Ask the Attorney Archives

Q: “Over the past few months we have had several employees voluntarily leave our employment. According to Oklahoma state law, we are not obligated to pay the employee for unused PTO hours; however, according to our employee handbook, the employee will be paid for unused PTO hours. Can we change our employee handbook, with proper notice to all employees, to state that the company is not obligated to pay resigned employees for unused PTO hours? Currently employees accumulate PTO hours on a yearly basis. Can we change our PTO policy to allow employees to accrue on a specified basis, i.e. hourly, daily, monthly instead?” – M., Oklahoma

Q: “An employer is seeking to transition from paper to digital employment files. They have a retention policy that is based on the type of each document, rather than a standard policy that permits them to retain everything for a set number of years following termination of employment or a period of time afterward. Their policy requires them to add metadata to each document so that documents that reach their retention date can be purged automatically by the system. “They would prefer not to increase the staff workload by requiring them to tag individual documents. Currently, they have two team members spend several weeks a year reviewing every employee file to purge documents that should be shredded. What is best practice here, and what have you seen other companies do to comply with the file retention guidelines of multiple laws and regulations?” – Maren, Virginia

Q: “Regarding the newly enacted NJ Sick Leave Pay Law, it is my understanding that employers cannot ask employees about the specific reason for using NJ Sick Leave. However, how does a supervisor establish whether the days qualify for NJ Sick Leave pay or not? If an employee just asks for a day off, can the supervisor ask if it falls under one of the qualifying reasons? We have a number of temporary workers who are now entitled to this paid time off and we are being cautious about what to ask, but we also need to know if the time off requested is covered.” Monica, New Jersey

Q:“I have a salaried exempt associate who will be taking a reduction in hours starting in June. She is an officer of the company. She will be working 32 hours instead of current 45-50. Can we put this individual on an hourly rate instead of salary?” – Cindy, North Dakota