"150% 2/3rds Funeral Leave Pay". As far as I know, this pay code is still in play at a large corporation. It is apparently the intersection of two pay polices. One that says you get 2/3rds of your pay if you need to take leave to attend a funeral and another policy that pays time and a half if you are scheduled to work a schedule not your normal schedule. Yes, even if you were actually on leave. Apparently it was still in use...Why? Because everybody knew that if you had to go to a funeral you changed your schedule with a buddy and you got your full pay (actually 99.9 % of it) and he or she got time and half. On account of the funeral... Well, I suppose if it was your buddy's funeral and he failed to show up for your scheduled time he would only make 99.9% of his normal pay too. Which isn't half bad when you are 100% dead or not actually working.
You can tell a lot about a company from their pay codes and rules. More so than their pay policies in fact. I've said for many years that pay policies don't put dollars in people's hands; timecards and lines of code do. And in many companies there is still a lot of interpretive dancing going on when various time card situations appear and a human operator makes a judgment call as to how to code it for payroll. In a 100% code driven system the same timecard scenario should result in the same pay coding, dollars and credit towards or against benefits. This is usually verified, at least at the inception of the system, with test scripts. You can tell a lot about a company by their test scripts...or lack of them.
A comprehensive test plan made up of individual test scripts puts the company's money where their pay policy mouth is. Once you get beyond the easy stuff like simple overtime you need to dig into all the intersections and combinations of policies that A) Could happen and B) Could be coded or punched. Leave and exotic paid time off benefits are often the most challenging to simulate as well as develop airtight code based rules solutions for. I have found in the world of Kronos Timekeeper, however, that companies that maintain current test scripts (and have a Kronos test system to work in) tend to have the most streamlined and functionally capable automated pay and scheduling rules. The ones that don't keep such real-world testing in mind seem to have lower expectations for their payroll system and are much more tolerant of having to make manual adjustments on a regular basis.
A good test script is generally narrow in scope as to the scenario it is testing. The sum of the entire test scripts assembled into a comprehensive test plan, however, is a statement on the overall effectiveness of the timekeeping and pay system. In many states, once you start paying or benefiting an employee at a more favorable level THAT is their new compensation deal. Even if it was the result of an unintended confluence of pay rules executing pay polices that seemed good and fair individually. I can't prove it but what do you think came first in the funeral leave example above-someone creating the pay code ahead of time to accommodate a pay policy they wanted to execute, or after the fact to track something that was actually happening and now would continue?
If you have interesting pay codes and/or an interesting confluence of pay rules please send them to me... I promise to keep your name and company confidential although I'm sure the people benefiting from them already know!
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