LOL I think the fed govt already has it figured out.
Either go by their guidelines or - don’t - but don’t have an arbitrary policy.
The OP ordered them to go home. Thus they are entitled to the pay.
Then why were all the appointments cancelled? :dubious:
What difference does it make? Why should employees get paid for hours they didn’t work?
Then the employees were simply no-shows? They should be fired immediately!
It’s OP’s policy, that’s why.
Because they were ordered to go home.
I wouldn’t say anybody is being totally unreasonable, but you’ll definitely generate ill-will by not paying for all of monday, and your poorly-worded policy isn’t helping.
If you said they could stay home and therefore get a paid snow day, and then halfway through the day decided you could open the office without informing them and giving them the chance to come in, then how are they to know the office was considered “open” and they wouldn’t be getting paid if they weren’t there? Then there’s the additional caveat: it’s not their fault that they’ve been snowed in. If they were still snowed in at that hour, they have no choice for their own safety, and it looks like you’re docking them pay for something out of their control. Then you have the whole “fed closing” ambiguity in your policy, which makes them feel doubly justified in their position.
Also, your policy makes it sound like both your hourly workers and salary workers would get paid for a snow day regardless. Your hourly worker who stuck to hourly made a good choice, especially if she works so much overtime that the overtime pay is a big consideration factor. Nobody likes being the salary worker milked for overtime work with no overtime pay, especially when you realize you’d be making more if you were hourly.
Because she said so:
[QUOTE=psychobunny]
If we are closed for snow, staff will get paid for their usual hours.
[/QUOTE]
The guidelines were that psychobunny decided what was a snow day and what wasn’t. There was no deviation from those guidelines. All policies are arbitrary, otherwise they would be laws or contractual obligations. This was a policy that psychobunny was entitled to apply arbitrarily. The only question here is whether psychobunny’s decision was a wise one.
Yes, this is all technically correct.
If psychobunny sent them home early on Friday and didn’t call them back before Monday morning to tell them they needed to be in at the regular time, their expectation would be that they were following the lead of the Feds. That would be the normal practice unless they were informed otherwise.
Then why were all the appointments cancelled? :dubious:
What difference does it make? The policy doesn’t say anything about patient cancellations.
It seems like your policy has conflicting or overlapping conditons.
“All closings are at my discretion” …OK
“We usually go with the Federal Government however, I reserve the right to make the final decision.” So you decide if you’re closed - the government is irrelevant to the workers. Did you tell them you would be closed?
“If we are closed for snow, staff will get paid for their usual hours.” You chose to reschedule appointments and in effect close your office because of snow. They should get paid for a full day.
“…staff usually goes home early on Fridays if there are no patients.” Do they only get paid for the hours they are in the office? Then the snowy Friday was just another day and they should be paid whatever they would normally be paid. Is there a pay policy for short days?
It seems to me that the difference between 8 or 12 hours pay over a year is a small price to pay for a happy staff.
Why doesn’t psychobunny say anything about what was communicated to the employees between the time they went home Friday and the time they claimed their pay for Friday and Monday?
Then why is everybody upset?
If snow days are at your discretion, why did employees “claim” anything on their reports to you other than “Snow day”?
Having them put hours/days onto a report creates an expectation that they’re being paid for what they claimed. If the pay is at your discretion, then you should be determining what gets put there.
You’re further muddying the waters with the idea of compensating them for work done from home. Don’t make it complicated. If you’re paying for work done at home, then track those hours and pay those hours (which is probably what laws would require anyway). If you pay for snow days at your discretion, then it’s not for time worked from home.
Anyway, given what did happen and what was written… Pay them for all of Monday. you say the usual policy is to pay for the hours they would have worked and to base it on federal closures. Both of those would say to pay them for all of Monday. The fact that you showed up half a day is not one of your stated considerations.
And, yes, the snow day policy says that it is discretionary, but any time you make things confusing, I err on the side of the employee’s benefit. After all, you had the chance to write the policy any way you wanted to…
For the future: clarify the policy.
If it helps: my snow day policy is this: employees will receive a phone call before 8 am if I choose to close for snow, and we will be closed for that entire day. If an employee feels that their local conditions are too dangerous for them individually, they’re expected to notify me in a similar manner. If there is work the employee can do from home, we will discuss the type of work and expected hours during that phone call and they’ll be paid based on that discussion. I don’t pay for snow days otherwise.
I think the problem I’m concerned with is a potential lack of notice about what the pay situation would be before these events took place. Everyone knew this storm was coming.
When the OP asked the employees about their ability to get in on Monday, was there a discussion about pay? Had the OP even decided how pay would be handled at that point? Because I can imagine some people would be willing to make an extraordinary effort to get to work if they know ahead of time they aren’t going to get paid otherwise.
For example, I also hadn’t had a plow down my street on Monday. But I was able to hike out of my neighborhood to a main road where I could catch a cab (I really needed to get to the supermaket). It sucked, it was a lot of effort, and it took a long time, but I was able to do it. And if I’d been in a circumstance where I knew I wouldn’t get paid if I didn’t make such an effort, I might have done it to get to work. But if I were operating on the assumption that my boss was going to pay me regardless because of the extraordinary circumstances, I probably would not have chosen to go through such an extraordinary effort to get in to my office.
So did the employees in this circumstance actually know ahead of time the consequences of not finding a way to get in? Or were both the employees and psychobunny just operating off of a different set of assumptions?
Man, that policy is a total mess. I keep reading through it, and I come up with several different interpretations that I think are all equally plausible.
psychobunny, when you called the employees on Monday, did you say that the office was opening at a particular time? The way you told the story, it seems like the employees were left with the impression that the office was closed, but you just took the initiative and made it to work on your own initiative. I think this makes a difference, as I’m not sure what to conclude for Monday.
For Friday, it seems to me that you have made a commitment to pay your workers for hours which the business is closed for snow. You clearly closed the business early for snow that afternoon; moving all the patients to the morning doesn’t negate the fact that the rescheduling was done solely because of snow. I’m guessing that in the spring, when the weather is nice, you don’t reschedule all your patients to come in before lunch so the whole office can get away and enjoy some 70 degree weather… without you paying them for that time? No, I’m sure you don’t. Wisely or not, you made a policy to pay them for their time when the office is closed for snow; you closed several hours early for snow, you can’t then backtrack on that and say, “Well, we got our work done early so it doesn’t count.”
What type of vehicle do you have, and what type of vehicles do they have? If you had no problem getting in because you have, say, a Jeep with snow tires, but they both drive regular cars with regular tires and low clearance, it’s unreasonable to expect them to come in even if you could make it to the office.