Hours in a vacation "day"...

hulawho

Need some help again with our vacation policy.   We're a production facility with employees working 8 hour shifts, and employees working 10-12 hour shifts.  Our vacation policy is based on days (10 days vacation after 1 year of service, 15 days after 5 years of service, and 20 days after 15 years of service).  The main reason for my question today is how do you define "day" in your vacation and sick policies?  We've always paid vacation at 8 hours per day but now a question has arisen as to why we don't pay the employees based on their schedule.   Does anybody have any experience with this type of situation and how do you handle it?  

cannie

We accrue vacation based on hours and this solves the problem.  10 vacation days per year = 80 hours.  For an employee working the regular 8 hour shift 1 vacation day = 8 hours.  For the employee working the 12 hour shift 1 vacation day = 12 hours.  Also, I don't know if this makes a difference or not, but our schedules are either 5 x 8 hour days per week OR 3 x 12 hour days per week, either way, if taking a full week off they are using the same amount of vacation time as they would regularly be paid if they had been working.

 

larscl

We have this same issue.  What we do is let our employees take vacation by the hour...that way the employee decides how they want to manage it.  If they want to miss a whole day wether the day is a 8 or 10 hour they choose how much vacation time to use.  Some employees really appreciate this option so they can take partial days off and still get paid.  We stick to hours of vacation time. 15 days gives the employee120 hours of vacation time to use.  We do preface it with this...an employee must give 24hour notice to use vacation time.