Intermittent leave for exempt employees: the survey results

Last week, I asked a simple question: should employer require salaried, exempt employees to take intermittent FMLA leave as unpaid leave, and deduct hours spent on leave from their pay.

Here are the results:

Does your company take deductions from the salary of exempt employees for intermittent leave?

• Yes: 41%
• No: 59%

Does an employer take deductions from the salary of exempt employees for intermittent leave?

• Yes: 35%
• No: 65%

The percentage of companies that require such deductions was higher than I anticipated, and the percentage of individuals who believe that employers should take such deduction was way higher than I expected.

What do these numbers tell us? Last week, I heard Pat Perry, the President of Cleveland's ERC, speak. He said that we are managing 21st century employees with 20th century laws. I could not agree more.

Our employment laws, at least as to the when and the where we work, must be modernized. The 40-hour work week for exempt employees is a dinosaur. Yet, we still manage our people based on this nine-to-five, punch-the-clock, anachronism. If you want to attract and retain top talent, flexibility is key. A good place to start is with your FMLA and time-off management. If your employees work hard for you and get their jobs done, why should you care if they take an hour here or there for a doctor's appointment, or their child's school play? On leave management, employers are 100 years behind the times, and it's time to modernize thse policies to 2015.