Compensation during an emergency closing

HRCGIL · July 2008

Hello All,

I need some suggestions on policies or guidelines for compensating employees during an emergency closing. I am new to the company and have realized that they have no emergency plan in place. We are located in Fl so I need to have in place an action plan in case we are hit by hurricane this season. I want to know what is commonly used in other companies. Do you pay everyone if the company can not operate, for how long, do EES have to use thier PTO time, how do you treat salaried, exept employees? All advice is welcome as I want to make sure that I do not overlook anything major.

[:)] Thanks!

IrisD · July 2008

The Florida state government has an excellent resource at http://www.floridadisaster.org/business/

There is also compensation information available on hr.blr.com under Emergencies.

HRforME · July 2008

Here's a good article:http://www.bricker.com/publications/articles/916.pdf ; Basically exempt employees MUST be paid if the office is closed for less than 1 week. You can require use of PTO, however if they are out of PTO, you still have to pay them.

If the office is open, then you can deduct for full days only.

Directly from the DOL: http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/overtime/cr4.htm

"Deductions for partial day absences generally violate the salary basis rule, except those occurring in the first or final week of an exempt employee's employment or for unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. If an exempt employee is absent for one and one-half days for personal reasons, the employer may only deduct for the one full-day absence. The exempt employee must receive a full day's pay for the partial day worked. Other examples of improper deductions include:

A deduction of a day's pay because the employer was closed due to inclement weather;
A deduction of three days pay because the exempt employee was absent for jury duty;
A deduction for a two-day absence due to a minor illness when the employer does not have a bona fide sick leave plan, policy or practice of providing wage replacement benefits; and
A deduction for a partial day absence to attend a parent-teacher conference. "

As to non-exempt, the employer is never required to pay for days the office is closed and the employee does not work.

That stated, what is best practice? Our employer (we are in the hurricane/flooding zone) generally pays non-exempts on days that the office is closed due to weather. It has only happened about 4 days in 3 years that I have been here. We cut our holidays from 10 to 8 a few years ago, so this allows us to be a bit more flexible for issues such as bad weather. If we had MORE bad weather days, we would have to revisit our policy!

Compensation during an emergency closing

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