Early Dismissal and Hourly EEs

edaffin · January 2010

Can someone share their policy or practice on paying hourly employees when you close early? For example on Christmas Eve?

We closed at noon on Christmas Eve. I am new to this company so I do not have a policy or practice on this issue yet.

I was debating between paying employee enough holiday pay to equal out 8 hours on Christmas Eve or just paying all hourly employees 4 hours of holiday pay.

What is common practice?

tshultz2005 · January 2010

What we do is probably not common: If the Company makes the decision to close the office early or open late for whatever reason, then the hourly employee is paid for their normal scheduled day. Even if they only worked 3 hours we would pay them 8. We believe that the employee would have worked if they could have. We would not want to penalize the employee for something that was out of their control.

I will say that we are a small employer and most of our staff is salaried.

I hope that helps.

HRforME · January 2010

Unfortunately in this economy, while I wish we could pay for the partial day not worked for non-exempts, we can't and didn't over the holidays. Just as we don't pay them for a full day when we are closed (like Christmas Day). I think more and more companies (especially small ones) are moving away from paying them, because they honestly just can't afford to do so.

782264 · January 2010

We pay the employees who were regulary scheduled on a day that we close early for the full day. If they were not scheduled to come in for that day or days, they do not get paid. We do not have a wait period for an employee to be eligible for the pay either.

Early Dismissal and Hourly EEs

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