snow day

NaeNae55 · February 2014

Just curious about how many of you pay your employees if you close due to inclement weather, and how many make the employee use PTO.

cnghr · February 2014

I can't remember the last time we closed any of our offices due to bad weather, but our policy states that "when operations are officially closed due to emergency conditions, including severe weather, the time off from scheduled work will be paid."

Dutch2 · February 2014

We recently made ours an official policy and it says - if you are not at work you will not be paid. You may use vacation time to cover the missed time if you wish. We have a few employees that are able to work from home but not many.
So far we have closed at two o'clock on Tuesday of this week, due to snow, but no other days. Last year we closed early one day, closed all day the next and opened late the following. At that time we paid everyone for their scheduled hours.

Library HR · February 2014

We are county government and if the county makes the decision to close, we pay everyone (including hourly) under Administrative Leave for the hours that they were scheduled that they were unable to work. Our workforce is far flung and if they decide that conditions are too dicey for them to try to come to work, they are choosing to use vacation time (salary) or non pay (hourly).
Our facility is open 7 days a week. If you weren't scheduled to work, you don't get the Administrative Leave.

FunHRBanker · February 2014

If we made the decision to close, we would pay everyone scheduled to work that day.

Carolil · February 2014

If we close the office, or have a delayed opening, we pay for the time. If a person was scheduled to be on vacation they use their own time. Most of our staff can work from home, so we expect that if they can, they will, but we don't police it.

Celeste Blackburn SPHR · February 2014

Here is article we ran in [I]HR Hero Line[/I] that addresses these issues. It looks like you have to consider the employees' exempt/nonexempt classification as well as what is laid out in your policy

[URL]http://bit.ly/SdTm4T[/URL]

Here's another Hero Line post that includes links to other HR Hero resources on the topic

[URL]http://bit.ly/kOTcLR[/URL]

Hope this helps!

Celeste

NaeNae55 · February 2014

We use PTO when we close due to inclement weather. One of our employees was very vocal about it being wrong and that they had never heard of ANY company doing so, that every company they had worked for or heard of paid workers regular pay when they closed due to inclement weather, and that they thought it was the law. I first corrected the last issue, but decided some research was needed regarding the rest.

Though more than half here said they pay, a larger survey I read about at another site said most do not. My boss also feels the company should not be penalized for bad weather, and this is one of the reasons we offer PTO. We stuck to our guns and the employees had to use PTO.

Thank you everyone for your responses.

cnghr · February 2014

You say your boss feels the company shouldn't be penalized for bad weather, but it's okay to penalize the employees for bad weather? I understand that they are allowed to use PTO so their paychecks remain whole for that particular period, but then what if they have an illness, or vacation plans, or something else that they would have used the PTO for? In the end, if they have to take time without pay for something else that would ordinarily be covered by PTO, then in effect what's happening is that they are being penalized for the bad weather, even if it's months down the road.

NaeNae55 · February 2014

We have a very generous PTO plan that gives even new employees a lot of time. We allow up to 23 months of accrual, and half of our employees are consistently taking time off just to keep from maxing. The employee is not out anything financially, as the employer would be (ie paying an entire company a day's pay for no work), and one of the reasons for the generous leave time is for just these kinds of cases. Indeed our newest employee (here less than 1 year) who has taken vacation days on at least 2 other occasions has well over 2 weeks accrued. They get plenty of PTO.

I can't say it won't ever happen, but at this point we have never had someone hurting for time due to a weather closing. Either way I am positive that if employees were given a choice of us paying while they are out due to weather and us reducing PTO to make up for it or keeping things the way they are they would opt to keep things the way they are. Especially since closings are rare.

cnghr · February 2014

Wow, you do have a very generous PTO plan, Nae. We think of ours as being very generous and I guess it is compared to some, but yours truly is.

Our vacation, sick, and other types of PTO are separate and are based on calendar year, rather than a monthly or hours- worked accrual. Our vacation time has limited carryover from year to year and nothing else carries over at all. So if we were to close because of severe weather and made our employees use vacation time, then it could negatively impact them somewhere down the road, for instance if they had a vacation planned and had to either cut it short or take some of the time without pay.

pmeredith · February 2014

We are a municipality. Our Police, Fire and Public Works employees don't get the day off because of bad weather.

City offices never CLOSE for inclement weather we are here to serve the citizens. These employees decide (without threat of disciplinary action) if they can make it in or if they want to stay home and use PTO.

It wouldn't be fair to give some employees additional time off that is not available to those who show up to work.

snow day

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