In the US for salaried folks you can’t legally do this. I learned because I had a boss take that approach and HR found out and absolutely freaked out and had an immediate sit-down with Boss, the other boss in the department and Grand-Boss.
But you’re in Canada. They way you’ve defined things sounds more like salaried than hourly to me, but Canadian law might differ from US law on that stuff.)
Yeah thats why imma make a.call today. I.dont know if theyre salaried or hourly to.start.
How do you handle it when an employee needs to take 90 minutes in the middle of the day for an appointment? Do they need to make up the 90 minutes?
I assume they’re mostly taking care of that stuff on their day off but surely they can’t make that work for absolutely everything.
Nah, take breaks whenever. Breaks are a necessary part of work. You cant be productive in front of a screen for 8 hours straight.
The only time thats come into play is one person wanted to.go.to the gym mid day, routinely. They work a.half hour later those days and i think they work through lunch. Its not tracked. They just ping me beore they go, telling me theyll be away for an hour and a half.
In the US this sounds closer to salaried then if you’re not tracking their breaks & stuff.
Yeah, I’ve no idea what the definition is of salaried vs hourly. They’re paid hourly but…wtf do I know.
I’ll get it resolved today by calling my sister in law. And probably work through with them something in the way of sick days.
Sounds like a good idea. I can give you a pretty good idea of how your situation would be handled in the US but no idea about Canada.
In the US salaried workers are paid for the work they produce not the hours they put in. Opposite for hourly. Salaried non-exempt is sort of in between. You can’t ding salaried workers for going to the gym during a 90 minute lunch break or taking time off to go to the dentist but you can say “have this project (that takes anywhere from 30-45 hours to complete) finished by this time next week”. If it takes the 35 hours (in the context of a 40 hour work week) then they have 5 hours to enjoy. If it takes them 45 hours then it’s still on them to get it done and meet the deadline. And you can schedule meetings that they have to attend.
Hourly you keep track of (or give them the tools to keep track of) exactly the hours they work. If they work 8:00 AM to 4:03 PM today and 7:59 AM to 3:59 PM yesterday, tomorrow, Thursday, Friday then you owe them 40 regular hours plus 3 minutes of overtime pay. But if they work 7:58 four days a week then you only pay them their hourly rate x 31:52 for the week.
Depends on the details. If you feel bad that they are sick, then give them some money.
That said, I think taking a day off with no pay is a great alternative that is all too rare in our business. Part-time should be the norm.
Ah.
Then, I recommend telling them to take the one day as Paid Vacation. (Again, this sounds like another HR issue of paying them $25 of Vacation vs what HR would probably do ($20).)
Not sure what the deal is with this employee not taking one day now. Needs 4 weeks paid vacation later in the year? So what? They take 4 weeks minus one day of paid vacation later.
SL, tell the employee to stop making inane requests.
More likely that was a company thing. It is definitely not illegal. 1) Flex” time is a thing. 2) We also grant “comp” time when someone works excess hours during a pay periods, which can be used the same as vacation time.
Does this person only work one hour a day? If not you are most likely violating some minimum wage law.
Side note: if they take a “one week” vacation they are only missing 4 work days, right?
i used round numbers so I didn’t make you folks stretch your brain with the big math stuff.
Correct. Just like when you take a one week vacation, you’re only missing 5 days instead of 7.
Official Theme song for this thread:
So, this is a wrap. I spoke to my SIL, she agreed that they’re paid hourly.
Complicating things a wee bit, The federal gov’t seems to have just introduced some new rules around sick days, at least for federally regulated businesses (which isn’t us). Here’s what we arrived at.
So they just took two sick days this week, they have 3 (jan/feb/march) accumulated. So they get paid for the two sick days and now have 1 sick day accumulated, and up to 7 more possible throughout the year.
Had a long convo with the ee, and they’re fine with this - better than fine since they’re now getting sick days when they didn’t before. And I don’t feel like an ass because people aren’t stressed about paying their groceries because they need a few days off.
Not sure if this is a good policy since it means (as written here) that you’ll always have zero sick days come Jan 2 when you might’ve had x > 0 on Dec 31.
That is, there’s a loss of a benefit that was earned previously.
Maybe do the following:
Its in work in progress. I considered your point, will deal with it if it becomes an issue. For now, its lightyears better than a typical small business startup.
If you have this feeling you should just not pay them. It’s a perfectly reasonable compromise.
I’ve also lived with the expectation that you can take time whenever and make up for it. And while it’s nice, sometimes it’s nice to take time and not make it up.
If you want to keep things fair, but still provide that option, the answer is unpaid time off.
We sort of do this. I don’t have sick time, just PTO. I accrue however many hours per pay period, and there’s a cap to how much I can bank, and it just rolls forward.
Agree… what happens when you contract flu/Covid on January 2?
Just cap the sick bank accumulation at 10 days (can never have more than 10) but allow rollover from one year to the next. IMO.
Well, these are guidelines not laws. I can, and do, whatever I want as long as it’s legal. We didn’t even have a sick day policy last year, and I think on three seperate occassions people were just paid for time off - one was out for a week. So, I’m not hyper concerned if it’s not perfect, since it’s just a guide so that folks know what they have available. If we need more on a one-up basis, I can do that without saying ‘sorry, the guidelines say no’.