Sheila K

I'm also considering a tally sheet for dead grandmas.

I've been sent on another mission...BEREAVEMENT LEAVE. Our current policy allows 3 days of paid bereavement leave for an in-state funeral, and five paid days for an out-of-state bereavement. Standard relatives apply. One "proposal" is for 10 days paid for spouse or child, 5 days for parent or 3 days for the rest of the immediate family, regardless of in or out of state status. ...and your thoughts??? Thanks in advance....

Okay, I finally got to read this entire thread and LOVED the Simpsons reference. But my favorite Simpsons name is when Homer changed Marge's name to "Hooty McBoobity", when he changed his back from Max Powers.

"L'eggs" get serious here. This problem is "Just My Size". That was a very silly answer for such a "No Nonsense" question. "Bali" wanted was an answer about support hose. You should be a-"Hanes"-ed of yourself for "supp-hosing" we would think it was funny. And it was!

Lynn: When we made our transition, we actually moved to a dual system, PTO and Reserve Sick Bank (RSB). We moved traditional vacation time to PTO and traditional sick time to RSB on a 1:1 ratio. The RSB account is used only for extended illnesses. All employees are required to use three days of PTO before they can begin using the RSB time. PTO time is paid out at 75% upon separation, RSB is not paid out. We continue to accrue RSB time for all employees, but at a much lower rate than before. If you would like more specific details, please e-mail me privately.

You have been sent this email from mezmez ------------------------------------------------ Topic: Sick pay Report: We had a similar instance occur at our facility and we made an exception to the written policy and paid the employee accordingly. We also disciplined the manager for the verbal misinformation. We checked with our legal counsel and they concurred. Policies are in writing for a reason. We didn't have to pay the employee but to appease the employee relationship we gave in.

I'm not sure about the context here, but I do know that our ADP rep was touting their administration of a 529 plan here in Arizona. We weren't interested, so didn't ask for details, but you might want to give your local ADP office a jingle to find out what they're up to!

GBurns: We are working with our state Employers Council to re-write our handbook. One of their staffers talked to a 20-yr DOL employee who told him that if the word "accrual" was used in a PTO policy, then the time was "owed" to the employee and could not be paid out at less than 100%, nor could it be lost or decreased upon separation. The Council president was fortunately able to speak to a "higher-up" at DOL who was utterly astounded that someone would give that kind of misinformation. Needless to say, the first contact is off the list of "sources"!

I'm with Kirk and KIP! We just had a big scare over this as we re-wrote our Employee Handbook. One "expert" told us we could not pay out our vacation (upon separation) at less than 100%. It caused a lot of sleepless nights until we were able to use another source to speak with a DOL rep.

I just received an e-mail from a vendor regarding their program for benefit statements. The website listed is: http://www.bsiweb.com/mainsite/printed.html I have not personally dealt with this company, but am assuming that you would like to see all the options!

Gosh, if you find one, let me know! I've been doing ours in MSAccess for four years now! Seems like it would be difficult to get the info needed from all the systems put together for a vendor to prepare!

Eullla: We are a credit union with 500 employees and assets in excess of $1billion. We do NOT provide PAID Military Leave of Absence. We allow the employee to use their accrued paid time off if they would like to receive pay during their leave. Once that paid time off is exhausted, the remaining time would be unpaid. We would not consider paid time for military leave, as it would be too expensive while benefiting only a few employees.

Steve: Although it may not be the moral high road, mroberts is correct that it isn't really illegal. If you suspect that there is some type of discrimination happening here, I would suggest that you contact a labor attorney to discuss your concerns.

I'm in Arizona, so can only speak to that arena. We do NOT pay out for vacation accrued in the first six months BECAUSE, they would not have been able to take the time as paid time until eligible (after six months), even though it is being accrued. In the situation where you are sometimes allowing employees to take the time prior to them being eligible, you may need to pay it out to all employees because you have given the benefit to the ones who were allowed to take the paid time?????

Marlene: There are so many different providers out there! I have just co-authored a piece for IHRIM (International Human Resourse Information Managers) which appears in their Go-To-Guide. I also presented some of this same material at their spring conference last year. If you check out the IHRIM site (www.ihrim.org), I believe there are links to the presentation materials for the 2001 spring conference. The title of my presentation was "The ABC's of the RFP". If you are unable to access the presentation there, please let me know and I'd be happy to send you a copy via e-mail!

:confused: Well, the lines have been drawn in the sand here. We have both an e-mail monitoring and an internet tracking software in place (2 unrelated pieces of software). Our IT department selected and implemented without any input from HR or any written policy in place. Reporting is worthless in both pieces of software and HR is peeved because we can SEE the abuse, but because of the poor reporting, there is not really enough written documentation to do anything about it. What does this mean? Time (already) for new software. I've seen ICaughtYou.com, but what other solutions have you seen out there or what is being done where YOU work??? Thanks in advance for any help I can get...

Although we are called "too nice" by other employers (!), we pay our employees 4 hours of holiday pay for these types of half days. Non-exempt employees are paid 4 hrs of holiday pay PLUS whatever hours they actually work that day. Exempt employees are paid 4 hrs of holiday pay PLUS 4 regular hours to make their 8 hr day. I would assume that if you aren't paying holiday pay, you would use a similar breakdown for your exempt folk, substituting vacation for holiday pay. If any of these folk are on vacation that day, we pay 4 hrs of holiday and then make up whatever difference (to their regularly scheduled hours) in vacation hours.....

Maria: We have developed our own "Benefit Statement" for our employees, although our HRIS has a "canned" report that we could have used. Our statement has changed quite a bit from the first year we used it. If you'd like more info, please call me. I could probably fax a copy to you...

Joey: I would suggest that you look on the hr.com website and hunt down their salary calculator (you may need to register, but it's free). They have a pretty good database of salary information!

Our company has an "allowance" amount that each full time employee can use for benefit expenses. Our allowance is sufficient to cover all expenses for medical, dental and vision care for the employee, with some left over for our cafeteria plan. If the coverage desired (with dependents) exceeds the allowance, the employee will pay the difference. That amount will vary according to the plan they choose. This also allows us to control our costs by setting this fixed "allowance" per employee and making them responsible for the balance (which we run through the cafeteria plan as a pre-tax deduction)

I will tell you from personal experience that our company had a HORRIBLE time with Great West. Lots of billing problems...late, later and way too late on claims payment...rotating "account managers" so that we had to start over almost every two months with a new person, and the biggest headache was billing. We were with them for two years, left last Nov 1 and are still cleaning up problems almost a year later...

My boss is thinking about starting to pay a premium to our employees who speak Spanish...We have a high percentage of spanish-speaking customers. Does anyone do that? How do you administer? How do you qualify? How much do you pay??? HELP!?!?!?!?!?!

Eeeeek We are fighting an internal political battle over "who" has control over the e-mail/internet monitoring policy. We are a financial institution and have recently added Internet access for all employees. Our IT VP insists that our Internal Control Department should handle (write and monitor) the policies governing this area. Our (the HR department...here we come to save the day!!!!) feeling is that WE should be the ones in charge, as we have to deal with the "fallout" if there is abuse. How does your company see this issue? Is it a compliance issue or an HR issue???

Kma: Do a search on this board for transportation plans. There are several discussions from about 6-8 months ago I believe.

jwalls: Use the "search" feature on this board to look for past postings. There are several different vacation policies out there in prior listings. If you still need help, give us a shout!