Paid Time Off & Salaried Employees

seeleyhr

We use Paid Time Off (PTO) to cover holidays, illness, vacations, etc. for all employees. My question is regarding salaried employees. In the past if they took time off for personal reasons, they would ask for PTO and we would deduct it from their PTO total. Other time they took off, we would not deduct PTO if it was a partial day. Also, the company policy has always been that if they were off an entire day for whatever (doctor, illness, vacation), they were expected to use PTO. We have salaried employees that request not to use PTO for a full day when they are out for illness as they are stating they put in enough extra hours to cover them being off a day. Are we within our limits to require a full day of PTO to be used?

deniseE

I am a salaried ee...and I have to use PTO for anytime taken out of the office. I am paid a certain salary for the job function...not based upon how many hours I work. Therefore, somedays, it takes 8 hours to do my work..some days 10...it's just part of the job.

Do you have a policy regarding salaried OT or comp time??? Do your salaried ee's routinely work a large number of hours that for another ee would be OT?

It may be worthwhile to review the number of hours your ee's are really working and adjust your policies accordingly.

Pork

SEELEYHR: Your issue brings me to the very point of why the HR should not be involved with the hour by hour control of EXEMPT employees. It is the employees manager/supervisor's responsibility and accountability for the EXEMPT employee's time. By law the employee must be paid weekly whether he/she is there or not unless there is a suspension for discipline for one week.

PTO for EXEMPT employees will drive you into these traps. If you can you should use the FLSA and get EXEMPTs out of accountability of hours for any reason. The new law will give you some flexibility for breaking down discipline weeks into days, but that is about it in changes.

Accountability for my time is between my boss and my self, PERIOD. The HR should have no influence over my hourly time, other than making sure my boss does not discriminate between my peers and me on how fellow EXEMPT respond and receive fair treatment of personal/work granted or denied time!

HR in my company accounts for EXEMPT time by weeks and we could care less if the individual EXEMPT is here or not. As long as the boss tells us to pay him/her for last week or not to pay him/her, it is none of my business whether he/she took off three hours to see a dentist or to go shopping. I would under line (if I knew how) "my business". Until my boss the GM tells me to monitor an EXEMPTS time at work and I get a chance to convience him otherwise, then I will monitor the hourly time of a specific EXEMPT employee.

I HOPE THIS WILL HELP YOU GET OUT OF A BOTTLENECK!!

PORK

Hatchetman

FLSA permits your company to do what it is doing for the exempts who are salaried. However, check your state wage and hour laws don't prohibit you from charging an accrued time bank without the employee's request, approval or concurence (or it has a prohibtition against use it or lose it policies regarding accrued time).

There is no requirement that you allow an exempt employee to accrue "comp time" for putting in extra effort beyond what the salary is intended to cover.

What you are dealing with is a morale issue for your salaried exempts.

If your post is including "non-exempt salarieds" if you are truly treating your non-exempts as salaried, then you would not dock the salary for full or partial days' absences. If you do dock them, then you would be treating them as hourly and not as salaried.

seeleyhr

Just so everyone understands, we do not dock their wages but require them when they are off to use a full day of PTO that they have accumulated for illness, vacation, holiday. Hope this clarifies my question.

griffin

Because we are a large company we would insist the management keep accurate records of when they are off work. That doesn't mean there's no flexibility but if an exempt employee were off sick for a day it should be recorded. I don't believe you are out of line to expect the employee to use PTO.

HRGirl

My company to uses PTO for everything. We do not make anyone use anything they do not wish to use. If they have worked 50 hours one week, and take a day off and do not wish to use PTO...so be it. This applies to both exempt and non-exempt employees.

I have to say that my company is very unusual in that it gives every employee a key to the building and we are allowed to come and go as we please. We have true flex-time. As long as the work gets done...no one cares. I guess that's what made us the 7th Best Place to Work in the state of Pennsylvania.

One of our VP's said it best..."Manage the environment, not the people." So far this has worked and our company continues to grow in leaps and bounds.

Don D

By the way....How is Buffet??!!

HRGirl

Buffet my dog...is well...Buffet the entertainer was in Camden New Jersey last night and as always...I got to watch the highlights of it on the 11 o'clock news!! One of my fellow parrothead co-workers called me at 3 PM from the bus on the way to the concert, we was already deep into the Corona's and singing Cheeseburger in Paradise to me. Revenge is mine...he'll need me someday and that's when I'll strike!

I take comfort in knowing that I wasn't the only person missing the concert. The President of our company is a parrothead as well...we were both here while two other co-workers partied it up!

Thanks for inquiring Don...I'm off to spin a Buffett CD...CD of choice...Meet me in Margaritaville.