Human Resource Blog

Sending employee home w/o pay

Is it illegal to send an employee home without pay for disciplinary reasons in Illinois?

No. Disciplinary suspensions without pay are a very common way of improving employee performance, and considered a best practice by many. The suspension is usually a final attempt to address a disciplinary problem without terminating the employee.

If the worker is an hourly employee, then the law requires only that the employer pay the employee for any time worked. If the employee worked for one hour, the employer would be required to pay him or her for one hour.

The situation is slightly different with an exempt employee. Generally, an exempt employee must be paid for the full day if he or she performs any work at all during the day. So generally, for exempt employees, the employer will inform the worker today that beginning tomorrow, they will be suspended for 1 day, 3 days, or whatever. A special regulation under the FLSA or Fair Labor Standards Act permits employers to implement unpaid disciplinary suspensions for exempt employees, when the employer has a bona fide policy in place to do so.

If the exempt employee is sent home before beginning work for the day, the employee is not entitled to payment for the day. However, in the example above, if the exempt employee were to work 1 hour, and then be sent home, he or she must be paid for the full day.