Salaried worker, please share the details of your leave accounting.

April 29, 2013 12:09 PM

Are you allowed to use a couple hours sick time, when you have a doctor's appointment? Can you take the afternoon off (charging a couple hours vacation?)

I've been a government contractor most of my career. In the mid-90s, the company I was working for instituted a new policy they called "Full Time Accounting" which meant in essence you could only take full days of vacation or sick leave (IE for any given day, you can only charge 8 hours of leave). I work for a different company now, but they have the same policy, in fact the issue came up in a rather contentious meeting the other day. At this meeting, the manager said that if you go home sick in the middle of a day, just charge regular time for that day, but if you must leave for a doctor appointment, that time must be made up. (This sounds wrong but it's not the issue here.) We were also treated to another serving of the usual crap salaried workers hear about "no comp time" (when forced to work overtime).

My question is, for any given work-day, are you allowed to charge a couple hours sick leave and the balance regular time at your job? I'm especially interested to hear from actual civil servants, and from salaried business people who aren't government contractors.

posted by Rash to Work & Money (47 answers total)

I'm salaried, but timekeeping here is measured in hours. I've committed to 80 hours per pay period (2 weeks, so about 40 hours/week), and can use any combination of worked hours, PTO, and sick to cover those hours.
posted by xingcat at 12:18 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm salaried. All of my timesheet is on an hourly basis; I regularly split days between normal charge codes and paid time off, when I have doctor's appointments, go home sick, etc. (I happen to be on a government contract, but this policy is the same throughout my company, which is overwhelmingly contracted by other large businesses.)
posted by Tomorrowful at 12:19 PM on April 29, 2013

This is going to vary wildly, because every state has slightly different labor laws and every company has different policies.

Where I work, salaried people are paid for the entire week if we work any part of the week. We don't have sick time at all; whether we're sick for an entire day or need to go to the doctor for a couple of hours, we just get paid normally. I am fortunate to be salaried, because this is not true for those who are paid hourly.
posted by something something at 12:19 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm a "salaried businessperson". We don't take sick leave if it's just going to be that we have to leave for a few hours or leave a few hours early, we just make it up later in the week (or really, just make sure all the work gets done that week). We would definitely be allowed to charge it in as little as 1-hour increments, if we wanted.
posted by brainmouse at 12:19 PM on April 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

Salaried business person, not a gov-con worker. I can use my vacation leave in quarter hour increments, and I don't have "sick time". If I'm sick, I stay home, I get paid, there's no cap on it. For my own doctor's appointments, I use the same "sick time" construct. For caring for family members, I get 24 hours a calendar year, separate from vacation time, which is earmarked as "family care leave". I can use that leave in the same quarter hour increments as my vacation time.
posted by ersatzkat at 12:19 PM on April 29, 2013

Sometimes.

When I worked for a larger company, you could take days in half-day blocks. Depending on the manager, you could take an hour here or there and make it up later.

When I went to a smaller company, they preferred half and full days, but were okay with occasional breakups (and maintained a heck of a spreadsheet). At one point, I had to spend 8 hours a month taking my kids to therapy, and just "took" one PTO day at the start of each month and left an hour early those 8 days for a summer.

Now I'm at a place that is officially an 8 hour day, though unofficially can break it in to two half days. If you need to flex around for dr appts, come in early, stay late. Overtime is occasionally approved for specific projects but you have to track your hours and have specific permission to do only specific work.

If you go home sick you can take half a pto or full pto day and or work from home (if physically icky but not passed out on 'quil) and / or work out something if you need to with your manager to meet the general understanding of 40 hours during the work hour range.
posted by tilde at 12:20 PM on April 29, 2013

Public librarian here, so civil-servant-ish (but my library is an independent non-profit, not a city agency, strictly speaking.)

The practice at my workplace is that we can take an hour or few hours off during the day, and mark it as Sick Leave or Annual Leave.
posted by Jeanne at 12:20 PM on April 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

At multiple places where I've been a salaried worker, I could always work late or come in early if I was just missing an hour or so for an appointment, no vacation or PTO or sick leave required.
posted by jaguar at 12:20 PM on April 29, 2013 [3 favorites]

At my previous job, I could take any increment of personal leave (we rolled sick/vacation into one pool) that I wanted. That was official policy - in actuality, no one obsessed that much about punching the clock. If you stayed more of the day than not, then just call it a full day. That job did not pay very well (and was grant-funded so there was not much flexibility to pay more), and one of the ways they tried to counterbalance that was by being generous with leave beyond the official leave policy.

Where I am now, official policy is leave can be half-day or full-day increments. You can't just take off two hours, you have to take four. In practice, again, in my department no one wants to be breathing down anyone else's neck that closely. We're all grownups and have better things to do. The other day I left two hours early. I also did some extra work on the weekend. Probably it about balances out my two hours but no one's counting, including me. I don't have a timesheet per se, but every few months we turn in a list of personal days taken. That day I left early won't be on the list; I probably made it up, and if not, my boss and I are both confident there are other weeks that I have worked extra that more than balance it out.
posted by Stacey at 12:21 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm a government contractor, previously worked as a civil servant, and before that was in the private sector. In the private sector, they would have looked at you funny for proposing this. The very idea of using "2 hours of sick leave" would have been seen as crazy (for doctor's appointments, I would duck out for a couple of hours and make up the time later). As a government contractor and civil service employee, this was all considered normal: vacation days and sick leave were accumulated in terms of "hours per pay period", and you could spend them hourly, if you so chose.
posted by deanc at 12:21 PM on April 29, 2013 [2 favorites]

Salaried here. We have to take our PTO in four-hour units, but we're allowed to head to the doctor/therapy/whatever without taking PTO. Some people like to work to make up those hours, but we don't have to.
posted by punchtothehead at 12:22 PM on April 29, 2013

Also a government contractor here.

My company allows sick time usage in half hour increments. Vacation must be taken in half day (4 hour) minimum blocks, though.

Comp time policies vary, for instance I don't get comp time but I do get paid straight time for hours over 40. It requires management approval, but it is pretty clear: if it has to be done now it will get approved, if it can wait I wouldn't be asking for overtime.

Those policies your manager is quoting sound strange, but really it is whatever is written down. So ask to see the written policy if it sounds weird.
posted by BeeDo at 12:23 PM on April 29, 2013

Oh, right. Salaried, private industry, 18 days PTO for vacation or sick time or both, plus a couple of "flexible" days we're supposed to use for celebrating non-company holiday holidays, such as Yom Kippur or Beltane or Diwali or your kids' birthday (really).
posted by tilde at 12:24 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm a salaried business person in the legal department of a large company. Prior to this I worked as an associate at a large multinational firm. Before that, I worked at a non-profit.

No one has ever cared where I am at any given hour of the day, and I come and go as I please. If I have a doctor's appointment or a car appointment, or just want to sit outside for a while, I just do it, and finish my work by my deadlines, and literally no one cares. I have a Blackberry, so I keep in touch when I'm not in the office. The flip side is that I am more or less always reachable--so, for instance, I did some work over the weekend. If a big project comes in, I may be here late. This was more the case at the law firm, but applies now, too.

My wife works at a non-profit and can take sick days or time off only in half-day chunks, but the rule is laxly applied.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 12:25 PM on April 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm salaried. I work overtime during the last days of the month, but I don't get paid for that.

If I want to take a few hours off, I can use my PTO in hourly increments.

A couple of weeks ago, I wanted the afternoon off, so I used 4 hours of PTO.

But for something of shorter duration, that's no big deal.

For example, I have a dentist appointment at 9 on Wednesday. I expect to be at work by 9:45. So I'll be 1.25 hours late. I'm not dealing with PTO for that. That's an hour or so between friends.


That's how it works here in my neck of the woods.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:26 PM on April 29, 2013

I am a federal employee.

I can take sick leave in any increments, I've never tried less than an hour, but possibly I could take sick leave down to fractions of an hour and put in normal salaried time for the rest.

At my job site it's also permissable to just work late to make for missing a few hours instead of taking sick leave.
posted by pseudonick at 12:27 PM on April 29, 2013

State employee at a university. I can take time off down to 15 minute blocks off (but usually just make up lost time up to about an hour).
posted by deezil at 12:32 PM on April 29, 2013

Federal worker here. Sick and vacation time are in 15-minute increments. Salaried, but we sign in and out every day. I sometimes take 15 or 30 minutes off on a Friday afternoon, and frequently take, say, 2.5 hours for a dental appointment, or leave an hour early to have dinner with my daughter. Most of my coworkers do the same. We're allowed to come in early or stay late, but that's not at all required. All of this is recorded, and happily accommodated by management (I know, because I've been management)--hours are flexible, but must be accounted for down to the quarter hour.
posted by MrMoonPie at 12:38 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm a city employee in a library, salaried. We can take leave in, I believe, as little as 1/4 hour increments. Usually, though, if you have to leave a little early, you'd just adjust your schedule. The same with working more than 40 hours a week. If I stay late one day, I'd go home early the next, or whatever.
posted by itsamermaid at 12:38 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm a salaried professional in the private sector, but I have also worked in federal gov and non-profit. I have always been allowed to take an hour or two of PTO or sick leave for things like doctor's appointments or on days when I start to feel sick halfway through the day. However, most of the time I choose to make up the hours later in the week rather than take PTO, because I don't want to get behind in my work, nor do I want to waste my time off with such things.
posted by joan_holloway at 12:43 PM on April 29, 2013

The whole point of being salaried is that you are not paid per hour — sometimes you work 50-hour weeks, sometimes you take an hour to go to the doctor and either way your salary is the same. And that is how it has always worked wherever I have been employed. Sick days could be taken in half-day increments if you came in and then started feeling bad, but in practice it was usually overlooked. Then again, I am an incurable insubordinate, so I only work places that care more about projects done than butt-in-chair time.
posted by dame at 12:43 PM on April 29, 2013

State employee, hourly. I can take any time off in 15 minute increments. Sick time can be used for any sort of medical-type thing.

Salaried state employees can generally claim they worked a full day as long as they actually worked two hours of it. This seems nice, but salaried employees also usually work an incredible amount of unpaid overtime that makes up for it.
posted by elsietheeel at 12:49 PM on April 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

As a government contractor and civil service employee, this was all considered normal: vacation days and sick leave were accumulated in terms of "hours per pay period", and you could spend them hourly, if you so chose.

This is the basic scheme for the R&D, government-contracting firm that I work for. Government contracting may be different than other jobs because the government often requires even salaried workers to record their time down to the half-hour, so it may be fraudulent for someone who worked 7 hours in a day to only record that they worked 4. There is also comp time, both formal and informal, but a lot of that is left up to the discretion of managers. Basically the underlying theory at my company is that our payroll system requires every salaried employee to input some combination of 40 hours a week, and it prefers everyone to input 5 eight hour days per week. Anything beyond that (sick leave vs. comp time) is negotiated with your manager.
posted by muddgirl at 12:52 PM on April 29, 2013

My husband is paid hourly as a contractor for a tech company (so the contracting company technically pays him but the company he works for agreed to the terms and pays the contracting company.)

He got 17 PTO days for the rest of his contract (nearly a year, as he got promoted.) He files a timecard weekly and files how many hours PTO or how many hours he worked. His overtime is his standard pay, so they call it a "salary plus" position I guess.

So he can file partial days as paid time off. However if he has overtime that week and hits 40 hours, he doesn't file for any paid time off for that week if he did take a few hours off for an appointment or something.

So yes, he can take partial days, or even choose to not file any paid time off if he had overtime that week if he took a half-day or something. He can only work additional hours if there is actual work to do. He can't just "make up" time if there is nothing to do, and technically he needs a go-ahed from a boss, unless he gets called specifically to fix something. He also gets compensated at the end of his contract for any unused paid time off, as a bonus.
posted by Crystalinne at 12:58 PM on April 29, 2013

I work in payroll and husband is salaried. Any time taken less than a half day does not need to be coded as an absence. All absences must be coded in 4-hr intervals. If he is taking sick time, it is coded as sick time and does not draw from his PTO bucket.
posted by agress at 1:12 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm salaried in California. I'm scheduled for a regular 40 hour week. If I want to take vacation time, I can take it in hour-long increments. Typically a half day. Anything like leaving an hour early or coming in an hour late, etc isn't a big deal and doesn't get a "time off" form or anything. You're just expected to make up the work.

For doctor's appointments, again, you just take the time and make it up. So tomorrow I need to leave for the dentist at 2:30 instead of my usual 5pm. I'll make that time up at some point this week generally (though probably not exactly 2.5 hours).

If you're sick and you call in, then it's a day off. If you end up coming in at all - for anything like an hour - you're considered to have worked that day. Which used to lead to people dragging themselves in to cough dramatically for an hour and then go home. Dumb. We don't really do that much anymore. We don't have a "work at home" option, but in some cases I've done that and if I put in half a day I call it a work day.
posted by marylynn at 1:33 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm salary plus commission and I work 50 hours in the average week. When I need a couple of hours for a doctor's appointment nobody cares and it doesn't get recorded anywhere.
posted by COD at 1:36 PM on April 29, 2013

It's depended on where I work. Usually no one cares if you're taking a couple hours or leaving early for a doctor's appointment (but custom/etiquette dictates you don't vanish for the day without good reason when you go to the doctor for a checkup). However, I have had jobs where they wanted to be hardcore about it, so I was very hardcore. If you're making me take a half or full day off, then I am taking every hour of that off, not coming back.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 1:42 PM on April 29, 2013

At my state agency we are salaried but still have to report our time in hours. In your scenario, I would mark that as 2 hours sick leave and 2 hours either comp time or vacation.
posted by lakeroon at 1:59 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm salaried but enter my time hourly. My answer is virtually the same as xingcat's with one difference: if we need to take UNpaid time off, it has to be used in 8-hour increments (i.e., it can't be used for a partial day). Otherwise yes, I can use one hour sick time for a doctor's appointment, two hours vacation, etc.
posted by Eicats at 2:00 PM on April 29, 2013

Salaried, work for a poor southern state at a state university. If I take the afternoon off to go to a medical appointment or to go home sick, I take as many sick hours as I missed. I only fill out an online time sheet if I take sick or other time off. Last pay period I used 1.5 hours of sick time- I left 1.5 hours early one day to go home and sleep. This system seems pretty reasonable to me.
posted by mareli at 2:09 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm a teacher. We can absolutely take a half-day for sick, personal, bereavement, whatever, as long as we have it in our bank of days. The sub just gets called for half a day.

If you have a doctor's appointment for less than half a day, you would still call the sub for a half day and you are totally allowed to take the whole half-day off.
posted by rossination at 2:54 PM on April 29, 2013

Government contractor in the salaried-but-enter-hourly boat. The limiting factor for me is that one of my time sheets only records down to half hour increments.
posted by anaelith at 3:53 PM on April 29, 2013

I'm a salaried (exempt) state employee. I'm either working or not working for the day. Working means I get paid, not working means PTO. The philosophy is that as a salaried worker you're paid to produce a result or outcome.

Leaving for an hour or two for a personal errand like a doctor visit is fine. It is expected that you will complete the appropriate amount of work for the week regardless. Our department has an informal policy that allows coming in late or leaving early occasionally with the understanding that we're all generally working more than 40 hours and what counts is the work getting done.
posted by jeoc at 4:40 PM on April 29, 2013

Salaried employee in Canada who is also a manager. Time is not consistently tracked among departments at my employer (a university), but the policy is that one is expected to put in X hours of work per week, not X/5 per day. Staff in departments that need to keep standard business hours are asked to schedule appointments around the beginning, end, or lunch times of day as much as possible. Generally people bank time ahead of or make it up after appointments and most managers don't have a problem with Rash -- having given a couple days' notice in advance -- coming in a little late or leaving a little early for any kind of appointment.
posted by thatdawnperson at 4:50 PM on April 29, 2013

Salaried management type here, and have worked as such in three different but similar companies. The policies on how we're paid for taking a part of a day off intentionally (scheduled in advance) have ranged from (1) taking paid leave for being away an hour or more, to (2) taking paid time off in increments no smaller than a half day, to (3) paying normal salary without charging an absence benefit, even if you were gone for the majority of the day. None of these three have handled going home sick any differently than going to the doctor for pay/benefits purposes, but that doesn't mean it's illegal to discriminate in this way.

U.S. salaried employees are not always exempt from overtime law (Fair Labor Standards Act), nor are exempt employees always salaried, but the conditions often coincide. The U.S. Department of Labor sees a problem with an exempt employee being required to take a couple of hours - or even a couple of days - as unpaid time. (Not the same as saying it can't be charged against a time off bank.)
posted by Snerd at 5:27 PM on April 29, 2013

Salaried flunky here. Our payroll guy calls it a push as long as you're there for about half the day, so there's need to account for leaving 2 hours early. Miss a day, though, and that comes out of your sick leave. It's a small company, and nobody's abusing the policy. No doubt the policy would change if there was any abuse, but there are not more than 15 salaried people on the payroll, so spotting a shirker wouldn't be difficult.

Plus there're some lovely interoffice feelings of mistrust, so everyone watches the watchmen.
posted by Sunburnt at 5:56 PM on April 29, 2013

Salaried professional (consultant). No one cares where I am, ever. As long as I meet my deadlines and attend the big meetings, everything's A-OK.

I truthfully do not know if I could cope with a job where people are on your ass about accounting for every hour. Lots of you guys are stronger than I am.
posted by downing street memo at 7:24 PM on April 29, 2013 [1 favorite]

> My question is, for any given work-day, are you allowed to charge a couple hours sick leave and the balance regular time at your job? I'm especially interested to hear from actual civil servants, and from salaried business people who aren't government contractors.

But...it doesn't matter what other salaried business people get. This is an issue that may be regulated by state laws to some extent, but is definitely regulated by contract (if applicable), company policy, and also company culture.

In my prior job, it was fine to take sick leave for doctor's appointments, but it would have been quite odd to take ALL of your vacation days, and certainly we didn't take off time for no reason just to burn through accumulated vacation days. In my current job, we are expected to only call out sick when we are actually ill, personally, for real, but the culture is that we take ALL the vacation days to which we're entitled, every year, on principle.
posted by desuetude at 10:39 PM on April 29, 2013

Salaried professional, nobody ever cares where I am or what I do as long as my deadlines are met, the team is supervised and the client happy. So I was free to get up at 4am to prepare a presentation for a meeting rhis am and I'm free to attend to some personal matters this lunch time.
posted by koahiatamadl at 11:06 PM on April 29, 2013

US Fed here. I have (almost) always been able to take an hour or even a fraction of an hour of sick time as needed. In one of my jobs I would take 15 minutes of sick time to ensure that I got to my appointments at 5:00, my normal quitting time.

The one exception was the awful year I spent with the US Postal Service. They required you to take a full day of sick leave even if you only needed to be out for one hour. At the same time management would send out emails urging workers to save their sick leave. I never understood that logic.
posted by Gringos Without Borders at 11:49 PM on April 29, 2013

Salaried editor at a nonprofit. I am supposed to take all sick, vacation, personal days in half or whole days. However, my workplace is reasonably flexible, so if you can stay late to make up a mid-day doctor's appointment, or take something home to work on while you wait for the cable guy, those short interruptions aren't really stressed over -- just watch your deadlines and so forth. Otherwise, I sometimes take the half day and then just use the extra couple of hours however I want -- leave early a couple of days, or whatever. You have to find out from your immediate manager whether this kind of creativity is acceptable.
posted by acm at 8:15 AM on April 30, 2013

I work for a large corporation, in a branch building with about 100 employees (almost all salaried). We can apply vacation hours to a day in any increment we like (but are discouraged from using half-hours, just round your 1.5-hour doctors appointment up to 2). As well as particular holidays on which the building is closed, we also get "floating holidays" (it's a common workaround for things like religious holidays and MLK day) but these are required to be taken as a full 8-hour-day absence. Individual managers preferences have set the "style" for my building, which is that although the company doesn't do comp time, and we don't keep track of overtime hours, managers are perfectly fine with us leaving for an hour or two during a day if we make it up during that same week by coming in early or staying late, but that's a tacit arrangement, there is no way to fill out the billable-time recording with anything other than 8 hours per day. (i.e. Say I go to the dentist for 2 hours on Wednesday. I can either write down 6 hours work and 2 hours vacation (not sick) for Wednesday, or 8 hours work on Wed, Thurs, and Fri but actually work 9 hours on Thurs. and Fri. Writing down 6,9,9 for those days is not an option.) I think employees who work in the other building have a different culture and are expected to take the 2 hours vacation.
posted by aimedwander at 10:40 AM on April 30, 2013

I'm in same boat as downing street memo except I'm not a consultant:
Salaried professional (consultant). No one cares where I am, ever. As long as I meet my deadlines and attend the big meetings, everything's A-OK.

I truthfully do not know if I could cope with a job where people are on your ass about accounting for every hour. Lots of you guys are stronger than I am.

I'm salaried, exempt, no time sheets or signing in needed. If I'm an hour late or need to leave an hour early for an appointment I let my boss know and it's fine. We all work late anyway so there's no need to make up for an hour or two.
posted by TravellingCari at 11:33 AM on April 30, 2013

oh and that's a non profit, quasi city agency
posted by TravellingCari at 11:34 AM on April 30, 2013

Salaried in TX.

We have to take 4 hour increments. If I have an appt that goes over my allotted lunch time, I make up the time later in the week or on the weekend. Last week I had two appts in one day and just took half a day PTO. I haven't even thought about taking sick time for a doctor appointment...
posted by getawaysticks at 6:28 AM on May 1, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks for the responses! No best answer since this turned out to be more like a survey. I thought my company's policy was more wide-spread.
posted by Rash at 2:44 PM on May 6, 2013