Deduct salary exempt for personal days?

Ruskanen

I know the law states this regarding salary exempt employees : An employer may make
deductions from the guaranteed pay: when the employee is ``absent from work for a full day for personal reasons, other than sickness or disability'', but do any of you actually deduct salary exempt employees pay when they take a day off for personal reasons? My HR experience has been limited to my current company and we have never done that, and I've never talked to other HR people that mention that they do this. Please enlighten me.

POPEYE

We do not. As long as there are no signs of abuse and the EE is completing all work and fulfilling the requirements of the job, I can't see us ever docking an exempt EE for taking some well deserved time off. As the question has been asked many time before, "Are you going to pay them extra when they work 15 hours a day for 3 weeks to complete a project on time"? So.....
why would you dock them for taking an occasional day or some hours off?

This is only my opinion and not legal advice and is not meant to offend anyone.

LivindonSouth

I'm seriously considering being offended.

mushroomHR

We deduct exempt employees for the full day. The only reason being is that we have some exempts who never work any hours over 8 and if we started to pay them for their days off they would take advantage of it. We tried this in the past and got burned so we had to stop that practice.

LivindonSouth

In all my years, this is the only place I've ever worked that totally ignores exempt sick days. It baffled my mind when I got here.

Ruskanen

When you say they "totally ignore exempt sick days" do you mean that they let salary exempt employees call in sick and they get paid for it, or if a salary exempt employee calls in sick, they do not get paid for it? Do you differentiate between calling in sick and taking a day off for other personal reasons?

hhaynal

Prior to 7/1/2005, we did pay exempts for full personal days. Of course, there were the expected few who abused the benefit; i.e. sometimes the total personal (and sick) days in one year exceeded one's actual vacation allotment.

Going forward from 7/1, exempt employees have been given three personal days which can be used in increments. The days are to be used for emergent situations or where appointments could not otherwise be scheduled outside company hours.

Ruskanen

Some of you mentioned that you have salary exempt employees that do or would take advantage of the system if they got paid for personal days off. It reminds me of other postings on this site regarding hourly employees with poor attendance or not clocking in or out properly and it seems the response is always to use the discipline procedures that are in place and counsel the employees accordingly. If a salary exempt employee is gone, or would be gone that often given the opportunity, it seems to me that they would have performance issues. Don't they get disciplined for poor attendance and poor performance?

We are very lucky here that up to this point we do not deduct salary exempt employees pay for sick or personal days, and we do not have any attendance issues with anyone. Everyone shows up when they are supposed to, works the whole day and doesn't take excessive amounts of time off.

atrimble

It is our policy to require exempts to report absences for personal (non-sick) reasons in excess of 4 hours (half day increments), which is then deducted from their accrued annual leave. A personal absence less than 4 hours in duration is informally tracked by not deducted from the leave bank. Any absence due to illness/injury is reported in minimum 1/2 hour increments, so if they have a quick blood pressure check first thing in the morning and report to work 30 minutes late, a 1/2 hour is paid out of accrued sick leave.

Exempts' pay don't get reduced in either instance, because most have been here long enough to have adequate time in the leave bank to cover half day absences at the very least. I don't know that we've ever had an exempt take time off (even in the minimum amounts) and not have the accrued paid time off to cover the absence, therein creating a possible pay reduction situation. Hmmmm - I wonder what we'd do...?

pork1

RUSKNANE: Do as I have done for years, and put the issue into the hands of the Management team who directly control the performance issues of their team members who may be EXEMPT and NON-EXEMPT. Let the responsible manager make that call and you don't have to worry about the issues. Our managers are happy to approve the time sheets and cards for the organization in which the company has placed major decisions as well as minor decisions in their hands. It is literally none of my business, I am not where the "rubber meets the road". If I receive a complaint about someone's mishandling of their responsibilities, I will get involved, but strangely enough, I have had no complaints to investigate in 5 different companies over the last 20 years. In government circles it is called "comp time" in private business it is called "decision making by the right person at the right time and just in time".

PORK

lorrie

If an exempt ee does not have vacation time available, we do deduct a day's pay when the absence is for personal reasons, other than illness.