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#Post#: 48182--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: NewHomeowner Date: March 3, 2020, 10:09 am
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[quote author=TootsNYC link=topic=1645.msg48142#msg48142
date=1583186270]
[quote author=LadyJaneinMD link=topic=1645.msg48109#msg48109
date=1583153080]
What she is saying is that
If she goes to the conference, they will pay her way in. Say
$10.
If she goes to work instead, she'll get paid for that. That pays
$20-$30. Double or triple what the conference cost.
So, if she goes to the conference, she only gets $10 for the
day, whereas if she went to work, she'd get $20-30.
Does that make sense now?
[/quote]
And that $10 will NOT come in cash. It will come in the form of
the non-monetary value of the conference she has attended.
[/quote]
Actually, I was thinking that the $10 was the ticket for the
conference. So, you're right, she doesn't get the cash, but she
does get 'free' entrance fee to a conference. But then she
loses the day's pay.
I've been in both situations. If I wanted to go to a conference
(although I've only gone to free ones), I just take leave from
work to go. It's my PTO (paid time off) to use as I see fit,
EVEN IF the conference is work-related. I have no idea what
would happen if my employer decided to pay my way into a
conference. I'm nowhere near important enough to ever find out,
either.
I also worked my way through college, while working at various
jobs. I work in computers and I studied computers, but my
employer(s) did not pay for my college tuition, nor did they pay
me for my time in class. That was all entirely on me. I took
evening classes (day classes when I worked nights), and finished
a 4-year degree. That degree did help my career tremendously
anyway.
#Post#: 48185--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: OnyxBird Date: March 3, 2020, 10:25 am
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[quote author=Hmmm link=topic=1645.msg48173#msg48173
date=1583245166]
[quote author=OnyxBird link=topic=1645.msg48164#msg48164
date=1583209592]
[quote author=TootsNYC link=topic=1645.msg48142#msg48142
date=1583186270]
[quote author=LadyJaneinMD link=topic=1645.msg48109#msg48109
date=1583153080]
What she is saying is that
If she goes to the conference, they will pay her way in. Say
$10.
If she goes to work instead, she'll get paid for that. That pays
$20-$30. Double or triple what the conference cost.
So, if she goes to the conference, she only gets $10 for the
day, whereas if she went to work, she'd get $20-30.
Does that make sense now?
[/quote]
And that $10 will NOT come in cash. It will come in the form of
the non-monetary value of the conference she has attended.
[/quote]
Yes, but the OP seems to be saying that the choice to go to
conferences is voluntary. If the OP doesn't consider the
conference/seminar to be valuable enough to her personally to be
worth missing paid work hours and they're truly voluntary, then
all she has to do is not go to those conferences/seminars. The
employer has presumably done a cost-benefit analysis and decided
that the value to the company of employees attending the
conference is more than the registration cost but less than the
cost of paying employees to go to conferences. The employees who
want to go need to do the cost-benefit analysis on their own
end: does the conference value to themselves (not the company)
exceed the cost of lost work hours or not?
From the employer's perspective, there's a whole spectrum of
possible levels of value for a conference:
[list type=decimal]
[li]If the employer considers it necessary for the OP to do her
job, then it's work that should absolutely be paid, but in that
case, it would also be mandatory.[/li]
[li]If the employer considers it non-essential but valuable to
the company to the point that they really want the OP to go
(either to learn or to represent the company), then they would
have good incentive and/or obligation to pay for the entire cost
(registration and work hours) of having an employee attend as
work.[/li]
[li]If the employer thinks the conference is mildly
useful/relevant, but not valuable enough to outweigh the costs
of paying someone to attend, then it's not cost-effective to
"send" someone to the conference (i.e., to have someone attend
as work on paid time), but there is value in facilitating
attendance for employees who wish to attend on non-work time for
their own personal development. (But it's basically like tuition
reimbursement for learning pursued in one's own time, not
work.)[/li]
[li]If the employer thinks the conference has zero value to
them, then there's no value (except possibly employee morale) in
offering to pay anything towards it at all, and any employee
wanting to go would have to both sacrifice the paid work hours
and pay the registration fee.[/li]
[/list]
The OP's employer seems to be falling at #3. As long as they're
1) not trying to dictate how she spends her time at the
conference or demand she do work for them there (e.g.,
representing the company by presenting/recruiting/etc.), 2) they
make it clear up front what they're offering to cover (only
registration costs versus registration and paid time), and 3)
they aren't "unofficially" penalizing people who choose not to
attend conferences, then I don't see anything inherently wrong
about it.
Personally, I am looking at this as someone who generally
dislikes conferences. They're relevant in my line of work, so I
go to some conferences because my employer/customers ask for it,
and it's paid work time. But if they didn't ask me to go as
work, there are few, if any, work-relevant conferences that I
would consider attending at my own time and expense. Paid work
travel of any type at my company requires advance approval, and
approval requires a business justification--they're not miserly
about it, but requests to attend conferences without a clear
business reason to go (e.g., customer request, presenting
papers, direct relevance to a specific project that will fund
the travel, etc.) can and do get turned down.
BTW, for those discussing that salaried exempt employees
couldn't have their pay docked for missing work to attend a
conference, that may be true, but my understanding (from reading
"Ask a Manager") is that it would be perfectly legal to require
that non-working time to be deducted from whatever vacation time
the employer allots, so while the employee wouldn't actually
lose pay, if the employer doesn't count it as work time, they
would still have to decide if that activity was worth
sacrificing that amount of their vacation allotment.
[/quote]
I think you're missing a #5.
5. Company offers a certain amount per employee of conference or
seminar registration reimbursement as a employee benefit. I know
it's not a popular opinion in this group, but sometimes
employers to offer benefits that are primarily benefits to the
employee with the focus on employee retention.
I also thought of a personal instance. My company will pay for
some online training classes. Many that I take are for "stretch
assignments" or technologies that I want to learn about but are
not directly related to my current job. It is expected that I'll
take these classes on my own time. Will they eventually benefit?
Yes. But it is also important to me to personally invest my own
time in my career growth.
[/quote]
I'm not understanding how that's different from my #3, but
perhaps I phrased it unclearly. When I said the employer sees
enough business value in conference attendance to "facilitate"
employees attending on their own time, I meant stuff like the OP
describes of funding registration fees but not counting it as
paid time. I.e., the company ponies up something that is a cost
to the employer and partially offsets the costs/difficulty to
the employee versus attending solely on their own time and
expense (e.g., employer paying some portion of the cost,
allowing unusual schedule flexibilty, etc.).
Am I missing how that differs from paying partial costs as an
employee benefit? The only obvious distinction I see is if
you're talking about an across-the-board offer that has no
dependence on the work value/relevance of the specific event,
and my assumption would be that the business decision to do that
is still generally based on the same basic calculation of "On
average, enabling our employees to attend voluntary conferences
has X expected value to the company, and it's not worth the cost
of evaluating on a case-by-case basis."
#Post#: 48193--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: Sycorax Date: March 3, 2020, 12:28 pm
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At the company I used to work for, they would pay my salary, but
that money would come from a different part of their budget,
i.e., my regular salary came from the Project A budget, but an
educational/conference day would come from the education budget.
#Post#: 48291--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: lisastitch Date: March 5, 2020, 3:30 pm
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And there are different kinds of "hourly" workers. DD worked
retail--at the beginning of the week, they told her when she was
working. It might be ten hours one week, but 15 the next. I am
nominally "hourly", but my job is "coded". I am in a position
where I am expected to work 40 hours a week. If I don't work 40
hours, then I need to use vacation or sick leave hours to make
up the difference.
My employer will send me to conferences. I usually do
single-day, local ones. They pay my entrance fee, and I am paid
as if I had worked at my branch that day. If I travel for one,
they will pay hotel, per diem for meals, and airfare. (It's
been a while since I've done that and I don't remember the
details). I am also paid for an eight-hour day for each day of
the conference.
Now, if I choose to go to a knitting conference, which is
totally unrelated to my job, they don't pay for it, and I will
need to use vacation to make up my 40 hours.
#Post#: 48299--------------------------------------------------
Re: Expenses plus Salary
By: jinx Date: March 5, 2020, 7:25 pm
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My company has several different variations on this theme. We
have in-house classes which are free to take and we receive our
hourly pay while attending. If our attendance causes our daily
hours to go over eight hours we still get overtime pay. These
classes are not mandatory for everybody but your supervisor may
require you to attend one or more. You can also request to
attend a class.
We are also able to take industry-specific classes chosen by the
company with any tuition paid by the company. We are expected to
do the work (which is online) on our own time.
The company also offers tuition reimbursement. I have never used
this so I don’t know the specifics, but I do know that any
classes are taken on your own time.
Our company also sponsors quality circles. If your quality
circle wins at an internal competition you progress to the next
level which takes place in a different city and lasts for a
week. In those cases we are still paid eight hours a day plus a
per diem for meals. They also pay for the hotel, and everyone (4
people plus an advisor) gets their own room. We are expected to
participate in workshops, team building and possibly classes
while there.
In the case of the OP, the company obviously sees a benefit to
these conferences as they’re willing to pay for them. Therefore,
I believe that the OP should be paid her regular wages.
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