Exempt employee time off...
hulawho
8 Posts
We are a production facility working 24/7 7 days a week most weeks. We also have a finance team that has a regular schedule of M-F 7:30-4:30. The production managers work 5-7 days a week, finance managers usually 5 days with an occasional Saturday. We do not have a policy in force about missed days in the middle of a workweek. What is your policy about a exempt employee missing a day of work in the middle of the work week? Do you charge vacation, dock their pay, or just let it go? What if that same employee came in on Saturday to make up the missed work? Our production manager considers the missed day as made up on the weekend. Our Finance manager wants a vacation request form filled out for all days missed M-F. I want to be consistent on how I handle both teams – production and finance but both managers have very different opinions on how this should be handled. We do not charge vacation days for weekend days. My opinion is that a workweek is 5 days for both production and finance and as long as the exempt employee is there for their 5 days then no vacation time is charged. If the employee had not come in on the weekend and worked then I would have charged her a day of vacation. How is this handled at your company?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Comments
Ultimately, exempt status is about job performance and not time worked. Although, for some jobs, being available to other employees to provide expertise or supervision during normal working hours is a part of that job performance, the larger question is, "is this employee meeting the standards of performance set for their job". If someone can get their work accomplished by coming in to perform duties they could not perform when they were out for a day, why would you penalize them? Would you prefer they did nothing over the weekend? Would you then discipline them for poor job performance since they didn't get everything done because they didn't come in because you were going to dock their pay for a day whether they did or not?
This is not a situation that is well covered under FLSA. We allow M-F employees to make up lost time by coming in on a Saturday.
I agree with TXHRGuy. We allow exempt employees to make up missed time (either by staying late, coming early or working over the weekend) without docking their PTO. However most of our exempts do not choose to do so because most don't end up using all their PTO for the year anyway. So it is rare that it would happen here, but when it does we add that time back into PTO as long as they communicate it to us.
There are also times where execs/mgmt/etc have given extra PTO without docking their PTO banks to exempt employees when they know that employee has worked multiple long weeks. It is not hour for hour, but more of a thank you gift at the time.
We do not allow non-exempt employees to make up time on the weekend at all. We do allow them to stay late/come early when business needs allow for it.
I would bring both "proposals" to senior management to see how they want it handled.
We changed our leave policy last year to require exempt employees to use PTO for any full day absence of a regular work day. They also have to use PTO for any partial day absences. So, if they work M-F 8-5 normally, and they work 60 hours by Thursday and then take Friday off, they have to use PTO. We did this because of the flagrant abuse of the system.
We are about to change this back as it got the point across but has become so administratively burdensome that it is costing us more on the admin side of the house than any money we were saving.
[quote user="dhall111"] We are about to change this back as it got the point across but has become so administratively burdensome that it is costing us more on the admin side of the house than any money we were saving. [/quote]
Keep in mind that you can discipline for attendance problems as a wholly separate matter from how to administer the salary basis of pay.
Of course, that wasn't entirely the issue. THe company was losing money because we had so many people that banked their time, and instead of taking a day off, they would work over earlier in the week to get Friday off "for free". With their supervisors approval. And it was fine. Until the banks started getting over 300 hours. So we capped our leave balances and started enforcing the - take a day off, use a PTO day policy.
But a lot of our employees don't have a choice in the hours they work - biologists running experiements for NOAA; policy makers in the pentagon; all kinds of federal type jobs that are - do the job till it's done.
Clearly, this is a matter of deciding why you've employed these people...is it to fill out a certain number of blocks on a time sheet, or warm a seat a given number of hours per week....or is it to get a job done, and do it well.
If it's the former, by all means, penalize your employees for not following a schedule. If it's the latter, and these people are getting the job done and doing it well, you would be a fool to make the day on which their hours fall into an issue!
And as for the poster who would dock PTO even after someone has worked 60 hours in 4 days..there are no words to describe that kind of draconian management style. Simply speechless.
[quote user="Lindsay39"] And as for the poster who would dock PTO even after someone has worked 60 hours in 4 days..there are no words to describe that kind of draconian management style. Simply speechless. [/quote]
This is actually quite common now that the DOL has given the green light. However, not all courts buy into this plan, so buyer beware.
And as for the poster who would dock PTO even after someone has worked 60 hours in 4 days..there are no words to describe that kind of draconian management style. Simply speechless.
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Well, that poster was me. NO ONE here likes it, including management. It has to do 100% with budges and costs. Nothing else. And it is VERY common in our industry of government contracting. We have to account for every single second of work time. Including exempts. We are audited by multiple agencies (far more than any other industry). Several of our auditors over the past 2 years recommended this practice to us because they could see how easily it would to abuse our system (and it was being abused). But we've made our point and are changing it back.
Regardless, it is legal and I know many companies that do this.
And as for the poster who would dock PTO even after someone has worked 60 hours in 4 days..there are no words to describe that kind of draconian management style. Simply speechless.
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This forum is a chance for HR Professionals to freely exchange ideas and seek advice. I take exception to the degrading tone of this post. No one learns anything if they are subject to or have witness an attack. Your other post and article addressed the merits of diversity, yet you did not allow for the fact that dhall111's business has to adhere to federal regulations. I would hope that in the future you would address yourself in a more professional manner.
Wow! I would have to agree that this is a professional forum and we as professionals should conduct ourselves in that manner. I do not agree with docking an employee's PTO if they have worked 60 hours M-T. You may consider offering a different type of work schedule. 4 days on and 3 days off. This would negate the administrative burden for payroll and HR and give you some flexibility and increase morale. I wish you the best.
Angie
HR Manager
[quote user="drobinso"]I also do not agree with docking an employee's PTO if they have worked 60 hours M-T. If it is causing a problem with people using "comp" time on Friday and racking up huge amounts of vacation that eventually has to be paid out, adopt a "Use It or Lose It" policy as far as vacation.[/quote]
As is being discussed in another thread, "use it or lose it" is increasingly under attack and not available to practitioners in some states.
[quote user="drobinso"]I also do not agree with docking an employee's PTO if they have worked 60 hours M-T. If it is causing a problem with people using "comp" time on Friday and racking up huge amounts of vacation that eventually has to be paid out, adopt a "Use It or Lose It" policy as far as vacation.[/quote]
As I've said before, NO ONE here likes this. That includes all of us that made the decision to do this. It was made in conjunction with other policy changes including moving from use it or lose it to a flat cap due to a number of employees in states where use it or lose it policies are illegal.
Regardless, I've also said that we are now changing it back. While it had the intended affect on a good portion of our population, it has become administratively burdensome to track and follow up. It also had an unintended negative impact on one business segment that no one realized until the policy was in place (including the VP and managers for that business segment). For those reasons the policy is changing back, on a somewhat limited basis. Employees must have managers approval and any consistent mis-use will be dealt with by disciplinary actions.