make up time

Irie

I have been given the task of coming up with a policy for employees concerning making up time.

Currently our employees (exempt and non-exempt) are allowed to make up for time they miss from work. Some employees are making up as much as a full day of PTO in one week!

My thoughts are to limit the make up time to a couple of hours in one week after all PTO has been exhausted. I also think there is a problem with allowing exempt employees to do this; if we are treating an exempt employee like a non-exempt or hourly employee then we must pay them overtime. I could be incorrect but this is how I see it.

Do any of you allow this "make up" practice in your company? If so, how is it controlled? Thanks.

NaeNae55

Non-exempt: Employees can make up PTO time within the same week with the supervisor's permission. They still complete a leave slip, but their time cards reflect actual hours worked.

Exempt: work part of a day you get paid for the whole day, miss the whole day you use a day of PTO; no PTO make ups for exempt employees.

Holly Jones

Re: Exempt employees and PTO

Generally speaking, PTO/paid leave is a state-specific/company specific creation that does not necessarily factor into exempt/non-exempt classifications as created under federal law. Remember that the FLSA regulates wages, not paid leave, so as long as your exempt employees are being paid their full salary for any week during which they perform (or are willing/available to perform) work, deducting hours from a bank of PTO, or allowing the employee to make up the missed time later in the week, will not affect that employee's exempt status.

The caveats on this are, first, there are a very few state laws that do restrict deductions from the actual PTO bank in order to make up for time missed by exempt employees. California is one, and I believe Wisconsin is another.

Second, and this is what you touched on in your initial post, Irie, there [i]can[/i] be problems with extensive "clock watching" of your exempt employees. There is no prohibition against requiring your exempt employees to work a set number of hours per week, or even against having them clock in and out, keep track of time, etc., as long as you don't dock their pay if they don't work the full 40 (or however many) hours. Exempt doesn't mean "I can come in whenever I want and leave whenever I want and no one can say a word to me as long as I get my job done."

However, if you have a situation where an employee's classification as exempt is a very close call, e.g., in close situations under the administrative or executive exemptions, then requiring employees to closely monitor and track their time, to make up for every hour of work missed with PTO, etc., to stay late for an hour because an hour lunch was taken, etc., [i]may[/i] call into question whether the employee is autonomous enough and given enough independent judgment to qualify for his or her particular exemption.

From that, it may come down more to a matter of logistics and recordkeeping. Allowing employees completely unfettered ability to "make up" full days of what would otherwise count as PTO definitely sounds like a nightmare to me. At the same time, docking PTO in hour increments because an employee needed to leave early for a doctor's appointment sounds similarly unpleasant, so allowing the employee to work an extra hour in that same workweek seems perfectly reasonable and even preferable. But as long as you're still paying your exempt employees the same [i]salary[/i], either method is fine (keeping to the caveats I noted above).

NaeNae55

I love it when you chime in Holly. You are always clear and concise. Thank you.

Still Need Coffee

For our non-exempts, we allow them to "make up" up to 4 hrs per week. PTO is used for any hours above and beyond that.

ACU Frank

You know, when I originally saw the title of this thread I thought you were going to talk about that first hour of the day during which several women in the office apply their makeup.

I assume that happens when they get too many phone calls on the way to work and can't use a cell phone [B]and [/B]put on eyeliner at the same time.