Human Resource Blog

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.

Yes, you absolutely have to pay employees for time they spend in the office for supervision, meetings, conferences, evaluations, etc. If you require the employee to be on the work premises, or engaged in work activities, they must be paid for that time.

The waiting time is a gray area. We would advise you to pay employees for this time, or to consult the DOL. Under federal law, an employee who is required to wait for work on the employers premises (or at another location) must be paid for that waiting time. Theoretically, you could have the employee drop the client off and take a 30-minute or 60-minute break. As long as the employee were able to leave the premises, take the break uninterrupted, and then return at the alloted time, that would be acceptable. However, if the circumstances make it impossible for the employee to leave the premises, or to pursue his or her own interests during that time (reading, knitting, playing video games, etc.) then the employee is entitled to payment for that time. For a more specific answer on this issue, check with the state or federal department of labor. 

In some states, this would be legal and in others it would not be. To be on the safe side, you should have the employees written permission in advance to deduct any overpayments from their final wages. But even with that written permission, in certain states like California, this would be illegal.

The best practice would be to not pay employees for more sick time then they have accrued, without such written permission.

There is no state minimum wage in Tennessee. Many (but not all) employees in the state are covered by the federal minimum wage. The federal minimum wage was increased in July 2007 from $5.15 to $5.85 per hour — the first increase in more than a decade. In July 2008 it increased to $6.55, and in July 2009 it increased to the current rate of $7.25 per hour.

Since your company offers a bona fide paid sick leave policy in the form of PTO, you are not required to pay this exempt employee if he missed an entire work day. (If he worked any portion of the day, even a few minutes, even from home, then he has to be paid for the full day.)

Under the federal FLSA or Fair Labor Standards Act, exempt employees must be paid their usual salary if the employer offers no bona fide paid sick leave. However, if the employer does offer paid sick leave, and the  employee has exceeded it (or has not yet accrued it) then the exempt employee need not be paid when he or she misses an entire work day due to illness. Different rules apply if the employee works part of the day, or misses the day for a reason other than the employees own illness.

Read more about this at: http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17g_salary.pdf

A few states may have different laws at the state level — because you did not mention your state, we answered based on federal law.