Treat your employees like shit and all you will get is shitty employees in return.
There is a business case to be made for employers to recruit and retain good employees, especially in the areas of medical can health care. If you like your folks, if they follow policy and provide good quality and safe care, reward them.
If you company is just a cash-cow squeezing an extra buck out of employees and customers alike, then you won’t be in business long anyway so screw them while you can.
So how you handle this is your call dependent on your long-term goals.
Based on the comments here I think I definitely will pay for Friday afternoon and Monday morning but let them use PTO for Monday afternoon. My rationale is that I told them that the decision would be made Monday morning and I clearly told them early Monday morning that we would open at two. We did not change the schedule on Monday afternoon and the office was operating as usual (albeit with only me as staff and only one patient). I think that the policy is clear that if we are open and working then the snow day does not apply.
I see some here that say that I told the staff we would be closed then decided to show up but I did make it clear that the decision would be made early Monday morning, I made a decision to open for the afternoon at that time, and it was conveyed to the staff early that morning. I don’t think I was being inconsistent, since I made the decision when I said I would and I stuck to the plan. They had seven hours advance notice that we would be open at two so I don’t see how you could say they were blindsided.
I think that’s a good call. If I were one of your employees I could live with that.
You probably could have saved a lot of grief in this thread if you had just given us the “actual written policy” from post #53 rather than what was stated in the OP, which was for many, including myself, confusing and unclear.
So what’s one more: don’t show up but do get paid.
I think you do need a clearer policy. Remember, employees aren’t as invested in getting results as you, the employer, are. I’d say either you work and get paid and then don’t whine about caller ID blocking, or don’t work and don’t get paid. Especially as they’d probably work additional hours to make up for the cancelations/no shows.
As for the current situation: I’m inclined to give them half a day and let them make up the remaining hours ASAP even if you don’t actually have the work to fill those hours.
Actually, the rules only determine who can be treated as exempt. Nothing prohibits an employer from treating an employee as non-exempt even if the job duties qualify as exempt. You can pay anyone an hourly rate for exactly the hours they work and time-and-a half for overtime , and you can also leave the choice up to them.
I think there’s a legal maxim that when a contract is ambiguous, it favors the party who didn’t write it, so the fact that you were unclear should benefit your employees, at least if you want to look at it from that perspective.
But everyone who has said that you need to rewrite your snow day policy is correct. Maybe you should consult an attorney or some sort of business planner who may have a template for this sort of thing. What they will charge you will probably be more than compensated by the money you save the first time you don’t pay for a snow day because everything was clear.
I see you clarified this later, but it wasn;'t clear in the OP.
I think your solution to pay for Friday afternoon and Monday morning is fair. Can you document that you told them you would be there at two? I guess since one patient came in you did.
Would you have had a full afternoon’s work for them with just one patient coming in? I guess there’s lots of paperwork to do, and maybe they do light cleaning, I don’t have any idea, or at least replenishing supplies and inventory, calling patients to remind them of appointments, etc., but did you discuss this with them? Maybe they thought you were just going in long enough to see the one patient. Part of your new policy should probably be documenting exactly what you said, and having a sort of script, ie, “We will be open from n:00 to the usual closing time, and you will be expected to perform all usual duties, [in addition to ______ because there are fewer patients]. I will be there the whole time. You will be paid for the entire day as long as you are there by n:00.”
Half day for Friday and half day for Monday is the right answer based on the policy and facts as presented.
However, if I worked for you and you made that decision with the conditions in DC that Monday, I’d have no loyalty to you and start looking for another job. In the DC market, that isn’t an idle threat. How hard is it going to be to replace these with equivalent quality?
My boss does this now and it’s the absolute worst. Don’t do it. All it does is create stress in the employees where they wonder if you’re feeling “nice” today or not, sitting at home thinking about if something is REALLY bad enough to warrant staying home and MAYBE not getting paid, and what if last week I had done X instead of Y, maybe I’d get my day’s pay and what if I hadn’t had that dentist’s appointment the week before, NOW he definitely won’t because he’ll gripe about it being “too often” and…
Yeah, no. Just write a clear and consistent policy and don’t leave paying people up to whether you’re in a good mood or not.
Question - how is it possible to write a clear and consistent policy about closing due to weather and other emergencies that isn’t dependent on *someone’s *discretion ? I’m serious - even if you pick something like “we close when X closes” ( X can be the schools or the Fed, state or local government offices) , you’re still leaving it to the discretion of whoever decides to close those institutions and the employees will be wondering if it’s bad enough to stay home and maybe not get paid until that person makes a decision.
You seem to be talking about a situation where you don’t find out whether you’ll be paid until after you’ve taken the day off (which actually does happen to me* ) , but that isn’t a necessary part of closing being at the owner’s discretion. If the owner calls the employees at 7 am and says 'we’re opening at 2" , it’s pretty clear the office is opening at 2 and I wouldn’t be wondering about whether I’d get paid if I didn’t show up- I would just assume I wouldn’t .
I work for a state government, and the offices rarely close due to weather or anything else. Typically, what happens is they remain open,people who can get in come to work and people who can’t get in use their leave time.The various affected agencies later seek permission to excuse absences and restore leave used on those days.
Very common, especially in healthcare. A lot of skilled jobs in healthcare are paid hourly. If a healthcare employer paid hourly and offered no PTO, you would have extreme difficulty attracting the type of people you want to hire. All the hourly workers in healthcare that I know get PTO–including me.
Play the long game. Keep your humans happy. Pay 'em for Friday afternoon & Monday. You’ll spend more than that recruiting & training their replacements.
I think the OP resolved this well, but I also agree with this.
Encouraging anyone to be out on the roads was not only disrespectful of your employee’s and patient’s lives, but it’s reckless with the lives of the snow removal crews and the people who absolutely have to be out there. 55 people were killed in weather related accidents, the majority of which were killed on the roads.
If there is any way at all to do it, during a historic storm like this people need to stay home, let the snow removal crews do their job, and wait until the roads are clear to get back to business. Trying to go out just puts people in danger and makes the snow removal process even longer.
Unplowed (and unsanded/unsalted) streets were a big problem across the area; trying to drive in those circumstances is dangerous. So not only were side streets unplowed and undriveable, the Feds were also closed. A full snow day for Monday is reasonable. Employee safety is pretty important.
Also, not paying the two employees for a Monday snow day is just petty, and that is not a good way to retain good employees.
I would also be looking for another position if the boss’s attitude implied that employees should put themselves in danger to get to work, and if that was followed by the pettiness of not giving a whole snow day when the area was still having widespread problems because of the snow.
ETA: The OP needs to re-write the snow day policy after consulting with an attorney about the whole employee safety while driving in unsafe conditions situation.
++ I would greatly simplify your policy. If an hourly employee doesn’t show up for work - whether you call a snow day or they decide to not drive in - they don’t get paid. You pay them to show up for work and work, not to sit at home. I’m astounded that a private employer would pay someone to stay at home and not work.
If they are able and want to do some work from home on a called snow day, then that is really a separate issue. You should clarify what work can be done from home, and under what circumstances.
Do you really go by the federal government’s snow policy? In my experience, the government is far too lenient and lets workers slack. After all, it’s the taxpayers’ money.
The federal government’s snow policy isn’t about being “lenient,” it’s about keeping the roads clear for everyone else. You may be familiar with the legendary beltway traffic. The government is the single largest employer in the NCR and if they cancel work, that means that the roads are clear for emergency workers to actually get to their jobs.
Yes, their threshold for shutting down is pretty low, but so is your average DC driver’s ability to operate a vehicle when there’s even a hint of moisture on the ground.
I don’t disagree with anything you wrote, but I still don’t see that as justification for paying an employee to not work. It just seems nuts to me. I do understand the “keep the good employees happy” argument, but at what cost to the business? What if employee A lives one mile away just off a thoroughfare and owns a Subaru and employee B lives 20 miles away on a dirt road with a steep driveway? Do they get to make their own decision about when it’s safe or convenient to come in?
The OP needs to really thing about this issue and come up with a firm policy that is clearly communicated. And I stick with my opinion that using the federal government’s liberal leave policy is nuts for a private business.
