Exempt-Time Off

Cat

An exempt employee was out for personal reasons. He has vacation time coming. If he is not charged for vacation day, can he be docked for this day? Or do I either have to charge to vacation, or pay his weekly salary? Thanks!

dhnyct

My first thought is to charge a vacation day. But it seems there may be some other factors not included in your post...performance, attendance ? ? ?

City

If you don't have a policy to utilize vacation days for missed days work for exempt employees, I would pay this employee for the missed day, institute a policy to utilize vacation days as such and immediately communicate it to all exempt employees.

The problem with such a policy is that it needs to be applied equally to all exempt employees including any high level (the president, vice presidents, etc.) employees. It is very difficult to administer because most exempt employees, particularly high level employees, interpret that they are being paid for the job they are doing not for the hours they are putting in.

Is it possible that this employee is really non-exempt and should be paid hourly? If they have an habitual attendance problem, this should be addressed with them. In my own situation, if I've worked long hours and need a day to handle personal issues, I would be upset if my vacation was charged when there was no formal policy and there were other exempt personnel who occasionally missed a day here and there and were not charged with a vacation day. I might even be irritated if there was a formal policy. The point of being exempt is like I said in the above paragraph, the employee is being paid for the work performed not for the hours, otherwise the employee should be compensated by the hour.

Down_the_Middle

Remembering that with "partial day absences", exempt staff must be paid for the whole day. You are permitted to NOT pay an exempt person for a day or more of absence for personal reasons and their exempt status will not be destroyed. Requiring exempt employees to take vacation for partial day absences of a few hours is a sure way for wage & hour to conclude that you pay exempt as hourly employees. I've seen this many, many times.

Refugemaker

I'm not an HR professional, and don't understand why the government looks so closely at treatment of time off for exempt employees. I've been through their guidelines for determining exempt status and seen materials produced by others with tests for exempt vs non-exempt, and the main criteria for administrative employees seem to relate to use of judgment and rate of pay. I work in a tiny office of a large not-for-profit and we always, always have more work to be done than is possible unless we settle for the minimum required. We strive for excellence because our work affects lives. Because we all exercise a great deal of independent judgement, work odd hours as needed by our clients, and are actively involved in the business of the organization, we seem to be exempt. But if we followed the government's guideline and worked until the job is done, no matter how many hours it takes, no one could be exempt, because the work simply exists continually. For balance in our lives and effectiveness on the job, we sometimes need comp time, or a day away for personal business because we spent the weekend immersed in our jobs, or worked a 16-hr day due to an emergency.
How does the gov't regulatory staff deal with the reality of jobs in the social service field? Do they want us all to be non-exempt, even if we seem by their tests to be exempt?

dhnyct

Without some sort of policy for using time off, how can you determine when leave has been exhausted in a case of FMLA, etc???

CuriousG

There are specific provisions in the Family Medical Leave Act regulations for tracking exempt employee time when a leave is granted under the Act.

Generally, an exempt employee must be paid their full weekly salary for any week in which they work any time at all. The execeptions are 1) in the case of an approved FMLA leave, or 2) in the case of violation of worplace safety rules. Otherwise, deducting even one days pay for time missed would theoretically negate the exempt status of that employee. If you have a practice of doing this with all of your exempt employees the practice would negate their exemptions as a group; a very expensive practice indeed.

There is nothing in the law requiring you to take advantage of a position's exempt status. You can go ahead and treat exempt employees just like your nonexempt. The catch is you must treat them as nonexempt in every way, not just those you pick and choose.