Every single damn month, we have a mandatory safety meeting, which is pretty much worthless, but occasionally I do learn something, and have the opportunity to voice my thoughts on safety.
But I’m about ready to demand they call a mandatory Employee Benefits meeting. It’s just ridiculous that none of us were filled in on fairly obvious stuff. Trouble is, I’m pretty sure it would need to be run by the HR lady, who is apparently picking all of this information up piecemeal, on a need-to-know basis. We do have a general manager, but she was just hired a few weeks ago. Before we had her, we had nothing for several months, because the previous general manager, who was forced out here to ND from CA when they took us over, quit after one winter.
Shit, I’m sorry. This has turned into a bitch session.
Anyway, thank you one and all. I will keep this updated if there is any more drama. :)
It was buried in my wall of text up there, so I don’t blame you for missing it. :)
Yeah, the handbook mentions very little WRT benefits. I read the whole thing.
Sadly 100% legal in places. My company switched to this recently and secretly I think Giles and I work for the same people (we definitely don’t). It’s one of the things I look at puzzled when people say they like working at this company because the benefits are great (they’re ok).
Good to hear that HR is going to fix their screw-up!
Are you sure?
Does the name of your company start with the letter “N”?
I ask because you are literally the first person I’ve seen anywhere that has experienced the same thing.
Nope. We’re a pretty big retailer (if you live in the US, you’ve probably heard of us) so I assume the change was pushed as a way to minimize costs and maximize shareholder value.
Use it or lose it is prevalent enough that I, as a Californian, have a disclaimer that a company can’t have a use-it-or-lost-it policy. Every time there is a mail or a document about PTO, there is a big asterisk that leads to “does not apply to employees in California.”
Seriously? Now, I can understand not carrying anything past one year from the time you’ve earned it. But in my case, even the 10 hours I received on Dec. 1 had to be used that same month, which just seems totally bizarre.
So how much are you allowed to carry over? And for how long? Certainly there must be some time limits? Or is it that anything you don’t use gets paid out in cash?
Any “competence” I have seen at any company was purely individual and was practically always at odds with the organizational machinery. Organizations are almost invariably dumb, probably because they are made up of people, who are mostly dumb.
A quick search of our basic policy at my company says “California employees accrue and bank time until they reach a cap equal to 1.5 times their annual accrual rate.” And then "Once you reach your cap, you won’t start accruing vacation time again until you take some (much needed!) time off and drop below your cap. "
So while I stop actively earning days when I hit the cap (and hence still encouraged to use my time because I no longer earn/add more PTO), it’s never actively taken away or reduced to zero. For my title/level/tenure, I accrue up to 20 days / 4 weeks per fiscal, and my cap is 30 days / 6 weeks.
For the non-Californians, the policy is “up to five unused vacation days will rollover into the nest fiscal year, which will expire at the end of September.”
my company’s vacation policy is the use it or lose it type. I have never worked at a company prior to this where you couldn’t carry over any vacation hours. It’s the main thing everyone bitches about.
we can get a utilization bonus if we charged enough hours to our main contract. However if you have more than three weeks of vacation you can’t take all your vacation and get the utilization bonus so they’re really trying to trick you into not taking your vacation. It didn’t work for me!
That screening questionnaire thing is bizarre. I wouldn’t tell my workplace about any health problems I might have. It’s none of their business unless it impacts my work.
That was my initial reaction as well. I wish I’d made a copy of it to show you all. I’d honestly never seen anything like it before in my 18 years in this business.
I drive a paratransit bus for a living, which is why I thought it might impact my work. At the time I filled it out though, I was more concerned about losing my job due to telling them about my prior heart attack than I was about losing my insurance.
