There is no obligation under federal or state law to pay premium pay for holidays. Of course, you are obligated to pay overtime for any hours in excess of 40 hours in the workweek but premium pay is not statutorily required. Therefore, your decision to pay premium pay should largely be guided by your existing holiday pay policy, if one exists. If one doesn’t exist, realize that how you handle a particular situation may set precedence for future working holidays, so make your decision with that in mind.
Affinity HR Group is BSCAI's endorsed HR partner, providing HR support, recruiting and employee engagement services. For a link to our menu of services for BSCAI members, go to www.AffinityHRGroup.com/BSCAI
While Affinity does not have a specific performance management program to recommend, we will confess that we remain underwhelmed with the vast majority of them. Annual conversations are hardly sufficient to truly manage performance. Often times the goals change throughout the year but usually the performance goals don’t, meaning that employees are evaluated based on out-of-date criteria. And there is always the problem with recency errors – we forget about the accomplishments or failures early in the 12 month period and put added weight on the performance in the months and weeks leading up to the annual review.
Instead, we prefer quarterly goals that require ongoing feedback and communication.
Employers are allowed to send home employees who show up at work sick. Having said that, recognize there may be reasons why employees are showing up sick that might include:
Reassure employees that you want them to take time to recover, and that you will help to ensure their work gets done. Remind them that sick leave is offered so they can stay home when they are sick. And if they are worried about lost wages, try to identify ways for them to make up the time once they return to health.
Interviewing a potential employee is a critical piece of the recruiting process and, if handled correctly, it can be effective. If not, it can be worthless. And even worse, asking certain questions can be illegal. Here’s what we recommend:
While there is no federal requirement regarding employee rest breaks, many states do have laws governing workplace breaks and meal periods. To avoid violating specific state or municipal laws, you should reference the U.S. Department of Labor's website.
For those states that do not have specific laws governing meal periods, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA) states that if employers choose to provide employees with rest periods, they must be paid. In addition, if employers grant employees a meal break, they, too, must be paid, unless the break qualifies as a bona fide meal period. As always, when the state laws differ from the FLSA, the employer is required to comply with the standards that provide employees the greatest benefit.