PTO

Check Out Time

Another update from the Jungle…

unnamed-230Bettysue loves the holiday season but this year she’s frustrated. Her children are grown and have other plans so they won’t be coming home. Her husband just says, “sure, honey, whatever” when she asks his opinion. Her husband has long-since concluded that the secret to their marriage is to keep his mouth shut, stock up on suitable beverages, and hide in his man-cave until after the Super Bowl game.

So Bettysue spends her working hours plotting how best to spread holiday cheer. This year, she decided that her workplace should have a multicultural party. She’s not deterred by the fact that the workforce has little religious or cultural diversity.

Her boss, Deena, has long-since concluded that letting Bettysue decorate the office is the most profitable use of Bettysue’s time since she clearly doesn’t have her mind on work. A couple of years ago, Deena insisted that Bettysue ought to actually do her job despite the seasonal slush. The results were so awful that Deena had to meet with her mental health counselor every day in the following January. Deena now sees the holiday excesses as a cost of doing business.

unnamed-227Bettysue’s coworkers have enthusiastically joined in because decorating beats working any day of the week. Now miniature menorahs, fake Yule logs, and a plastic Christmas tree create a fire hazard in the elevator lobby. A Kwanzaa fruit broom serves as a seasonal centerpiece in the middle of the conference room table.

Multicolored tinsel adorns every doorway and most cubicle entrances. A sprig of mistletoe was tacked over the breakroom door until Arlene, the HR director, yanked it down, muttering about sexual harassment.

unnamed-233However, most of Bettysue’s time at work is devoted to buying things online. Her Amazon Prime deliveries now exceed regular business deliveries to her employer. FedEx, UPS, and the post office have offered to set up a mini hub at the building to handle the volume of deliveries.

What should the company do next year?

  1. They could have a daily party since none of their employees are working anyway.
  2. They could shut down for two weeks in late December since no one is working.
  3. They could pay a bonus to volunteers who agree to provide minimal customer service while the office shuts down during the seasonal distractions.

Many non-retail companies either shut down at the end of December for two weeks or allow most employees to use vacation/PTO during that time. Employers believe this policy improves morale and productivity in the first quarter of the next year.

If your company is struggling with HR issues, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor can help you create HR policies that are appropriate for your company’s size and then serve as a resource to your staff as the policies are implemented.

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Did PTO Policies Inspire Paid Sick Leave Laws?

Another update from the Jungle…..

Last week’s story was about a sick employee who would not take time off from work because she didn’t want to burn through all her PTO days. As a result, she infected many of her co-workers spreading misery to everyone. If her company had offered paid sick leave separately from her PTO, would she have taken time off to get well rather than coming to work sick?

Years ago, employers began combining vacation and sick leave into a single category of leave called personal time off (PTO). PTO was administratively easier for employers to track in their HR and payroll systems. As an added bonus employers didn’t have to worry about violating HIPAA privacy because there was no need to verify that an employee was sick. It was easier for employees, too, since they didn’t have to fake symptoms or explain the gruesome details of their illness to justify their sick leave requests.

But PTO policies can be unnecessarily restrictive. A former employer of mine allowed only ten days of PTO a year. The practical effect was that everyone showed up sick in order to save a few days for a paid vacation. PTO restrictions didn’t apply to the owners or senior managers. Not surprisingly, morale was tanked, and turnover was astronomical.

Poorly designed PTO policies raise employer costs through poor morale and permanent recruiting efforts. Not only that, the policies seem unfair to workers. So it’s not surprising that many states are considering paid sick leave laws. Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington now require paid sick leave. Washington, D.C. and a growing number of cities also require paid sick leave.

Tennessee is unlikely to enact a paid sick leave law any time soon. However, Tennessee employers with multi-state operations need to plan how they will address these laws.

  1. They should compare the cities and states where they have operations with those that require paid sick leave and verify they are in compliance with applicable laws.
  2. They should revise their employee handbooks to address paid sick leave laws, either by creating a separate handbook for affected locations or adding jurisdiction-specific addendums.
  3. They could design a company-wide paid sick leave policy to comply with all the jurisdictions where they have operations.

Deciding whether to change a PTO policy to add more days or creating a separate paid sick leave policy depends on a number of factors, notably the company’s corporate culture and the cost of offering the revised benefits.  The worst decision would be to ignore this issue.

If your company is struggling with HR issues, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor can help you create HR policies that are appropriate for your company’s size and then serve as a resource to your staff as the policies are implemented.

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You Make Me Sick!

Another update from the Jungle…..

Sue likes her job except at this time of year. First, she had to listen to coworkers talk about their snow and ice adventures. Now she’s listening to many of them cough, sneeze and wheeze all day. Flu season seems worse than last year based on the disgusting noises she’s hearing in cubicle world.

In the next cubicle is Patty who has the flu although she claims it’s just a head cold. Sue’s pretty sure that Patty showed up at work while she had a fever because three coworkers quickly succumbed to the crud after getting too close to Patty.

Now coworkers run away when Patty lurches into sight. Sue can’t escape because they share a cubicle wall. She wipes down her cubicle hourly but that’s not enough. Sue’s heard less gross noises from her cat, Pixel, when he’s coughing up a hair ball.

She complained to Meg, the HR rep, who stopped by to suggest that Patty might be better off at home in bed. Patty croaked that she didn’t want to waste all her PTO days because her husband has promised her a really nice vacation this year. If she uses all her PTO, she won’t have any days left for her vacation.

Meanwhile, their supervisor, Wesley, sits in his office up the hall doing whatever bosses do all day. He can close his door, thinks Sue resentfully, and tune out their suffering. Wesley is young, and he is fixated on not screwing up his future promotional chances. So he blindly enforces the rules on attendance arguing that he has no power to change them.

The company policy sets out a limited number of PTO days a year and doesn’t allow any carry-over. The owner discourages working remotely because he’s afraid staff will goof off. Sue and others grumble quietly because they doubt the company will revise its PTO policy.

What can Meg, the HR rep, do to help the grossed-out employees?

  1. She can set up a sterilization chamber at the entrance and require all workers to hose themselves with disinfectant before entering the office.
  2. She can ramp up recruitment efforts to replace employees who leave voluntarily for better benefits or involuntarily with the EMT’s.
  3. She can suggest that the company revise its PTO policy to allow extra days during seasonal events like flu season.

Employers face a dilemma. They need to balance productivity and staffing requirements against the losses caused by sick employees who show up to work. Adapting leave policies or allowing employees to work remotely are two options.

If your company is struggling with HR issues, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor can help you create HR policies that are appropriate for your company’s size and then serve as a resource to your staff as the policies are implemented.

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Join the HR Compliance Jungle today. Click here!

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