We recently had equipment failure that lasted for several days. On one of those days, one department was sent home and told that they could use vacation time, earned time, or accept a loss of pay.

In a different department, the supervisor told employees that leaving was voluntary. If they wanted to go home, they could use vacation time, earned time, SICK TIME, or accept a loss of pay. (There was no company-wide announcement or memo, so one department had no idea what the other was being told.)

At least one employee in the second department left under the assumption that she could use sick time. The next day, she was told that she couldn't.

Our written policy regarding the use of sick time is very specific, but the hourly employee thought that, due to the special circumstances, use of it was being allowed for non-sick time.

Is it acceptable to tell an hourly employee one thing on one day and another thing AFTER they've already acted on the first?

I questioned HR, asking if the problem shouldn't be worked out at the supervisory/management level rather than punishing the hourly employee for believing what her boss told her.

Any thoughts?

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Topic: Sick pay
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We had a similar instance occur at our facility and we made an exception to the written policy and paid the employee accordingly. We also disciplined the manager for the verbal misinformation.

We checked with our legal counsel and they concurred. Policies are in writing for a reason. We didn't have to pay the employee but to appease the employee relationship we gave in.

The same thing happened at our facility. We decided to make an exception to our policy and pay the employee based on the manager's communication to the employee. We checked with legal counsel and they said we weren't required to do this because our written policy spells out when sick leave can/can't be used, but they suggested we defer to the employee in this isolated instance.

It's easier to discipline the manager (which we did) for giving out incorrect information than to punish the employee.