“What are my options when a salaried employee takes an hour or two off? I’ve heard you must pay for the whole day unless they take a whole day off.”
My HR survival tip
This topic was broken into two newsletters. Last week’s newsletter covered the paycheck options.
As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, you may reduce a salaried (exempt) employee’s time off balance when the employee is absent for sick leave, vacation, and PTO (Paid Time Off). However, you may not reduce the actual paycheck unless you are paying a prorated partial week due to a mid-week hiring or termination date.
Where you do get stuck is if your salaried employee has burned through all accrued time off and still takes more time. At this point, you are legally obligated to pay for the whole day or week and it’s time to look at this situation from another angle.
Never focus on the hours worked (or not worked) because this isn’t an hourly position. Picture all your salaried employee’s job responsibilities and duties piled into a box… s/he has agreed to own that box in exchange for the salary you have offered. Period. In theory, whether it takes the employee 25 hours per week or 60 hours, the agreement is the same.
California does not recognize “comp time.” The concept of a salaried employee working long hours and then taking a day off here and there to “compensate” for working those extra hours is not a legal option here. Again, if you are focusing on the number of hours worked, this position could be consider hourly (non-exempt) by the state.
When your employee is off work more than you intended, is s/he really accomplishing all the job responsibilities and duties? If the job is getting done, congratulations on having a very efficient employee. If the quantity or quality of the work is not what you expect, deal with this as a performance problem. The clearer you are about your expectations, the easier it will be to manage performance.
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