No Hour/No Pay - Active Employee???

JDauer

I have never worked for a company that allows someone to be an active employee for months without being paid or having hours worked. I used to get nasty calls and emails from bosses for no pay/no hours and told to term employees immediately (contract/temp firm).

Where I work now we don't have Per Diem or Seasonal status' set up in HRIS. So these employees that are sitting in the system for 4 months are accrueing PTO etc and treated per policy as FT or PT. Isn't there some sort of law or legal definition of 'employee' or FT or PT that demands active employees have hours or pay?

dbutton111

No law, that's company policy.

However, you may have a problem with insured benefits. Most insurance plans require employees to be actively at work. If they are out for months at a time, your policies may require that you term them from the plan and offer COBRA.

Dutch2

I agree with db-one-eleven: can't think of any law's. Just depends on your company policies - reg's and if they are covered by company insurance. If they are covered, you do need to check with your provider as they will no doubt have limits set as to how much someone can miss and still be considered an active ee and covered by the plan.
Do you have any attendance policy, LOA programs, etc? If not may be a good time to institute or your sr mgmt may say, it hasn't been a problem so far so why bother now.
We allow two ee's that "retired" from full-time work to stay on as part-time on an as needed basis, but even they will work at least a few days every couple of months.
Good luck

hrdilemma

If you have a 401K or stock option plan, you may need to also check you Summary Plan Description or Adoption Agreement to determine the number of hours needed per year to be considered active and enrolled. Every plan I have ever worked with had this criteria in the eligibility rules, and their seniority would impact vesting.

davids

I have worked for several organizaions that had seasonal, intermittent or on-call employees. We may keep them "active" although they may not perform any duties for months. We found this to be more efficient than terminating them on the system and then having to re-activate. However, as others have noted, it may present issues with your benefits programs. COBRA is definitely the one that comes to mind. Even though the employee is "active", if he/she is not working, you may need to provide him/her COBRA rights (assuming the employee was benefits-eligible). You will need to develop a mechanisim to know when an "active" employee is not performing duties.