Employee Compensation Policy

Purpose

The College values its employees and is committed to compliance with all applicable laws, rules and regulations for compensating its employees for their work. Generally speaking, compensation at the College can be determined based on a variety of permissible and legitimate non-discriminatory reasons, such as education level, skills, abilities, professional experience, demand for the job position, job performance, nature of position, etc…  Further, the College at all times complies with the U.S. Department of Education’s incentive compensation prohibition as set forth at 20 U.S.C. § 1094(a)(20) and implemented at 34 C.F.R. § 668.14(b)(22), regarding payments based directly or indirectly on success in securing enrollments to any party engaged in any student recruiting activities.  

Scope

This policy applies to College employees. 

Policy

Paydays

Regular employees and student employees are paid on a bi-weekly basis. The College will deduct all payroll taxes and other withholdings as required by law. Paychecks are mailed to the home address of employees or if employees have elected for direct deposit, paychecks are deposited directly into the bank account designated by the employee. For direct deposit, paystubs are available for viewing/printing electronically through myPortal.

Pay Status and Holidays

Regular employees must be in a “paid” status (i.e., receiving pay due for actual hours worked or from accrued vacation or sick time or a combination thereof) prior to and immediately following a College recognized holiday in order to be eligible to receive holiday pay.  If an employee takes leave without pay prior to or immediately following a College recognized holiday, the employee is not eligible for holiday pay.

Work Hours

Columbia College employees are expected to maintain regular work hours to ensure accomplishment of tasks assigned and service to students and campus visitors and so that the College can operate efficiently and effectively.  The normal daytime on-campus work schedule consists of five (5), eight (8) hour days, per week Monday through Friday between the hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., although some duties will cause work hours to vary, which is at the discretion of the supervisor. Some College departments have varying shifts (i.e., custodial, public safety, etc.), requiring employees to work evening and night shifts.  The College work week is defined as Monday through Sunday for overtime calculation purposes.

Employees typically receive one (1) hour for lunch and two fifteen (15) minute breaks, except as exempted by the appropriate Administrative Council member.

Non-exempt employees are required to clock-in and clock-out throughout the day (i.e., arriving to work, lunch, leaving work at the end of the day) and are permitted to clock in five (5) minutes prior to the beginning of their workday and upon their return from lunch. Employees are not permitted to perform work duties before clocking-in or after clocking-out.  If a non-exempt employee does perform work outside of normal working hours, they should immediately report this time worked to their supervisor to ensure they are appropriately compensated for this time.

Overtime Work

Overtime work is time worked beyond forty hours (40) hours in a workweek. Work weeks that include holidays along with hours worked in excess of 40 hours will be compensated at one and a half times an employee’s base rate of pay.  Overtime work shall be the exception rather than the rule and must be approved in advance.  Overtime shall be used after other alternatives have been fully explored, such as rescheduling of priorities, adjusting work schedules, balancing workload peaks, and offsetting excess hours with reduced hours during the work week.

In order to support the operations of the College, an employee may be expected to work additional hours beyond the normal workweek or beyond the employee’s normal schedule, if required to do so by the employee’s department head. A department head also has the authority to require employees to report to work in emergency callback situations and to be available for an on-call basis for normal College operations.  Employees will be compensated appropriately for overtime worked.

The Administrative Council member responsible for the management and oversight shall approve all overtime work requests in advance for non-exempt employees. The immediate supervisor is responsible for scheduling approved overtime.  Non-exempt employees shall not work overtime unless specifically authorized to do so by their supervisor. Employees who do not receive written approval from their supervisor prior to working overtime may be subject to discipline. 

Vacation, sick, jury duty, voting, administrative leave, bereavement leave or other recognized and approved leaves are not considered hours worked and will not be used in the calculation to determine whether or not hours worked in a week are in excess of forty (40) hours.

Supervisors may allow non-exempt employees to take flex time within a single work week. For example, a full-time, non-exempt employee who works forty (40) hours in a week by the end of the day Thursday, may be permitted by their supervisor to take Friday off as flex time. Flex time may not be utilized outside the work week in which it occurred in lieu of paying overtime. For example, a full-time, non-exempt employee who worked forty five (45) hours in a work week cannot take off five (5) hours the following work week as flex time, in lieu of being paid overtime for the previous week in which they worked forty five (45) hours.

Exempt employees do not earn additional compensation beyond their base rate of pay for hours worked in excess of forty (40) per work week. Managers, at their discretion, consistent with College policy may offer flexible working hours to exempt employees. 

Merit Pay Increases

There are no guarantees of merit increases to be provided to employees. However, if merit increases are approved, they will be implemented at the beginning of the new fiscal year, on or after July 1st. The guidelines below will be following for all new employees and current employees moving to a new position:

  • An employee, who is hired between July 1 and December 31, will be eligible for consideration for a merit increase that will be applied in the next fiscal year.
  • An employee, who is hired between January 1 and June 30, will NOT be eligible for consideration for a merit pay increase applied in the next fiscal year.

Questions regarding this policy, overtime or flex time should be directed to the Human Resources Department.

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