Human Resource Blog

Comp time for salaried employees

We have a salaried employee who will sometimes work longer than our prescribed workday, and then use that time to take an entire day off later in the same time period, or another time period. The same employee says she does not have to put in the a full work week as salaried employees are exempt from being accountable for actual time worked.

It seems like the allows this employee gets to have it both ways, not get penalized for not working the full work week, and getting comp time when more hours are put in. I do not understand why that is allowed.

On this most recent time sheet, this same employee took off a day and has indicated that as she almost had the normal work hours that is was not chargable against vacation or sick. To complicate it, some people did not come in that day due to weather conditions. We were closed the previous day, and on the day in question, the owner did not offically close, just said come in if you can. Our formal policy on weather closing is that if we are not offically closed, that you must take personal or vacation time if you chose not to come in.

So is this reasonable for this employee not be required to use vacation or personal time for this absense?

Thanks for your help.

The good news is, yes, you can charge this employee for personal or vacation time, because the employee did not come to work that day. The better news is that this employee is incorrect when she says that salaried employees are exempt from being accountable for time worked. (That is the problem with getting your HR information from employees — it is often inaccurate.)

Under the federal FLSA or Fair Labor Standards Act, an exempt employee must be paid his or her full salary for any day in which the employee does any work at all. However, the employer has the right to set performance standards, including the minimum number of hours worked per week, the minimum number of days worked per week, etc. Very simply put, when this exempt employee works later one day, that does not give her the right to leave early another day, or to take an entire day off work. The employee can be disciplined or terminated for the performance problem of missing one or more days of work, or not working the minimum required hours.

A very few employers allow exempt workers to come and go as they please, but the majority do not.

In addition, an exempt employee who is not available for one or more full days of work due to personal business, need not be paid for that day.

Use of personal time and vacation time is a matter of company policy. In nearly every state except California, you can require the employee to use her personal or vacation time whenever she is absent for a full day, or even a partial day, regardless of how many hours she has worked during the week.

This is a complex topic, so feel free to post additional questions.