Time-off benefits include vacation, employee/family sick leave, national holidays, funeral leave etc;

A good time-off policy will include the following for each benefit type:

• Who is eligible for the benefit.

• Allowance Rules: How much time do they get?

• Use-Notification Requirements. Can they call five minutes before shift start time and take a Vacation day?

• Whether the time-off negatively affects the employee's attendance record.

• A description of the benefit and it's intended purpose. You would be surprised how many folks think of their sick time as "time-off I have earned."  If you do not tell them the basis for using such a benefit, you may be giving away perceived extra vacation days.

• See "Elvis and Priscilla"

For established companies who have maintained the same time-off packages year after year and have not changed the way benefits are earned or used within the last two years, we recommend including time-off benefits policies in the Employee Handbook. 

Until you have worked the bugs out of the policies created/written in your company, a separate "Time-Off Benefits Guide" will keep you from having to re-produce an entire employee handbook each year just because your Time-Off Policies section needed updated.  We recommend keeping these policies in a separate "Time-Off Benefits Guide" if:

• Your policies are consistently on the "drawing board."  You have changed at least one major time-off policy at least once per year.

• Employees are frequently finding loopholes that stump their supervisors.

• Your staff complains of grey areas in the administration of the policies.

• Around the holidays you hear your management staff use different language when explaining holiday pay; one manager uses "time and a half," another uses "double-time," you've heard "holiday pay plus regular pay," and you have even heard the term "triple-time" uttered amongst your crew.

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