Some issues just seem to come up again and again
By: Bill Zolis
One thing I’ve learned in working with owners and Human Resources managers in a great many different workplaces over the years is that it’s not easy managing HR.
HR has wide-ranging responsibilities that cut across all the different departments in an organization, and practically every issue involving people eventually ends up as an HR concern. Here are eight things that I hear about all the time.
- Vacation. Is a sick day or vacation day? When an employee takes a day off, especially if it was unscheduled, it’s important to clarify whether this was a sick day, a personal day or a vacation day. Each of those may be tracked separately and have different entitlements. Not clarifying and keeping track can lead to misunderstandings about how many sick days and how much vacation an employee has left.
– Carry-over. Many employers have policies about how much vacation earned in one year may be carried over to the following year. This can be a “use it or lose it” policy that avoids the pitfall of employees building up many weeks of vacation to the point where they can’t use it all in a reasonable time frame. One way to avoid problems is to send every employee a memo at the start of the year listing their vacation entitlement, any carry-over days they may have, and a reminder to use accrued vacation by a given date.
- Contractor or employee? There are many reasons why a workplace would use contractors to perform certain functions rather than hiring employees.
However, employment laws are fairly strict when it comes to defining the employment relationship, and it does happen that some people, whom the employer considered to be contractors, turned out to fit the legal definition of employees – meaning that they were entitled to employment benefits and subject to employment law. Also, the employer becomes liable to submitting Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance payments, withholding tax and so on.
To avoid any possible misunderstanding and to make sure that all the rules are being properly followed, an employer wishing to engage a contractor should do the following:
– Make sure you have a written agreement with the contractor that states clearly that he or she is a contractor and not entitled to employment benefits.
– Clarify that the contractor is responsible for his or her own taxes.
– Make sure the contractor can work off-site (even if temporary space is provided for use in the workplace).
– Make sure the contractor is responsible for his or her own tools, equipment and supplies.
- Overtime pay. Employees are generally entitled to extra pay for any hours they work beyond their regular hours. In Ontario, for example, most workers are entitled to time-and-a-half pay for any hours beyond 44 in a given week.
Where this gets tricky is, first of all, that many workers expect the overtime pay to kick in as soon as they work more than their regular hours. For most people, regular hours mean 40 hours per week, or perhaps 37.5. But the legally required overtime doesn’t kick in until they hit 44. Also, many employers use “averaging,” which basically means that if you work 45 hours one week and 40 in the second week of your pay period, it averages out to less than 44 hours per week and no overtime is required.
To avoid confusion, and possible disappointment of workers who believed they were entitled to overtime, it’s important to have clearly defined policies in your employee handbook and/or HR policies binder – and to make sure employees are familiar with the policies.
- Training. It is widely agreed that training is an important part of workplace culture and a key element of worker satisfaction and retention. But there are pitfalls, as well. Here are just a few of the questions that need to be answered.
– Is the training work-related or personal development related? Is it primarily a perk or is it part of the workplace development strategy?
– Is the training appropriate to the job or role of the employee requesting it? Will the training help the employee for a better job, do the work at a higher level or do a different job?
– Are there direct career implications for the employee once the training is successfully completed? For example, do they become eligible for promotion?
- Performance review. It often happens that the discipline or termination of an employee is made much more difficult because of past performance reviews that are either missing – because they were never completed – or misleadingly positive in their assessments. This can happen when supervisors conducting a review want to avoid conflict, or because they want to provide positive reinforcement – perhaps hoping that a positive review will result in improved performance.
The solution, I think, is for HR to provide training for all employees who will be expected to conduct performance reviews. This will not only explain the tools and format the organization uses but also stress the importance of being straightforward and factual in their reviews.
- Absenteeism. Issues of absenteeism can be very difficult to manage – it can often be a fine line between the rights of the employee and the needs of the workplace.
– Make sure there is a clear policy regarding the tracking and reporting of all absences, and whether they are for sick leave, personal days, vacation or other categories (such as unpaid time off).
– Second, it may become necessary to work with the employee to manage repeated requests for time off. If the organization’s policies regarding notification if the employee is not coming in to work, and acceptable explanations of time off are not forthcoming, termination becomes an option.
– One option available to employers, if absenteeism continues and short- or long-term disability do not apply, is to place the employee on unpaid leave unless and until the issues leading to excessive absenteeism are resolved.
- Late applications. It’s a simple enough issue, yet there are any number of ways this one can fall through the cracks and cause no end of complications. When a new hire becomes eligible to be signed up for benefits – usually after three months when they successfully complete their probationary period – the employer has 30 days to notify the benefits provider to get them automatically enrolled. After that 30-day period, the benefits provider may ask for medical evidence, and things like pre-existing conditions can come into play.
- 8. Documentation. Pretty much every communication that an employer has with employees regarding policies, performance and things like disciplinary action need to be thoroughly documented and filed. HR policies don’t just need to be written policies, you need to be able to show that they were shared with the employee. In an increasingly litigious world, even things like verbal warning or a sit-down meeting to discuss performance should be documented so that there is a clear trail of evidence.
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I really appreciate comments, ideas, suggestions or just observations about the blog or any other topics in benefits management. I always look forward to hearing from readers. If there’s anything you want to share, please email me at bill@penmorebenefits.com.
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