Compressed work week and paid days off

[Guest Lisssi]

I am designing a flextime/compressed workweek policy. I am wondering how other companies deal with the issue of vacation days and sick days for employees who are working a reduced number of days for more hours each day per week. If they have the same number of days off as employees working a five-day week, they are in essence getting more time off than their peers because their "days" are more hours. Has anyone else addressed this issue in a policy?

I'd also love to see a written policy on flextime even if it doesn't address this issue, if any of you are willing to share your company's policy.

Thanks,

Liss

[Guest Carlye]

I was in a similar situation previously. The vacation earned was in weeks, for example two weeks per year. Our standard work week was 40 hours, whether an employee worked 4 10 hr/days or 5 8 hr/days, so all EEs would get 80 hours vacation. The vacation taken was tracked in hours, which is how most payroll system track vacation/sick time taken for accrual purposes. Basing vacation time upon hours also allows for pro-rata amounts of vacation for EEs who may work fewer hours/week.

[Guest Lisssi]

That certainly seems like a fair system. Did you do that for exempt as well as non-exempt employees? I have been told that it's not good to track exempt employee's sick time by hourly increments, for fear of undermining their exempt status. I would have the same concern about tracking exempt EE's vacation time by hours (and most of our employees are exempt).

Do you have any thoughts?

Thanks,

Liss

[KIP KRAUS]

Lissi:

A former employer I worked for simply prorated the vacation schedule on the basis of the required workweek using 40 hrs per week as the regularly scheduled workweek for full-time and if a part-time employee’s regular scheduled workweek was, say 30hrs., per week vacation was prorated at 30/40 or 75% of the full-time schedule. Thus if after 2 years service vacation for full-time employees was 10 days, a part-timer working 30 hrs./wk received 7 ½ days. This would be the program even if the part-time employee on occasion worked more than 30hrs., because the PT employee was hired specifically as a PT employee and assigned a normal workweek in terms of hours expected to work.

Anyone scheduled to work less than 30 hours per week was not eligible for vacation.

If you do not require a regular schedule for part-timers this could be a problem.