Pay is say $100/week for the position, so $20/day.
But position is 4 days a week, but maintain the full pay (so in the payroll we just use $25/day).
EE wants a day off with pay. Do you reduce the pay by $25? Or $20?
Technically, sure, $25. But that seems a bit punative?
(additional info, No sick days but 4 weeks vacation/year they can use as they see fit. Also have the opportunity to take a day off and then just make it up later for no loss in pay. And, though there’s technically no sick days, have already given a week+ in sick days in the last six months or so).
I think the answer is $25, but willing to hear arguments against this. What say you?
With 4 weeks vacation/yr I would encourage them to use that.
The extra $5 deduction from their paycheck is the penalty for making you jump through this hoop.
If this were an hourly job and they worked four ten hour days and then missed a day they’d lose out on ten hours of wages. Fridays off doesn’t matter .
There is no 4 day a week guy here except for me.even my spouse won’t work Fridays lol.
I’ll probably do the 25 dollar thing, full day. It’s certainly easier for payroll. And they did have two other options (make the day up later, or take a vacation day.)
It’s a small biz so stuff is poorly defined,.flying by the seat of my pants but trying to also be understanding.
I appreciate the input.
And it’s not homework because I didn’t use the phrase yield curves lol.
There’s a reason why my company’s payroll system uses hours as the lowest common denominator.
Back when we had defined PTO, it was coded in the system as a set number of hours. It may have been defined as numbers of days, assuming a 40 hour/week, 8 hours/day basis, but we did have a few people working a 4×10 schedule…
I guess it depends on how you’ve communicated time accruals in the past? You’ve mentioned before that you give Fridays off. Does that mean that everyone works 4 8 hour days, and the 5th 8 hour day is a freebie? Or does everyone work 4 8 hour days and a full time week is known to be 32 hours? Did anyone sign any employment contracts you could revisit?
Based on how you’ve discussed this in the past, it sounds more like each work day is 1/5 of a full week, and they get a free paid 1/5 every week. In that case, I would say it’s a $20 reduction.
When I worked 4 10’s, it was very clear that I was not paid in weeks or days, I was paid in hours, even as a salaried employee. I accrued x hours of vacation each pay period. Someone else would have to use 8 hours to cover a day, but I had to use 10. On weeks where there were federal holidays, I had to either take 2 hours of PTO, or make up the 2 hours elsewhere in that week. If the federal holiday fell on my day off, then I got to work only 8 hour days each day to make it fair (not that I ever only worked 40 hours a week anyway).
Say pay range for the industry is 90 to 110 for ft work. I set the pay to say 103. Then, made the work week 4x8 hour days, with the annual pay still at 103. That was the extent of my thinking (*).Payroll i think just used a higher hourly pay x 32 hours to effect this. Thats why its probably easier to do the ‘25’ dollar pay dock.
I havent really run into this before. Previously they either made up the day, or when they needed a week at a stretch i just told them not to worry about it and paid them for the time.
You know what, upon further consideration, eff it. Im putting too much effort into trying to dock the pay of someone who’s off sick,as if i required to make and follow rules. Ill just ignore it and let payroll go through as is. If it becomes a problem in the future ill let future sl deal with it.
(*) The rest of my thinking was, say youre making just over industry standard ft wages, but for a 4 day week. How much of a raise do you need to go to another job that requires a 5 day work week? Probably more than someone is likely to pay. Its the same question as, how much would it take for you to move to a job thats 6 days a week?
Why are they taking time off without burning sick / vacation days as appropriate? (Or other applicable paid time off: floating holiday, bereavement, jury duty, whatever.)
No employer I’ve ever worked at allowed time off without pay unless you’d burned up all your applicable paid days off and an emergency arose. Or if you needed an extended leave of absence.
SpaceLobster said they have 4 weeks of paid vacation. I assume an option is to take a day of vacation, get full pay, and have 3 (4-day) weeks + 3 additional days of vacation left. But the employee is choosing to not do that.
Most employers would force the employee to use up available vacation days before taking an unpaid day.
Yeah, I totally get why you’d reduce their pay by 1/4, that’s mathematically sound. I just didn’t know how you’d messaged this in the past, and how that might come into play. If employee satisfaction and engagement are your highest priorities, then a lower or no reduction would be good to that end - but may also encourage adverse behaviors. I don’t know your employees though, of course.
I’m also confused why this person is taking any unpaid time when there is PTO to be used.
Anyway, it probably isn’t a bad idea to codify these kinds of things for down the road. Specifying the hourly rate and laying out policies helps both parties understand their responsibilities and promotes transparency. And while I’m only really experienced in US employment situations, having some kind of handbook could protect you against potential legal issues, worst case scenario.
Thank you for defining my vague concerns. That clarifies that this is a me problem, not an ee problem. If someone is sick, they need to be able to have a day off without worrying about losing pay or eating into their time off. I don’t want people taking time off when they don’t need to be off…but upon reflection, that’s not my choice or business.
Still,.it’s important that things are well defined, so I think I’m going to call my spouse’s twin…who is a career HR person at a large multinational insurer,.and have a convo around what the legalities are. Then I’ll define a structure that lets people take sickdays without loss.of.pay or making the time up. I really prefer they make the time up, but if that’s not going to happen then I’ll deal with it.
