. When we were letting people make up more than 4hrs, it created resentment among the other employees who were here. The mentality became "use all your vacation and then some! You can just make up the hours".
This is just one version. You may hear from others who work it completely different.

PS. We only count hours worked for OT, no holidays, vacation,etc. as well.

SamanthaQ · December 2004

Limits? - We don't have limits on amount of time that can be made up but we do allow them to make up missed time when we can and with supervisor approval ahead of time. Sometimes making up an entire 8 hours is not possible because most of our employees work in customer service and we're only open so many hours for them to serve customers. On occaison we've had people make up an eight hour day by taking a shorter lunch or coming in early, etc...I think you will have some that use it wisely and some will try to abuse.

FLSA? I think you're covered as long as they are getting the extra hours in to cover their absence during the same Sat-Sun Pay week.

As for the OT - what does your HR policy say? At my place of employment they actually have to be here and work 40 hours before OT kicks in - so PTO, holidays, etc...don't count toward OT.

In fact it seems kind of silly and expensive to me to make an employee get overtime when they don't need it. Why is your accounting dept. making the HR interpretations? Especially when there's nothing in writing in your policy to justify their issue? Has it been a past practice?

HR Hazel · December 2004

You're all right. I checked her pay from last week and she was not paid overtime for the 8 hrs. Just PTO time.

Your're also right in that our Accounting Department should not be making HR interpretations, but they do and it's a constant battle... I guess that is my biggest issue... we don't want them controlling/changing timesheets and policy. I want to make sure I am not out in lala land with my interpretation of our policy before I take this to the next level. -- because I can understand why they don't want people making up this much time (unfair to those who cannot make up time, abuse of system, that is what PTO time is for, etc...)but, I still think if a Manager okays it, and the department needs the extra time put in, that how much time they make up should not be an issue.

Yes it was a past practice to only allow 3 hrs make up.

SamanthaQ · December 2004

HR Hazel - I feel your pain. I used to supervise an accounting dept where we had the payroll and I was constantly in the middle of the HR director (not my boss) and my payroll clerk. Finally the HR director moved payroll to her dept and the functionality of processing was MUCH better and I gained some sanity back because I wasn't in the middle!

I was wondering if the past practice was to force employees to use PTO when they didn't need to make up hours to get them to 40 (or whatever your full time threshhold is). It seems odd for this sudden change by your Accounting Dept. - unless that's the way it's been done in past practice.

System · December 2004

You're not in violation of any labor standard but your past practice of allowing 3 hours is the better one (IMHO). Allowing 3 or 4 of make-up provides employees with a 'work friendly' atmosphere which is good for morale if it's administered fairly and supervised properly. I think it's a mistake to allow employees to 'make up' a whole 8-hour day. That's not 'make up' at all, that's a day off and should be treated as PTO. You're probably setting yourself up for abuse of time if there is no supervisor on duty at the time the make up occurs. Your finance department apparently has some other problem with it; possibly a personal issue or the belief that the time is not actually being made up.

Crout · December 2004

This was mentioned in some of the posts above, but I wanted to make certain to saw it....your Accounting folks are DEAD WRONG if they want to pay OT after someone has taken a day off and makes up those hours. OT kicks in after the EE works more than 40 hours in a given workweek. It doesn't matter if the EE takes 5 days off and works 40 hours over the next 2 days to make it up....assuming your State does not have a law governing this...if that 7 day period constituted your company's workweek there would be NO overtime.

seeleyhr · December 2004

We require employees who take off more than 2 hours in a day to use PTO. We had too many employees taking off early, coming in late and then making up their time when it was convenient for them during the week. They then used their accummulated PTO and took more time off. Hard to get the work done when employees aren't here. This has made it simplier for us and the employees are here to do their jobs. We now find that they make doctors appointments, etc., at the end of the day and maybe leave only an hour early so they don't have to use PTO. Made it easier on the managers.

Dutch2 · December 2004

We also pay OT only for "productive" hours worked in excess of 40 hours during the week. So Holiday, vacation, etc. time even though paid to not count towards OT for the week. We do not guarantee anyone that they can make up time work time missed. It is up to each Supervisor to determine if their missed productivity is such that for business reasons it needs to be made up. We may just be lucky, but this has never been a problem for us.
Good luck.

Limit to making up time?

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