Sick days vs vacation days

CTAYLOR

We have 30 employees currently and have never exceeded that number so we do not fall under the guidelines of FMLA. I need to know if we can require our exempt and non-exempt employees to use vacation time when they have exhausted their accrued sick time. In addition, can I stipulate a number of sick days for exempt employees as I have for non-exempt? I have read through Indiana employment labor laws and cannot find the answer.

System

Yes, I think you can do these things, though I'm not a lawyer. The tricky part comes when an exempt employee exhausts all of his leave and needs more. You can't dock an exempt's pay for missing part of a week.

James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers

Theresa Gegen TX

James, I think you can dock pay for exempts as long as they miss the entire day!!! For example, if an exempt worked on Monday, then didn't work the rest of the week, he would not get an entire weeks salary. Only a day's worth. But if the exempt worked two hours each day, he would get the entire weeks salary.

I know of several companies that do what you want to do with paid days off. I have usually seen it with a policy that "employee gets X number of paid days off per year". The days are not called vacation days or sick days, they are just called paid days off. That way the employer doesn't care what the reason is (whether employee is sick or just taking a paid day off). If you change your policy now, you might have some employees get upset about using up their vacation for sick time. One option you could give the employee is use vacation or have a day off without pay. Also, you can stress to your employees that the attendance control policies will apply.


Good Luck.

System

You're right, Theresa. I didn't warm up before thinking and got a brain cramp.

James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers

System

Hmmm. Not to get too far off the original question asked, but I thought I had read the same thing James mentions about deducting pay in only full-week increments after exhausting vacation time. After a little research in our special report on "[link:www.hrhero.com/special.shtml#overtime|Defusing the Overtime Bomb: How to Comply with the FLSA]," I found this information:

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Subject to certain exceptions, employers must pay exempt employees their full salary for any week in which they perform any work without regard to the number of days or hours worked. [109]

What Payroll Deductions Are Allowed?

The three major exceptions to the general prohibition against payroll deductions are that an employer may make deductions from an employee’s salary if:
(1) The employee is absent for at least a full day for personal reasons other than sickness or accident.
(2) The employee is absent for at least a full day because of sickness or accident and the employer makes a deduction from the employee’s paycheck in accordance with the employer’s bona fide sick or disability leave plan. This means that if the employer’s plan provides compensation for absences due to sickness or disability, the employer may — before an employee has qualified to participate in the plan or after the employee has used up all of the leave time to which s/he is entitled under the plan — make deductions from the employee’s pay for absences of one or more full days because of sickness or disability. But employers are still not allowed to make deductions from an exempt employee’s salary for partial day absences after s/he has exhausted vacation or sick leave benefits.
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Christy Reeder
Website Managing Editor
[url]www.HRhero.com[/url]