Dear Evil HR Lady,
We have an employee who periodically leaves early. When she does, she skips lunch and tells her supervisor an hour before she is leaving that she is leaving early and didn’t take lunch. While my answer would be to document this and issue a memo/warning, we are a small company. This particular employee is good friends with the CEO and has been here for 16 years. When she is disciplined, she gives everyone the silent/nasty treatment. Any ideas on how to address this with her? Her manager basically wants to say that leaving early isn’t necessarily an issue — she just needs more notice and that it can’t happen regularly.
To read the answer click here: What to do when an employee skips out early
Aren’t hourly employees required to take their lunch breaks? The letter does not specify if she is hourly or salary but thought there were problems allowing staff to skip breaks.
The Federal gov’t doesn’t require lunch breaks. As long as there’s not state law, then she can work through lunch. She has to be paid for it, though. I assume that she is.
I believe California now has a law requiring employees to take a lunch break (go figure!). Although, I believe the law also has a provision for the employee to voluntarily give that up on occasion, but I could be wrong about that.
California does have such a law (and has had the law for at least the time I’ve been doing HR in CA, which is 8 years, so it’s not new.) The employee can only give up their lunch under certain limited circumstances (unnecessary for less than 5 hours, waivers for less than 6 hours, or between 10-12 hours when the first lunch hasn’t been skipped.)
With all that said, we have no indication as to the location of the letter writer, so mandatory meal periods may not be an issue. I agree with Evil HR Lady – if the employee doesn’t need to be there until 5, what is the big deal? Just talk to the employee about the amount of notice needed and go from there.
I don’t think taking the lunch is the problem, or the letter writer would have mentioned it.
It’s sometimes really hard to get people to stop and say, “Why do we have this rule?” And when you can’t come up with a good rule, throw it out.
I forgot to add that the meal period need only be 30 minutes long. So even if this employee was in CA, the manager could still work with her by reducing her lunch to 30 minutes and letting her leave 30 minutes earlier.
This problem props up so much here in England and I’ve found a solution. To have regulations and rules, guiding when employees can/not leave early. This seems to work as it is set in stone and leaves no room for uncertainty.
If the employee does not have a position that requires seat time (unlike a teacher, secretary, police officer, customer service rep, etc.), I think this type of trade off can work well for all parties. When parents have to leave work early to cart a child around, they are motivated to complete their work with maximum efficiency and often feel guilty when they are gone. Without the flexible lunch arrangement (free to the employer), the employee would have every incentive to take the entire day or half the day off. While many people enjoy the Type A supervisor who is Theory X… Clearly stating the rules and demanding compliance… Many others would prefer a compassionate supervisor who negotiates a minimum notice requirement. As an executive for the company/organization, I would be glad that we were able to provide no-cost perks to employees that demonstrated a teamwork/family culture.