50% pay WFH w/out approval

How can I find out if this is even legal in IL without contacting an employment attorney?

HR just sent out an email with a few new policies. Note that HR is outsourced to a local company. The policy that made my jaw drop is that if you work from home without manager approval, you will get paid HALF your regular pay for the day. We’re all salaried. This was apparently triggered by a guy in another office working from home while out with pneumonia since his dept was so short staffed.

In my office, I’m the only one besides the import manager who has capability to work from home. I got approval over the summer for IT to put VPN/remote desktop software on my new personal laptop. I live 45 min from the office and this gets me out of having to drive to the office for something quick.

Couple months back I worked from home at the suggestion of the import manager, rather than taking the entire day off, when I had some car issues and had to take it into the shop. I asked HR about this situation and said I would still have gotten my full day’s pay under new policy for that situation.

Plus they used some dumb language that makes no sense. “Working form home is not allowed unless approved by your manager and surrounding the situation. Even if approved by a doctor, it be will paid half if your rate for the days worked from home.” WTF does “surrounding the situation” mean. I told HR it made NO sense and that “depending on the situation” would have made more sense. HR came back and told me they specially chose that working. WTF? This is proof the idiot owner (the Indian guy) hates people working from home.

Import manager emailed HR and asked if we would get paid for working a half day on the weekend for doing air freight. No answer yet.

As long as you receive at least minimum wage there is not much you can do unless, perhaps, you have it in writing otherwise.

Are you exempt or do you get paid overtime? I don’t know about other states but in California if you are exempt you literally only have to work a few minutes and you get paid for the full day. I can only take a full PTO day, not a half day. Something like that would not be legal here but beyond the federal minimum wage employment law is very much a state by state thing.

This sounds more like one of those crazy internet stories of management going overboard. Now every single time an employee wants to do work at home to benefit the company, they will probably need to document the approval of a manager to cover any later misunderstandings. Guess if the manager does not respond, the employee will just go back to bed if home sick or on vacation.

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Originally Posted by jp1

Are you exempt or do you get paid overtime? I don’t know about other states but in California if you are exempt you literally only have to work a few minutes and you get paid for the full day. I can only take a full PTO day, not a half day. Something like that would not be legal here but beyond the federal minimum wage employment law is very much a state by state thing.

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I’m exempt. I went over the IL Dept of Labor website has no option for reporting this before the fact. It’s only after the fact.

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Originally Posted by sweetana3

This sounds more like one of those crazy internet stories of management going overboard. Now every single time an employee wants to do work at home to benefit the company, they will probably need to document the approval of a manager to cover any later misunderstandings. Guess if the manager does not respond, the employee will just go back to bed if home sick or on vacation.

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I love the Ask A Manger website. Someone put me onto it a few months ago. I did send this in as a question, but doubt it will get published.

Wow! That's awful! Which prompts me to ask... have you resumed your job hunt, Tradd?

To play devils advocate, I’m trying to envision a scenario where someone would be working at home WITHOUT a manager’s approval, counting it as a workday, and expecting to be paid.

so who are the “managers “who have the authority to authorize full at home pay? Is that a limiting factor here?

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

To play devils advocate, I’m trying to envision a scenario where someone would be working at home WITHOUT a manager’s approval, counting it as a workday, and expecting to be paid.

so who are the “managers “who have the authority to authorize full at home pay? Is that a limiting factor here?

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Someone is home sick and can’t reach manager to get the written permission. They clarified today that a text is not accepted as “written permission.” Must be on email. I access work email on the web. So I’d have to text manager what was up and then log onto work email to send the email for permission. Or if the weather is very bad (big snow) and I wanted to work from home and couldn’t reach manager. Stuff like that.

I emailed HR today saying I’d forgotten to ask them about weekend work yesterday, saying I assumed the WFH thing was just for weekdays. I said I have to handle weekend air freight clearances sometimes. No answer.

Trade for your weekend where could you get paid extra? Or do you take comp time off? Or I can’t see how that would work since you’re salaried.

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

Trade for your weekend where could you get paid extra? Or do you take comp time off? Or I can’t see how that would work since you’re salaried.

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I’m exempt. I don’t get paid anything for weekends or OT. To be honest, OT is rare and the weekend stuff depends on what shipments there are. I can go weeks without one.

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Originally Posted by Tradd

I’m exempt. I don’t get paid anything for weekends or OT. To be honest, OT is rare and the weekend stuff depends on what shipments there are. I can go weeks without one.

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Sure, that’s what I thought, so your occasional weekend work won’t be affected by this policy.

frankly, this new policy doesn’t seem all that crazy to me. I can’t imagine being an employee who thinks it’s OK to stay home and have it count as work without checking in with my manager. I had a boss who did that but that wasn’t my circus to adjudicate since I wasn’t her boss.

There are situations where you don't have to check with a manager, it's called having a hybrid or full WFH schedule, obviously :). But if there is the expectation of being in the office then yea, I can see why it is assumed you will. There should be an option to run it through the managers manager or something though if the manager is also out. It just makes sense.

Btw, I'm in CA of course and exempt, we can take partial days off (sick days). They only dock sick time here if you miss at least 2 hours though, if you are an hour late for a doctors appointment, it won't cost you sick time.

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Originally Posted by iris lilies

Sure, that’s what I thought, so your occasional weekend work won’t be affected by this policy.

frankly, this new policy doesn’t seem all that crazy to me. I can’t imagine being an employee who thinks it’s OK to stay home and have it count as work without checking in with my manager. I had a boss who did that but that wasn’t my circus to adjudicate since I wasn’t her boss.

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You need WRITTEN approval. And a text isn’t sufficient. Has to be via email. HR clarified today that when I WFH two months ago due to the car issues, I would have been docked the 50% since approval was verbal, not written. Hell, the manager suggested herself I WFH. I would have otherwise taken the day off.

Good luck to them going to court and trying to prove that a text isn’t considered written.

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Originally Posted by jp1

Good luck to them going to court and trying to prove that a text isn’t considered written.

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I know, weird, hunh?

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Originally Posted by jp1

Good luck to them going to court and trying to prove that a text isn’t considered written.

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Haha. Yep.