Unlock the Power of Digital Signature Lawfulness for Sick Leave Policy in India

How to eSign a document: digital signature lawfulness for Sick Leave Policy in India

for those that are on with us welcome and we are asking everyone to please mute yourselves we we tend to have a problem with that so again please meet yourselves Shannon I will be speaking chin and Jenkins attorney at toad whalum Standard Oil and I'm wondering it Adams leave for me to our network so we wanted to present an update today on paid sick leave most of you by now should have your paid sick leave policies and programs out however there was some emergency legislation that came out of the state of California in early July so we are we want to talk about what some of those changes are and try to answer your questions not sure if we'll be able to answer everyone's questions today because we know that that there are so many around this issue but hopefully we can get those answered and then assist you with any of your own policies or programs that you're presenting in your at your company so let's go through a couple of a welcome Shannon or say hello to you as well okay thank you good morning or three on okay so let's go through some of the changes the first one was on modification of record-keeping so the healthy the Healthy Families Act I'm there's a quite a long name to that but it's essentially two Healthy Families Act said that you had to maintain a record of hours worked and paid sick days accrued and used for the past three years however the amendment that just came on that came out in early July said that the employer is not obligated to inquire into or record the purposes for which the employee uses the paid leave or paid time off so while you record the hours paid worked and paid you're not required to say for what purpose they were necessarily used okay there was an expanded exemption for spur in a certain construction industry employees so the app provides an exemption for construction industry employees who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement that meets various requirements and it defined a construction employees as an employee rendering on-site work associated with construction the a B 304 that was the amendment that came out July eliminated the word on site as a requirement for somebody being in the construction industry there if I thereby expanding the exactions applicability so it's still it's still for construction industry employees who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement however okay as a reminder San Francisco and Oakland employees employers they have different policies that different from this paid sick leave policy they're actually stricter and respire more of you so if you are an employer in San Francisco or the City of Oakland or have employees working in the city of San Francisco for the city of oakland you need to know what the local ordinances ours for those cities okay and just one reminder again please if you are not muted please meet yourself okay sick leave grandfathered plans so if you were an employer already providing paid sick leave or paid time off to a class employees before january 1 2015 as a reminder the law went into effect in january 1 2015 however it was not effective till july first 2015 so this provision covers employees hired into the class after that the company continued with the existing tickly plan in other words the plan you have prior to 2015 if it satisfies the acts obligation of providing a pre-existing accrual on a regular basis in other words monthly every pay period etc the employee got no less than one day or eight hours of accrued to sick leave or paid time off within three months of employment of each calendar year or in a 12-month period the employee would accrue at least three days of 24 hours off within nine months of employment so in other words if you're sickly plan prior to 2000 January 1 2015 met the obligations of the Act you don't really have to make any changes okay so amounts and usage earnings of sick leave and an eligible employee earns one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours work and who is an eligible employee was a reminder it's pretty much anybody it's full time part time or even temporary employees as long as they work 30 hours in a year they get one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours work beginning july first or the employees first day of work whichever is later and for exempt employees it's determined we the idea is that they work a 40-hour workweek regardless of what they actually work just to the purposes of sick leave accrual employers can cap the sick leave employees can start meaning so several caps that you can put on that one you can say that employees may not use their accrued sick leave until they have completed 90 days of employment and although the employees can earn one hour sickly for every 30 hours worked you can limit their usage to 24 hours or three days per year if you're on an accrual basis the accrual basis requires that you allow a carryover and the carryover is up to six days max however you can still require that and have a rule that employees can only use three days a year so even though you have to allow to carry over you can tap usage at three days per year well some employers of asked why would I do that I mean that seems silly if I have a it's a cap of six days why have a cap if I can limit use it to three days per year and the idea of that is so that the employee is not necessarily without usage of any sick leave at any time so when the rollover occurs into the new year the employee would still have time even though they might not have been on the accrual in the new year to fully earn their three days okay so as I said your cap can be at 48 hours or six days per year and of course you you can always do more I mean I have employers who offer more than that and you can always do more you just cannot do less okay so as a reminder you can you which should put in your handbook or your policy what the sick leave increments would be for both exempt and non-exempt however they can't be more than two hours so if you had increments let's say for exempt or even non-exempt in a passive for hours or a half day 48 hours or full day you can no longer use those increments they have to be in one or two hour increments I usually suggest one hour increments it's much easier to understand and manage but even if you use two hour increments the idea behind that is you can replace time off in a day for each full amount of incremental time taken so in other words as an employee comes in or works two hours out of an 8-hour day you would replace that with six hours six hours of sick leave or 32 hour increments or six one-hour increments in other words each full amount that they are out of your incremental time is how much you would replace with their sick leave okay so you have three options when it comes to cool and carry over policies and and well employees can you crucially during their introductory period you can enforce that they can't use it till after they completed that introductory period and then they accrues sick leave a one hour for every one hour sickly for every 30 hours worked and your options are to accrue it that you provide them no less than 24 hours by the 120th day of employment or the 12-month period or you advance them three days on the start of their employment a calendar year or any other 12-month period and this is front loading essentially so if you front load it relieves you of any carryover requirement or the third option employers provide 24 hours and three days of particularly that's available to use by the 120 state of employment and each year thereafter the employee finishes his or first calendar year 12-month employment they get another 24 hours of paid sick leave so that's also another way of front loading it ok so again maximum accrual you have two options the first option is if you accrue it over a period of time then you have to roll it over unused sick leave at the end of the year rolls over to the following year up to a maximum of six days once is reach all further accruals will cease and then they start up again once the employees taking some time off and drop to below the maximum but remember with this even if they reach the maximum even they take some time off and they keep accruing again you can cap their usage at no more than three days per year or for lump sum methods in other words of you front-load you can say onions sickly does not roll over into the next calendar year anniversary year or whatever year you designated okay so as a reminder about what the permitted use of sick leave is if it employee needs to leave you need to allow it we're in the past we said we may require doctors know and if you don't provide a doctor's note we can withhold sick pay you can no longer do that you also can't cannot ping an employee or take any kind of disciplinary action because they did not provide a doctor's note or they didn't call in by a specified period of time the rule now is that they must that we can ask them to provide reasonable advance notice as long as it's foreseeable or as soon as it's practicable in other words you know if they said well I was getting ready to come to work and getting dressed and I was getting ready to get in the car and I just realized I just don't feel good enough to come in and I know it's only 30 minutes before the start of my shift from supposed to call in at 60 minutes you would have to accept that as as soon as practicable or reasonable advance notice the other thing is you know again you can't exceed the to our incremental use of paid sick leave okay one of the big changes which is a positive for employers originally in the end they act it was written that you had to do a 90 day look back to determine average total wages / average / hours worked to come out with a new average hourly rate for that employee and that 90-day look back and compass things like submissions piece rate any non discretionary bonuses etc so that was going to be quite challenging not only to figure it out for the calculation but for people who might pay out Commission's or piece rates or bonuses very expensive potential proposition that the amendment now is giving you the option of paying continuing to pay that way ie putting the 90 day look-back average hourly rate in place or just paying at the employees base pay at the time of events in other words if I make ten dollars an hour and I get commissions and piece rate of some sort you can either you can either pay me by looking back many days and adding up all monies earned in other words all my hourly rate plus all commissions earned dividing that by hours work to come out with a new average hourly rate of which you would pay me my sick leave or you can simply just pay me at ten dollars an hour my base rate of pay I think for most employers they're going to up for the second option and then as a reminder sick pay is not used when you calculate overtime or any other special forms of compensation so if I worked if I worked let's say 35 hours in a week none of which were over time and I also took eight hours of sick leave so my total pain by total hours including the sick pay was 43 hours in a week none of that that would necessarily be over time to sit in other words the sick pay doesn't get used for the calculation of overtime okay we're hearing some background noise again a simple reminder please if you are not muted please mute yourself we'll have an opportunity down the road for people to unmute and ask questions okay so as a reminder on notification so we talked about this is what I've done is I've taken a section out of our handbook to kind of talk about what you can and can't ask for notification and again we ask employees that as soon as it's foreseeable they provide notification that they they will be out sick we can tell employees it's their responsibility to personally call and speak to whomever you identify typically the supervisor in order to report their absence unless of course it's an emergency situation you can save voicemails not acceptable now as far as the doctor's note the employee will be asked to provide the company with a note from their position on the fourth consecutive day of absence due to illness so in other words we can ask for a doctor's note on day one day two a day three but if they don't provide it we cannot take adverse action against the employee or withhold sick pay as a result on the fourth day of absence or after either four days in a row or after exhausting three days in a calendar year we're no longer under the umbrella of the paid sick leave rules necessarily so now we can go back to how we what we're kind of used to and saying okay you've exhausted your sick leave we now will require any further absences to be to give us a doctor's note okay I'm again I'm asking everyone please meet yourself we're having some really bad feedback here from somebody who's not muted so please meet yourself thank you after three days of consecutive illness the company requires employees to provide a release from the doctor and in order to make sure they are able to return to work or if any modified work as needed our the restrictions necessary for restricted duty so remember you always have a right to ask for a return to work note in other words to make sure that that person is able to come back safely and do the job with or without an accommodation Oh to understand if there's any restrictions and make sure that if you can accommodate those restrictions under the person is not going to come back and get everyone else to get work okay 6a is not treated like vacation pay the company does not have to pay out any sick leave upon termination of employment however there is a rule under the Act that says that the employees rehired with one within one year the company must reinstate whatever previously accrued and onions sickly they had as of the date of separation so well it's not a payout if you rehire that employer within 12 months you would have to reinstate whatever basically they had okay notices to employees you were required on on or before the first of July to provide employees with a written notice on there I'm going to go to the second one that will come back to the first one so Labor Code section 28 10.5 notice this is a notice that came in to play over a year ago from employers non-exempt employees to identify actually and in this case will be for all employees so identify what their sickly portion is how the company is paying it and the new the new there was a revised form that came out January 1 2015 that updated the labor code form that included paid sick leave and you as an employer need to check the box for what kind of paid sick you are providing in the box and have everyone sign off on that if you are at using Labor Code section 28 10.5 not just for this but for any any information on there that you are required to notify employees about I would suggest that you call back and speak to either shannon at Treadway or myself at HR network because we need to we'll explain that to you it's a lot more than just a basically you're supposed to be using this at any time when you up when it is it encompasses information about the company company's address dba's your workers comp and then how you pay that employee as far as their rate of pay and and how often they're paid okay so that's Labor Code section 28 10 then also on the paycheck you are to required as part of their wage statements or itemized wage statement to provide them the amount of sick leave or PTO of your doing PQ instead of sick leave to let them know how much they have available to them so you should have been working by now with your payroll company all the payroll companies have been set up to properly track sick leave and set you up to identify that on each person's paycheck with what their cruel is what they've used and what they have remaining okay there was a poster about paid sick leave under the California law became you became effective January or 1 2015 so you should have that poster up with all your other legal posters there is potentially a civil penalty for a hundred dollars for each offense so if the labor board walks in and says show me your poster area and you don't have this poster up it's potentially a hundred dollars for each offense and i assume i'm not sure but shannon has each offense potentially mean each employee okay um I'm not sure Shannon are you with us all right we'll keep going ok notice requirements you again you're required to post the sickly poster it's called the healthy workplaces healthy families act of 2014 where it can be easily read now and you can go straight to the labor the california labor commissioners website and download it there and just if you haven't already printed also we have it available if you and we can email it to you you have to remember to show how many days of paid sick leave each employee has available either on their pay stub or a separate document issued the same day as the paycheck and you need to make sure you provide all the non exempt hourly employees with their labor code notice wage labor code section 28 points 28 10.5 notice Audriana yeah for your clients that are on pto multiply pto are you finding that that the payroll companies that you're working with or breaking out the sick leave separately from the pto on the pic honestly say i would say that i do not think they are and I'm I do is that required or is that suggested God is suggested it so people can understand what because that's how you track how much of your sick leave is utilized and I think it's suggested to break it out but I'm not sure how practicable that is we may want to have your payroll company speak to that or new laws seminars that we have coming up okay that sounds like a great idea alright so that's kind of an overview of the changes that occurred as I said we have gotten many many questions in our office for that we also and you know we've been helping our own clients with their policies and their handbook we kind of want to open it up now to questions that you may have so because I know there's been a lot out there so let's open it up any questions anyone has you this would be a time to unmute yourself if you have a question and go ahead and ask your question you can also type it in the chat box hytrin regard include 90 days of employment okay so cool if we screw front-load instead of a crew that that 90 days to apply actually under the changes to the law you can now do 100 you if you front load you can actually provide the three days paid sick leave at the hundred and twenty day employment let's go back to that real quick let me klein that did you have three options okay so your three options were to provide and thank you for that question has a great question Kevin if you don't mind now I'm going to ask you to meet yourself and then see if I answer your question so you can accrue it on an annual basis provided they have no less than 24 hours by the 120th day of employment you can accrue it over a 12-month period and provided that the that and you can say that we will this so number was in the second method your advanced three days or 24 hours that's advancing somebody the three days right up front but you can say they can't use it till they've been there for 90 days okay the other option is you can provide 24 hours or three days of paid sick leave that they can use under 120 a--the day of employment so instead of accruing over a period of time you can you can also brought and in the first year they have to wait till they're 120 days of employment as long as there's 24 hours or three days in their account on that 120th day to use so you kind of have three options um you know again front-loading three days at the front but say you can't use the top-tier 90 days front-loading a hundred hundred twenty-four hours or three days that they can use on 120th day or accruing and say you can't use till after 90 days as well okay thank you anyone else send me other questions Kadri not are you finding some employees or some employers we're using one policy more than the other okay that sounds like it was that Becca yes Huizenga that Becca from our team i would say i have not found it one more than the other i think it's a real mixed bag of accrual versus front load i think the challenge for some employers is the tracking and how much they want to track it's certainly more administrative lee challenging to track the accrual and do the carryover than it is the front load you know the pros and con of the pros and cons well the pros and cons are that that somebody has sick leave in december and uses all three days and it's a and then you front load on january one they have three days available again they use another three days could they end up being tick out stick six days in the two-month time period they could you know it's not something you have to worry about that because there's no payout upon term so that's not an issue so some people are just more comfortable with the accrual over a period of time and employees can use it as they earn it any other questions hi I'm Ryan this is you Sarah I do have one quoted to question the first one is we have teacher across and ing to the law it said prior through July 2015 and after july 2015 4 after july 2015 they have to have the 33 days whichever is the sick but at the same time it said that also on employee pay stub it you know it has to be you know the secrets apparently has to be shown so in this case the company who had pto a crawled with the sick and in a vacation we have to separate those entries in the pail on the payroll the general yes i think i understand so you have to hell and we didn't really get in a pto today again you if you had a if you had or have a pto program as long as it met the requirements of the Healthy Families Act the paid sick leave then you didn't have to necessarily change your pto program and but however it did require that you even if you use pto that you provide it on the paycheck so if you weren't providing it before you need to now and just as Shannon was saying earlier it's not required that you separate those three days out of your pto to be designated for sick on the paycheck it's only a suggestion you just want to make sure that if you have a pto program you meet all the requirements of page sickly in other words your pto would have to say three of these days of your pto are available for all the same reasons that you could use the paid sick leave that you accrue it and that you make sure that they earn at least one hour for every 30 hours worked and that you either our front loading or occurring most pto people most PTO is always accrued so it has to have the same role over requirements etc and you know of course the difference between PTO is in the paid sick leave is PTO is treated notification so anything left at the end of me anything left at the end of termination would have to be paid out did that answer your question my my you know the low seed the on the employees stuff taste of it should show the three sick the seeker separately so in this case since we do have with vacation the general term we call it PPO so it doesn't show to the employee pay stubs are they sick okay so what's really important and what you just said is words and semantics can play a big big role when it comes to HR so either you have a PTO program or you have a sick and vacation program sick and vacation would be separate and each have separate rules that have to be applied pto is considered a vacation program although within the rules of using and and collecting pto time you can use it for six so what's interesting is if you have a pto program you kind of have to apply both the sick and stick paid sick leave and vacation rules even though by labor standards it's considered a vacation program so the things like paying it out upon termination apply chenin anything you want to say about that i think what she's saying if i'm hearing correctly is that she has a vacation benefit as well as a separate sick leave benefit and at a minimum in that case the separate quickly benefit should be broken out and placed on the face of the paycheck stub when you are in a PPO program it's not necessary to separately break out sick leave but it is recommended or suggested especially if they're not going to be paying a portion of that out on separation in other words you're separately designating those three days for ordinary PPO those who don't pay everything out upon separation so there would be no need to separately track it or or you know account for it so yeah under the program that she's describing which is vacation and sick they should both be separately broken out on the face of the paycheck stubs thank you anyone else any other questions sorry I have a question regarding the employees being rehired with within the year a lot of times we have students that come back every summer and they work right around that 90-day period now that if it carries over the following year when they start and rehire do we have like do they stuff to wait the 90 days or do I have to allow them to have the sick leave right away interesting question I'm not sure we've had that one else before do you know the answer to that Shannon restate that question good she's asking if somebody's rehired so they have students who but this who are employees but they're rehired and they have carryover in the air they leave and then come back within the 12 months so they're sick leave is reinstated but can they reapply the 90 days of introductory period when they come back are they also actually off the payroll that is correct because they go back to school so I don't pay them anymore they just work in the summer I think in that case because Audrey and I have gone back and corazon recently on this 90-day introductory period and when it applies to current employees and when it doesn't if their current employees with no break in service i would say that there well if they're rehired within 12 months even if they're off the active payroll that a cruel gets reinstated I I think the more conservative path is to waive that 90-day continuous employment period I think you can make an argument that there has been a break in service and although the accrual is immediately available the usage shouldn't be permitted for another 90 days but if they've already worked 90 days within that 12-month period I think that would be a hard argument to make I think you're more conservative approach which would be the more employee friendly approach would be to for employees who are rehired within 12 months who have already worked the 90 days even though there's been a break in service to allow them to immediately begin using that and that benefit an interesting question it's actually not one that we that's been posed before and i will tell you bush in and i have read this basically law back in front several times even have sent some questions to the dl SE for clarification that is not specifically written out in the law so as i always tell our plan always best to take the most conservative approach until we get clarification and how do we often get clarification someone else gets sued and they become the test case and we never want to see any of our clients be the test case okay any other questions before we wrap up you okay so I just want to finish up here and let you know that we do have some more webinars and hot spots planned between now and the end of the year we already just you can mark your calendars for I believe it's january twentieth is that date correct genin Henry 20th we're going to be having our annual all and new workplace rules workplace rules and laws for 2016 I can't believe we're even talking about that already but so by learning the way what January 21 Audrey on okay January 21 and there'll be more coming out about this but along the way if there's any more changes to the paid sick leave low if anything of any pressing issues come up or any significant cases between now and then we will definitely throw together a hot spot to keep our clients and friends of both Treadway and an HR network informed okay I want to thank everyone for attending if you have any more questions please feel free to contact shannon directly or myself directly and and we'll talk to everyone soon have a good day