Enhance eSignature Legitimateness for Sick Leave Policy in Mexico

How to eSign a document: e-signature legitimateness for Sick Leave Policy in Mexico

welcome everyone thank you for joining us for the webcast navigating paid sick leave laws sponsored by EPA before we begin I would like to remind you that the smoke has been pre-approved by HR certification credits one HR CI and term recertification credit and e-learning credit please be sure to attend the complete webcast to receive your credits you will receive an email from HR calm within one to two business days which will include the certification credit information questions may be submitted any time during the webcast by typing the question in the ask a question text field and clicking submit the orange button located on your screen and I will now turn over to today's presenter Michelle inter Smith thanks Kathy hello everyone again my name is Michelle lanter Smith I'm from ipe systems I'd like to welcome all of you to our session today navigating paid sick leave loss today I have with me Tracy billows and we are just really thrilled to have her with us welcome Tracy thank you Tracy is a partner in the Chicago office of seyfarth shaw seyfarth is partner of EPA's we've worked together in the last three years presenting a client series and is talking about issues such as the one today on sick leave department of labor laws and Affordable Care Act and so on and so on so we're thrilled to have this partnership with cipher sha they have provided our clients with much needed information so again thank you to your firm Tracy for again being with us today I like to tell the folks on the line a little bit about Tracy Tracy at seyfarth provides extensive advice and counseling to clients on a wide array of human research topics and issues including policy development and review auditing the HR functions leave an absence management EEO compliance reductions and forces employee relations and the list goes on and on she really / brings a unique perspective to her clients prior to her legal career she was a human resource executive in the corporate community wow you don't see that very often so a great great skill and talent being brought forward here with first-hand knowledge of you know the challenges that clients face tracy is able to advise them in areas of labor and employment law including employment policies and employee handbooks training programs sick leave and many other issues so again thank you tracy for joining us if i may just take a minute here quickly to go through our agenda for today i'm going to just spend about one minute giving you a brief overview of ipe and then we're going to turn it right over to Tracy because I know everyone's on the line to hear Tracy speak about what's out there today unpaid sick leaves and what she might think is coming so she's going to overview paid sick leave laws out there and select some of the paid sick leave that laws that are in different cities around our nation talk about some things you need to think about and then the outlook going forward so just a little bit about ipe UK has been in the human capital management technology space since 2001 were we're headquartered here in Chicago Illinois and we've always been about developing SAS based solutions and services for companies that have employer employees spread across a lot of locations we call that a distributed workforce however it happens in most hourly workforces so that's really what we focus on is enterprises that have large hourly workforces where you really start to get some complicated issues and tracking people paying people and staying in compliance this type of work force is can be very hard to keep up with laws such as the one we're talking today can be key part to track stay in touch with department of labor laws and things like that but this type of Enterprise this is what we know and the companies we love to serve since our inception our priorities have always been focused on providing software that's smarter and easy for these type of folks to use because we do know that you don't have a lot of usually resource to handle that so that's why some of the largest firms that you've seen there in the business service industry that are up here on your screen right here we are proud to call as clients today so what makes us different in providing a full human capital management solution and we do provide a full solution from all the way from applicant tracking through HR onboarding payroll time and attendance and performance management is that at the heart of our solution we have a very strong hourly workforce workforce management time and attendance solution that it really allows our clients to get at the heart of controlling costs and being in compliant and then of course we provide many changes across the whole platform and from onboarding to paying people and getting their taxes done right and being able to track things like sick leave things that you need to be able to track and a lot of the issues that Tracy is going to talk about today we offer our customers 24 7 365 days to support which is really premium support for all of our clients every single client gets it and it's what really clients say they love about us and because of that we boast a ninety-nine percent customer retention rate so that's a little bit about e tail and but I'd like to turn it over to Tracy now and again everyone please enjoy the presentation Tracy thank you thank you very much everyone for having me I'm thrilled to be presenting with all of you today it's great to be here unfortunately I know the subject is not a favorite in the sense that while everybody wants to hear about this subject I think we all wish some of these paid sick leave issues would go away before I get in to the presentation itself just wanted to go through my brief disclaimer here the content of this presentation should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances these materials are intended for general information purposes only and you are urged to consult a lawyer concerning your own situation and any specific legal questions you may have so want to start by giving you an overview of the paid sick leave laws that are out there and it is quite the overview as I'm sure all of you know who have been keeping up with the trends with respect to paid sick leave you know current compliance with paid sick leave ordinances and this is everything from municipalities counties States and of course the executive order which we will talk about compliance has always been complex and every day it seems to get more and more complex just briefly at the federal level we have the executive order 13 706 this provides paid sick leave for employees of certain federal contractors we'll talk a little bit more about that executive order down the road here as we proceed through the webinar but understand it is currently the only federal mandate with respect to paid sick leave out there there are five states right now that on a state level provide paid sick lyric wireman for employers within their states that would be California Massachusetts Connecticut Oregon and vermont for municipality standpoint I already have one to add to this within since then we've submitted these slides we have one more ordinance that came out last week we're actually at 32 municipalities as of today Cook County here in Illinois passed a paid sick leave ordinance last week that's 32 different municipalities that are out there that are implicating employers in this area the oldest one being San Francisco San Francisco and Seattle are two of the older municipalities in terms of having their laws in place they have been around three ounces before 2014 but we've just seen a tremendous surge in possible paid sick leave legislation as well as past paid sick leave laws going into effect with respect to also just briefly on the federal front I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that you know for a number of years now in Congress at the federal level the Healthy Families Act has been introduced it is a federal law that would require employees of employers of at least 15 employees to accrue paid sick leave up to 56 hours per calendar year the bill that was people that was promulgated never made it past committee and it has been reintroduced on multiple occasions but to date still has not been passed at the federal level which is why I say the executive order is the only thing in existence at this point time but it is something the employers should be aware of so given the myriad of ways that state and local laws differ employers need to look to establish policies and procedures that are sufficiently broad to ensure maximum legal compliance so the first question when assessing tapes degree the issues is which employers are covered and unfortunately which employers are covered varies from law to law some laws talk about the number of employees in the employers entire workforce some laws talk about the number of employees in the employers workforce in that particular jurisdiction and you can see we have some examples up here for you the next question when assessing paid sick leave issues is ultimately employee eligibility under these laws in terms of their receipt of and their rights to pay sickly oftentimes it's based on a certain number of hours worked in a certain time period and you can see here for example as 80 hours per year in New York City it's 30 days per year in the state of California etc etc again there is no consistent approach in determining which employees are covered I also want to point out that in many cases the employee coverage is far broader than existing policies and here's what I mean by that many of these laws require a all employees be covered under a paid sick leave policy that means full-time part-time seasonal employees interns temps that you put on your payroll nap taps from other agencies although be where some of these laws do talk about joint employment situations with contractors and with temporary and staffing agencies the third question when assessing paid sick leave issues that needs to be addressed by employers are the pace to leave accrual crap and again there is no one-size-fits-all here they vary by jurisdiction to jurisdiction generally speaking there's a certain amount per year meaning an annual cap that is most common some of the laws though have what's called a certain amount amount at any given point time and these laws are what's called point in time of quarrel craft both annual end point and time accrual cast can also appear in some of these laws Minneapolis is a prime example they're one of the newer paid sick leave laws that are out there and in Minneapolis you have both an annual cap and a point I'm a coral cat the other issue that comes into play with respect to this accrual is whether you're using days versus hours certain laws define the amount of tape simply to be provided in days whereas others defined it in hours on this can make a difference for employees who work more or less than eight hours per day in terms of calculating what overall basically they would be entitled to another issue that comes up with respect to these basically laws of course the accrual rate generally speaking most are one hour of paid sick leave is accrued for every 30 hours worked some are one for every 40 hours worked and again though there is some variations here with respect to accrual rate additionally there are variations of the laws with respect to the employer's ability to limit annual use and what I mean by that is believe it or not many of these laws have one annual accrual path but also have a different annual usage cap and they're not the same so for example in some of these jurisdictions an employee can accrue up to 48 hours of paid sick leave but an employer can limit their ability to use 48 hours of paid sick leave to only 24 hours in the given year now think about that first of all that makes for an administrative and compliance nightmare but it also makes for an employer relations nightmare how do we explain to employees that they've accrued 48 hours of paid sick leave but technically under the law we only have to allow them to use 24 hours in a given year hence what happens is oftentimes employers when they're tackling these issues tend to be more generous in terms of an employee's ability to use their paid sick leave in a given year additionally there all of these laws have very different carryover requirements some specifically say if you front-load paid sick leaves at the beginning of your calendar year fiscal year whatever year you are using you do not have to allow for the carryover sick leave at the end of the year however under the executive order as well as under various municipal municipal paid sick leave laws including Los Angeles and Tacoma Washington you do not get out of the carryover requirement simply by front-loading and so again you can see the laws are all over the place with respect to these requirements some other ways at the laws vary greatly the usage waiting period as you can see here it varies from Ross law how long newly hired and/or this employees have to wait before they could start using their paid sick leave California it's 90 days after hire in New York City it's 120 days after hire Seattle 180 days after higher and the list goes on and on additionally another question when assessing you know typically issues and i'm really getting more into some of the technical requirements now are the minimum increments of use and what do i mean by that well you know in many paid time off in vacation policies now we dictate that an employee cannot use vacation sick or pto in increments less than an hour and oftentimes for exempt employees it's four hours or eight hours well many of these tapes tically laws have very specific increment usage requirements meaning in seattle you have to let employees use paid sick leave under a flaw in 15-minute increments in connecticut this one hour increments in california it's two hour increments some of the laws make it even more complicated because what they say is it has to be the smaller of an hourly increment or the smallest increment your payroll system currently tracks absences or use of other time off and think about that that could require you to do extensive research to figure out what your current payroll systems are programmed to do what your existing policies do determine the most generous standard that you have in use and ultimately provide that under your paid sick leave policy another area where the laws somewhat differ but we do tend to see a little bit more consistency is covered family members or covered uses of paid sick leave generally speaking most of these laws allow people to take off time for not only their own illness or injury but also for that of a family member family members are typically including child parent spouse domestic parent or partner excuse me sometimes it's grandparents and grandchildren sometimes its siblings as you can see here in Seattle is household members in Los Angeles and Chicago at somebody you have a close association with so the list of go on on with respect to what notice you can require from your employees when they want to use basically again there is differentiation amongst the different laws as to what an employer 10 and cannot require for example if something is foreseeable in some cases you can require up to 7 days in other cases you can only require up to 10 days generally speaking for most jurisdictions if something's unforeseeable you can only say that they have to provide you notice as soon as practicable additionally there is a question under these laws as to what documentation can be required if you normally have a policy that says if somebody is absent for three or more days that they have to provide you a doctor's note or if somebody is gone for a particular reason they have to provide documentation you need to check those policies against your applicable paid sick leave laws and jurisdictions to ensure you're not running a follow those laws as you can see New York City Oregon Los Angeles in Chicago you can require a reasonable documentation when somebody takes more than three consecutive work days in Connecticut Washington DC in oakland california it's three or more consecutive days in massachusetts if there are five different situations generally including 24 consecutive scheduled hours of work but you can see where this can get very complicated for employers not only with respect to their paid sick leave policies but there are attendance and time tracking policies as well last but not least each of these laws also have various record-keeping requirements and the timeframe for doing so can vary from law to law so I highly recommend you review your document retention policies to ensure that they have been properly adjusted for any paid sick leave law requirements on a going-forward basis so I'm going to go through some of the paid sick leave laws some of the more recent ones that's the only way I could pick it because I could be here for the next eight hours talking to you about all the different paid sick leave laws out there but I'm going to provide you a summary of some of the newer ones los angeles los angeles had a lot in effect a couple years ago that only applied to hotel employees and then effective july one 2016 it passed a law that says if an employer has 25 or more employees in the city of los angeles it has to start complying with the paid sick leave la ordinance and for employers that have 25 or less employees in the city you have to start as of july one 2078 you can see here and i'm not going to go through every single one of these details here but it does apply to people who provide 30 days of work within a year it is an accrual rate of one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked and the accrual cap in los angeles is 72 hours at any given point in time so this is an example remember i talked about annual accrual past versus point in time or cold caps this is an example of a point in time accrual cap and what it means is because employees are allowed to carry over paid sick leave from prior years in los angeles going forward the cap for paid sick leave is that an employee can have no more than 72 hours at any given point in time having said that though because it is a point in time cap not an annual of coral cast it is possible that an employee could take more than 72 hours of paid sick leave in a given year for you to be in compliance with the los angeles sickly importance some additional requirements under the los angeles sick leave ordinance as you can see here that can be used for the employees own health care needs covered family members health care needs as well as to seek any type of aid or assistance related to domestic violence sexual assault or stalking now if you remember when I was giving the general overview of paid sick leave laws i talked about these annual usage limits and here's a prime example where the annual loose usage limit does not meet the 72-hour point time requirement if you decide to just give employees at 72 hours point in time paid sick leave and not institute an annual usage as you heard me say they can easily take more than 72 hours in a given year if you don't want that to happen then what you have to do is part of your policy is institute this annual usage limit of 48 hours of paid sick leave as I said a few moments ago though this does create an employee relations nightmare because an employee understands that they have 72 hours of paid sick leave that they've accrued but you're only letting them use 48 hours of paid sick leave these laws you know create these conflicts for employers and managing these issues which results oftentimes in many employers simply doing away with the annual usage limit but not all the usage waiting period in LA is going to be the 90th day of employment notice requirements the employer has to provide paid sick leave upon oral or written request of an employee this is a big one this means that you cannot deny someone paid sick time simply because they made the request orally and many laws do have these different types of provisions with respect to the notice that must be provided and with respect to documentation you can as an employer demand you can require documentation to substantiate the need for leave only after the employee has used more than three consecutive days of paid sick leave you also have to put up a posting in Los Angeles record retention as a period of four years there's also issues with respect to you know how are you going to pay employees you have employees who have salaries you have employees that may be paid on commission that are eligible for this so here's one example of how will the laws handle it with respect to Los Angeles an employer has to pay an employer wage of no less than the hourly rates set under the ordinates which is basically the minimum wage however the wages do need all amounts that the we would get to the Labor performed including whether it's fix are ascertained as of a point in time or if it is done on a task piece or commission basis now I want to talk about the i paid sick leave ordinance this one is not going into effect until July one 2017 but it is getting a lot of press and a lot of questions because it has some unique requirements that we haven't seen in other paid sick leave laws today first just briefly what we have to show is that an employee [Music] had worked 80 hours in any hundred and twenty day period and in any particular to period performs at least two hours of work for the employer within the city of Chicago very complicated one hour paid sick leave is accrued for every 40 hours worked the start of the cruel has to be either at the start of the employee's employment or on a particular effective date whichever is later the accrual cap is 40 hours per 12-month period the carryover gets really tricky though under the Chicago ordinance with respect to the carryover first generally employees will be allowed to carry over up to a maximum of 20 hours however if your employee in Chicago also happens to be FMLA eligible and the employer is subject to FMLA in the city of Chicago then you have to provide them an additional 40 hours or if you may have to allow them to carry over up to 40 additional hours of their paid sick leave that you can also require be used exclusively for FMLA eligible purposes think about what i just said there you're now have a paid sick leave bank that you have to split into two for tracking purposes either let them use all of the paid sick leave for all reasons or if you don't want to be overly generous you have to track paid sick leave that's been carried over pursuant to this FMLA exception as well as these sickly that's been carried over just generally and then determine when an employee's using paid sick leave for which reason additionally there are particular other requirements under the Chicago sick leave ordinance that requires strict compliance certainly the reasons for use again no surprises is for the employees own illness or injury and receiving medical treatment diagnosis and care it's also for a covered family member you can also take time off for certain absences related to domestic violence sexual offenses as defined in art in the Illinois Criminal Code also though here is one that is slightly different and then some of the other paid sick leave laws if fear is a closure of the employees business or the employees child school or place of business due to some sort of public health emergency employees has to be allowed to use their paid sick leave to cover set time off again you've got your annual usage limits here with respect to the Chicago paid sick leave 40 hours per 12-month period except don't forget about that s MLA exception they would be entitled to use an additional 20 hours for those smoe qualifying reason the waiting period for new employees here in Chicago would be a hundred and eighty calendar days and with respect to notice again here differences amongst some of the laws for foreseeable absences an employer can require up to seven days of notice before the leave is taken and for unfortunately the employer may require notice as soon as practical in terms of documentation we're covered employee is absent more than three consecutive work days then of course we can require a certification that the use of the paid sick leave was authorized but again this is more than three consecutive work days other technical requirements there's a posting that will have to go up with respect to the Chicago City paid sick leave ordinance and employers will be required to provide with the first paycheck a notice advising the employee of his or her rights under the Chicago paid sick leave law and all of the rights to take paid sick leave with respect to how paid sick leave is paid under the Chicago ordinance basically this time that is compensated at the same rate and with the same benefits including health care benefits that the covered employee regularly earns during hours worked so let me talk briefly about minneapolis is our next example with respect to minneapolis i should note that a lawsuit has actually been filed to challenge the implementation of the minneapolis basically law so do pay attention to what happens with that lawsuit we've seen other lawsuits come into play and have barred certain basically laws pittsburgh pennsylvania is an example of that pittsburgh and philadelphia both passed paid sick leave laws Philadelphia's move forward but there was a lawsuit filed to challenge the Pittsburgh basically laws whatever reason that one did work and the paid sick leave lost or has not been implemented so what we're seeing is a similar type lawsuit being filed related to the Minneapolis paid sick leave law and we'll stay tuned to see what ultimately happens there assuming the law excuse me assuming the lawsuit is not successful in stopping the law from moving forward it will become effective July one 2017 it will cover any individual employed by an employer yes I just say any individual employed by employer that includes full-time part-time and temporary employees who work in Minneapolis for at least 2 80 hours in a given year individuals will accrue one hour of sick time for every 30 hours worked in the city and in terms of the start of the accrual it will start as of their employment or the effective date of the law whichever is later in terms of any type of cats if an individual has six or more employees then of course we have to provide paid sick time if it is less than six employees we have to provide unpaid six times the total annual cap is 48 hours in a calendar or a fiscal year and then there is a point in time cap of 80 hours employers have to permit an employee to carry over accrued but a new sixth time into the following year reasons for use under the Minneapolis paid sick time ordinance against um some more things but a few other changes again employee of family members illness or injury domestic abuse sexual assault and stalking absences closure of the employees place of business or family members school for public health emergency but here's another one closure of a family member school or place due to inclement weather lots of power loss of heating loss of water or any other unexpected closure so think about those snow days at schools have in Minneapolis assuming the law goes forward employees could request paid sick leave for they are important for their child's school being closed on a given day it does appear at this point in time we're waiting for further guidance from the city of Minneapolis but it does appear at this point type of employers cannot set annual cap on the amount of paid sick time employees can use the waiting period is 90 days following commencement of employment in terms of notice comparable to Chicago you've got the seven days advance notice when it's foreseeable and you've got the as soon as practical if unforeseen all in terms of documentation an employer can require reasonable documentation that the employee use safe sick time for permitted purpose only when the employee is absent more than three consecutive days as well some other quick technical requirements of the Minneapolis law upon the employee's request an employer must provide the employee with information containing the employees than current amount of accrued and unused paid sick time and employers make you their reusable we're providing this notification what it means is whether you do it electronically whether you do that manually etc also you have to post a model notice and if you have an employee handbook you have to include a policy in the handbook what that includes both the employees tape stick time rights and remedies terms of record retention here is a three-year period of time and again with respect to payment of a sick leave is that the same hourly rate with the same benefits to let me talk briefly now about the executive order the final rule on the executive order governing paid sick leave for certain contractors came out at the end of September leading into October the effective date for compliance for federal contractors and subcontractors is January 1 2017 employees who are eligible any individual who performs work on or in connection with a covered federal contract I'm not going to get into all the technical requirements there's pretty complex definitions as to what a covered federal contract is and I strongly recommend you partner with your outside counsel or inside counsel to determine whether you are covered i will give you generally speaking that it's providing services to the federal government not good those that provide services to the federal government may find themselves with a covered contract and generally speaking those that only provide goods are not going to find themselves covered by this executive order but again there are a number of complicated pieces to the definition of a covered contract please please please make sure that you consult your counsel regarding your coverage the accrual rate is one hour basically for every 30 hours worked in connection with a covered contract the accrual cap is up to 56 hours in a year there is a year-end carryover of up to 56 hours regardless of whether you use in a cruel or a front-loading system so here's an example when I was going through the sort of overall um approaches to paid sick leave front-loading versus accrual and how some laws allow you to get out of the annual carryover requirements if you do front loading the executive orders does not let you get out of the annual carryover requirements if you use a front loading system reasons for use in terms of the executive order individuals can use sick leave for themselves for their children their parents or spouse or any other individual whose association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship should be very very broad and there are no annual usage limits in terms of time off so that is just a brief overview of just some of the most recent developments in paid sick leave laws now I want to get to some of the practical considerations that employers are struggling with is they're looking to try and figure out how to grapple with these tapes to cleave issues you know because there are so many different laws to comply with in so many different provisions you know many many employers are looking at a few things one they're looking at an accrual versus of front loading system now in general you can have policies that provide paid sick leave you know to part-time employees during a cool system but a front loading system the full-time employees if you want to do so there's no requirement that all employees be provided paid sick leave in the same format so much as they just be provided the paid sick leave their ultimately entitled to under the law the pros to front-load because you don't have to worry about a cool calculations or your Ontario over where the laws allow you to get rid of that it's much less administrative leave burden them for tracking the cause of the front loading system though is it can provide a windfall to part-time and temporary employees most of the deploy ease may not even work long enough to get to accrue as much basically as they would get from a graph but again there you can talk about having two different systems for part time versus you know the accrual system if you don't have that windfall to employees at the beginning of the year but you do have a greater administrative burden in terms of the accrual tracking urine carryover and knowing that the accrual system can be different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction the other issue is you know do we have PPO vacation paid leave policies or some you know sort of other way to address the sort of paid sick leave issues as I mentioned you know using existing vacation and teaching policies are possible but it's complicated you have to revise the policies to make sure that they need all of the requirements of the pace tickly law that includes not only the total time provided but the accrual rate the carryover requirement this employees covered by it typically part-time employees of a certain level are not covered by such policies temporary employees are often excluded such policies may not employ to start accruing right away or may not let them take time off right away under existing policies and again don't forget that many of these basically blogs have posting requirements and notice requirements save increment usage requirements and you cannot retaliate against or discriminate against somebody who uses PTO or vacation for any of these protected reason it make it very difficult to track what employees are using their vacation of pto or if you're not using a separate paid sick leave policy additionally you know because of some of these anti-retaliation provisions you could find yourself running afoul of some of the laws if you have somebody who's been inappropriately using vacation or PPO but to your knowledge you know haven't implicated any sort of protection paid sick leave laws the problem is though an employee could claim that that is what they're using to pay time off or and you could run yourself you can find yourself running afoul of those anti retaliation and discrimination provision some have looked at sort of this one-size-fits-all coming up with a one-size-fits-all sort of paid sick leave policy this is not to say that it doesn't work but remember that would mean that you need to eat adopt for your national paid sick leave policy the most generous law that applies to you so for example Seattle has unlimited a cool and so if for example in Seattle people just would continue to accrue paid sick time without any particular caps so if you wanted to use Seattle as you're paid sick leave model you'd have to keep that in mind with respect to you know carry over issues and such again you have to find the most generous provision additionally with respect to increment usage depending on the jurisdiction ER and that could mean the smallest increment you use that could mean for hours or two hours actually one hour and I can go on and on and on about these different ways that you would need to factor in all of the myriad of different paid sick leave laws that are out there to determine which is the most generous in terms of your compliance at the one-size-fits-all last but not least there's this notion of unlimited PTO that many employers are considering an unlimited PTO can raise a whole host of risks and concerns as well you know first employee short term not extended absences for reasons covered you know under applicable paid sick leave laws you know arguably anytime somebody took off then on an unlimited basis would have to be protected as opposed to saying we provide absences up to the annual caps for example that these laws allow for so certainly you know that is an issue with respect to these unlimited of pto policies additionally even though I have you no unlimited PTO on here as an option we really strongly encourage you not to use the term unlimited with describing this policy because it really does suggest that it isn't limited meaning i could take 12 weeks 16 weeks 20 week 6 better so certainly what we recommend in crafting these policies is coming up with sort of like a routine time off policy and carving out certain leaves and time off for things like SML a std etc but again there's risks and doing that as well and then last but not least record-keeping risks exists with these sort of Korra sort of limited pto policies you know most laws require employer's to maintain certain records of employees are cool and uses basically and flicked with this certainly can't conflict with this sort of notion of unlimited PTO where you're that track information all right so with that happy news for what we've seen thus far what are we seeing on the horizon for the remainder of 2016 well effective October one Montgomery County Maryland had its paid sick leave la go into effect january 1 2017 Vermont will be the next state law to go into effect Santa Monica California has a paid sick leave la going into effect on 11 2017 Spokane Washington that has its paid sick leave la going into effect on 11 2017 and federal contractors has its executive order with respect to paid sick leave for covered contracts going into effect on 11 teen if I pull out my crystal ball and sort of start guessing as to what next locations are likely to adopt paid sick leave ordinances while I've already correct about one under municipalities Cook County as you can see can come out of the likely to adopt and move into the actually adopted paid sick leave ordinance but additionally from a statewide perspective where we expect to see some potential movement as the state of Washington that's in large part because there are a number of municipalities in Washington including Tacoma Spokane Seattle etc that already have basically ordinances that would make it very likely that the state would move in that Maryland New Jersey New Jersey is like the state of Washington it is over nine municipalities right now that has basically was and Michigan in terms of municipalities Albuquerque New Mexico is on the horizon Duluth Minnesota and Duluth is probably a likely one considering both st. Paul and Minneapolis have already passed their own paid sick leave ordinances and then Princeton New Jersey is the next one in New Jersey to hit so now I am going to turn it over to questions I know we want to leave 15 minutes I think I've only left 10 my apologies but I'm going to look at some questions here that have come in let's see here try and expand these questions so I can read it are there special circumstances for part-time employees with respect to paid sick leave compliance unfortunately under most of these laws with respect to paid sick leave compliance part-time employees are not treated any different in terms of their rights so for example you can't prorated and employees paid sick leave entitlement if the law provides for example 80 hours of paid sick leave and you have an employee who only works a 50-percent schedule you cannot prorated for a part-time employee and say they're only going to get 40 hours of paid sick leave if you front load basically two employees you have to front load two part-time employees the same amount you would front load two full-time employees and if you accrue paid sick leave for Europe paid sick leave policy then they have to recruit at the same rate as everyone else now having said that they may not ultimately accrue the full amount allowed under by the law depending on their hours work but you can't make any adjustments for their part-time status additionally part-time employees are subject to the same protections with respect to paid sick leave me you know they their absences are protected additionally with respect to part-time employees they have to be given the same notice so for example if it's required that you put something on their paycheck part-time employees get the same requirements if you are required to give some an employee written notice they're basically rights that applies to part-time employees and of course anything else so as you can see here there really isn't a difference for part-time employees that can come into play are there some exceptions for example like under the chicago law for collective bargaining employees yes each law is different with respect to exceptions for collective bargaining agreements in union employees for example in chicago unless you know you have a contract at speed discs expiring after you know the effective date you have a window of time a period of time where as long as your collective bargaining agreement paid sick leave at or above the rate of what the law requires you don't have to make any adjustments to your paid sick leave policy until your next contract negotiation however if your current paid sick leave offered in chicago is at a rate lower than what the law requires then the CBA exception likely will not apply similarly the executive order has a provision as well with respect to cba exemptions and such that also comes into play so what you have to do is look at the date of your collective bargain greement you have to look out the levels basically that's provided and you have to determine if you are presently meaning at least the time allotment for paid sick leave and if you are then the exemption may apply to you but I highly highly recommend you reach out to Council to discuss that because there are some technical requirements that have to be met in many of these cases and you want to make sure you're meeting those two fully avail yourself of the CBA exemption that is out there alright so now I'm looking at some of these other questions that I have here with me a moment as I'm looking at this ah let's see here [Music] many of these sick leave ordinances become effective in July does the next year's hours start from the time the ordinance started or on a calendar year great question so if the ordinance is starting as of July as of that effective date for purposes of that year you are looking at from July going forward but what employers are struggling with is many employers don't want to change their paid time off policies to run from July 12 jun 30th and so what they struggle with is how do I develop an annual policy but also meet the implementation requirement of July one so some are looking back to January one just for purposes of eligibility for purposes of use etc to make sure that they don't have to worry about making adjustments six months later because of the half-year implementation considerations related to the new paid sick leave law let's see here sorry I'm scanning through some other so with respect to cacao me are there any other limitations other than being in Cook County no it's for employers who are in Cook County's it doesn't matter what municipalities Chicago or otherwise if you are in Cook County you will be covered by the paid sick leave laws to me otherwise meet their requirements there's been an after clarification is to explain front-loading versus V accrual rate so front-loading is where i'll use california's example because they're one of the first to adopt front-loading California says if you are going to front-load employees paid sick leave you must do so at the beginning of the paid sick leave year that you're using which most people are using calendar or fiscal years and in California if you use a front-loading model and let's just assume for argument's sake for answering the question that you are using January one at the beginning of your year you are front loading paid sick leave at a January one of the full 24 hours which means the individual can use at 24 hours of paid sick leave starting on January one and at any point in the rest of that calendar year if you're using in a cruel system what it means is starting January one employees are accruing paid sick leave for one hour for every 40 hours worked and interestingly in California if you use the accrual system of employees can accrue up to 48 hours so you cannot Kathy a cool at the 24 hours their law is unique that way in the sense of how they are providing that but nonetheless that is the difference between front-loading and accrual it's basically giving the employee on that fixed day of as I said you know January one the fiscal year or however you're using it all of their paid sick leave to use up front for the remainder of the year let's see here the sick time have to be carved out of pto time great question so if you're using your pto policy and you to comply with a paid sick leave law's requirements you have to look to see what notice requirements and tracking requirements you are required to meet under the law if the law requires that you are going to be if the law requires that you are going to be giving an employee for example notice on their paycheck stone which is required in California or notice upon their request which is what we saw in some of the more recent was then what that means is you do have to track in a PTO policy the reason somebody is taking time off and that's very frustrating for employers because the whole reason for going to pto in the first place was to not have to track the reasons for absences and once that happened once we you know sort of transition all these PTO systems most employer said look we don't care what your reason is for taking the time off take the time off and as long as you're staying within your pto limit that's okay however the problem is with respect to these paid sick leave laws you now have to pay attention as though reasons people are using their PPO if you are going to use a pto policy to comply with these paid sick leave ordinances that's why many employers not all but many are looking at going back and moving away from pto and going back to going back to vacation and sick leave as separate policies one of the questions is will there be any discussion of any Canadian laws on this at this point I'm know we are solely focusing on US laws today with respect to paid sick leave but know that various countries outside the United States have very extensive paid sick leave laws that can come into play and certainly that you should be aware of on a global basis is there one source that I can access that lists all current and future state City Municipality etc I'm not aware of any free resources out there right now that tracks that many law firms including my own have subscription services that we offer to clients that allow them to help track the different paid sick leave laws that are out there but I'm not aware of a single go to one stop source for this information that's provided to employers on a for free let's see here next one is we are a federal contractor so with respect to the municipalities and where people live in it looks like how are we rectifying the federal contract in the different locations so the federal contract is tricky because the federal contract issue is the federal contract issue is any time and employees providing work on a covered contract they are entitled to paid sick leave benefits under the executive order doesn't matter where they work under the executive order they're entitled to those benefits having said that if you are in a jurisdiction that provides greater paid sick leave rights than the executive order the executive order makes clear that that state or municipal law will govern over the executive order and what I mean by that is so I'll use San Francisco as an example where you can accrue up to 72 hours in a given year but the executive order is 56 if you have somebody who is working on a covered federal contract or subcontract but they're working in San Francisco it's not enough to comply with the executive order you also have to comply with the San Francisco requirements again lots of complicated questions that employers are grappling with I see i have two minutes left and I know that there are some concluding remarks from ipe so I try to get through as many questions as I could but I thank you all so so much for your time and for being with me today on this very complex subject thanks Tracy that was unbelievable the amount of laws and the complexity I'm sure like us everyone is very overwhelmed but I think you actually helped clear up something so thank you very much very very much appreciate at your time sure Rama I would like to just wrap up in the last couple of minutes and and just tell you a little bit about what you can receive with a full HCM platform from ipe if you could just go to the next slide Tracy we again as I had said offer a full human capital management solution and some of the features within that solution obviously our payroll with accrual systems in HR excuse me and so the first thing you want is obviously a system that can provide seamless flow of information so that you as your onboarding employees and you move them through the whole process from into HR time and attendance and payroll you only have to enter it once you only have to set up things like we've talked about today once in the system so when you're talking about benefits and vacation and sick time you set that up once based on the policies you have in its track both in payroll and your benefits system in HR and so on so that's the first point that I wanted to make is that a seamless system is the way to go the next is you got to look at your curl systems so we have accrual capabilities being able to manage some of the things that Tracy talked to talked about today at both the payroll level and also the time and attendance level so it gives you a lot of city of how you're going to track these things you can in our system track accrual caps the the rate that accruals or the rate that the sick leave and vacation leave is accrued carryover limits and more so the tracking is very important so we give you the flexibility that you can have multiple policies across the name and be able to track all of them and you know you don't necessarily have to do a one-size-fits-all policy like she was talking about which isn't necessarily a good idea you can have multiple policies going on by pay group by state so on so that's some important things to know you also want to know that with when you're tracking different leave types you can do that in the system so if you have someone that is working or supposed to work today and in the time and attendance system you normally would have put in there eight hours but they took 80 sick leave you can track that eight hours as sick leave time and it's a sick leave rate type but you may also have a different rate type for perhaps paid leave vacation leave and so on so we can track the various rate types we can track the various different types of leave now there's another piece of the system that this data and this information has to flow into and that's your scheduling system because then when you're going to build schedules you if someone obviously can't necessarily you might know if they're going to be out sick for a while but if they're going to be taking vacation right you need to be able to track that so that you can build a schedule that's accurate so we have that capability and then finally just to wrap it up you have a self-service tool with our platform so that folks can go in and not only they can request verification they can talk to say this they've got sick leave or they need to take sick leave but then it can also be approved and they can look at their balances so they have an employee self service tool to be able to easily go in and do that to request it to talk about what's happening to them and then in addition of course on all of their pay stubs they can see exactly what type of leaves they have taken so that's just a little of information of how ipe can address some of the needs that were brought up from Tracy today on the next slide you'll see again a depiction of our full platform from applicant tracking all the way through the elements you need to track the employee through their whole life cycle and they're in there stay with the company human resource management benefit admin time and labor payroll and performance management we have a SAS based solution that we wrap with administrative services so that you can offload some of the work and we can do it for you everywhere from payroll outsourcing tax management Affordable Care Act and other ancillary services such as Cobra and some FMLA tracking all right I'd like to wrap up then if you could go to the next couple of slides there Tracy and move forward these are just some of our highlights but the most thing I want to tell everyone about is on Thursday we will be having a webinar at ten a.m. central time on active is oktoberfest it's a session we do on how to evaluate human capital management technology well we'll talk about the important thing is how you can evaluate it and you actually get a sneak peek of our software so if any of this has piqued your interest and you're interested in taking a look at EPA all you have to do is go to our website and go to upcoming webinars and sign up for Thursday's webinar we we would welcome your attendance so thank you very much at the end of the survey today you will have a quick survey and Kathy he'll tell you more about that but on behalf of ipe and Tracy again thank you very much we appreciate your time this past hour we hope you got a lot out of it thank you very much and we look forward to talking to you soon thank you i wrote back ow thank you michelle and tracy presenting this very informative webcast today the archived webcast and slides will be available in the hr.com site within 24 hours you will receive an email from HR com the certification credit information within one to two business days EPA and HR com do appreciate your feedback so please take a moment at the very end of webcast to complete the evaluation survey which will appear on your screen this concludes our webcast and thank you again for joining us and enjoy the rest of your day