Paid Unpaid Leave Procedure | COM102

Paid Unpaid Leave Procedure

The Paid Unpaid Leave Procedure offers guidelines relative to compensated leaves of absence, including holidays, and to unpaid time away from work.

The Paid Unpaid Leave Procedure applies to all employees of your company. (12 pages, 3295 words)

Your company should provide employees with paid time away from work for any personal reason which can include vacations, sick leave, disability, maternity/paternity leave, personal business, bereavement, etc. Your company should also believe in grouping all traditional categories of compensated time off into one category to reduce cumbersome record keeping requirements.

Your company should realize that occasionally, employees may require additional time off away from work that exceeds their Paid Time Off accrual. This can include maternity or paternity leave, disabilities, leaves of absence, extended military leave or other personal reasons. The employee will not be compensated for time off that exceeds their Paid Time Off accrual.

Paid Unpaid Leave Responsibilities:

The Controller should be responsible for overseeing the execution of company policy for payroll records.

The Human Resources Manager should be responsible for assisting employees with completing all payroll or benefits forms, answers to questions about their payroll records, or interfacing with accounting regarding their payroll files.

The Accounting Manager should be responsible for the calculation and distribution of paychecks.

The File Manager will be responsible for categorizing and maintaining a listing of records maintained and the location (i.e. by wall unit and shelf row number).

Supervisors are responsible for collecting and submitting their department’s Time Sheets to Accounting in a timely fashion.

Paid Unpaid Leave Procedure Activities

• Paid Time Off
• Jury Duty
• Military Leave
• Unpaid Time Off
• Absence Request and Notification
• Holidays
• Vacation Eligibility
• Vacation Schedules
• Vacation Over Holidays

Paid Unpaid Leave Procedure References

• Uniformed Service Employment and Reemployment Rights Act
• Family and Medical Leave Act
• Pregnancy Discrimination Act

Paid Unpaid Leave Procedure Forms

• Absence Request Form

Do You Have An Inclement-Weather Policy?

Small businesses are more vulnerable to natural forces than are their much larger business “brethren.” How do we account for inclement weather, then? With an inclement-weather policy, which should be a part of your paid and unpaid leave policy.

Of course, the large-scale destruction that accompanies some flooding and quakes will be the death knell for your business when your geographic expanse is limited to one office, which is in the flood/quake zone. In those cases, company policy had better include careful risk assessment and ongoing risk management, including major disaster and contingency planning.

Fortunately, most business disruptions are not nearly so large in scope. Like ice storms that cost a day of down time — or even two or three — might not be critical. We might be able to continue working in the cloud, so our core functions continue whether we’re “there” or not. We can telecommute when the need arises. Having a bad weather policy seems like a non-issue for us.

“Well, that’s just fine for some B2B”, you might be saying to yourself, “but that’s not us.” If our business depends in part on foot traffic — people showing up at our office/storefront to do business — we can’t have workers not show up and expect that to have zero impact on our cash flow, or our company’s reputation. Our customers have come to rely on us to be there for them, regardless of what it’s like outside. If there’s a lot of competition in our area of business, one little “glitch” could send our customers elsewhere.

At the same time, we can’t risk the health or well being of our employees. What do we do?

We establish a “rain day” (or a snow day or ice day) policy, we put it in writing, and we make sure all employees — as well as our customers — know what that policy is. Like other procedure in the paid and unpaid leave policy, we would want to establish clear, easy to follow procedures to ensure that the policy is carried out and we train all our employees periodically and when the likelihood of the threat is on the increase.

What About a Telecommuting Policy for At-Home Employees?

Thinking about offering your employees the option of telecommuting? It’s becoming increasingly popular for obvious reasons: nixes the commute, less distractions, decreases office politics and infighting between employees, etc. And as technology becomes more compact and less expensive, connectivity is no longer an issue.

But there are a lot of things to think about before implementing a telecommuting option—things that should go into a Telecommuting Policy. The policy should include which positions are eligible, who should pay for things like Internet access and equipment, how often or should the employee come in for meetings, will the hours change, etc.