How to Write Good Time Off Policies for Vacation, Sick Time, Holidays, etc.

Your Company Time Off Policies

Writing Good Time Off Policies for Vacation, Sick Time, Holidays, etc.

Tips and considerations when writing your company policies for time-off benefits, including 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.

We've created an exercise that you can use the next time you meet with your supervision staff - it will test their knowledge of your attendance / absenteeism policy.  Do you they know what type of absences result in a negative ding on an employee's attendance record?  Go to the "Elvis and Priscilla" exercise to find out.

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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Links to all articles on this topic....

 

	Absenteeism
	Writing Time-Off Policies
	Employee Code of conduct
	Company Sexual Harassment Policy
	Test your staff on how well they know your Company Absenteeism Policy
	Don't reinvent the wheel; start with an HRIT employee handbook template

 

Other Topics ...   Employee Discipline & Correction Action   Setting Job Standards and Managing To Them

 

 

 

 

Employee Handbook Templates   Our most popular product, a downloadable and customizable Employee Handbook, is in use by thousands of satisfied business owners ranging in size from 2 to 200+ employees!    Our Employee Handbooks can be purchased here on our website and downloaded immediately.

 

 

 

 

 

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