Paid Time Off (PTO) (Sick & Personal Leave)

**Effective July, 1, 2022, Northeast Data will be making the below changes to the PTO leave policy. **

PTO (Sick & Personal Leave)

There are no State or Federal Labor Laws that require employers to offer hourly or salaried employees paid PTO leave. However, Northeast Data provides PTO leave days to full-time employees to cover short absences that occur for illness and personal needs. Full-time Employees are required to notify their manager of PTO days within a minimum 1-hour prior to their start schedule, the day of the absence.

• If an hourly or salary employee fails to notify their manager within a minimum 1-hour prior to their start schedule, the employee will receive an incident for the day regardless of a received doctor’s note or paid time available. This day will be considered an unexcused absence.
• Any full-time employee entering employment with Northeast Data, Inc. will only become eligible for PTO leave after their 30-day probationary period at Northeast Data, Inc. All PTO days are based on the Employee Hire Date Anniversary year rotation. All changes to PTO leave will become effective on that date. If an employee has a position change in the company prior to their anniversary date, the PTO leave will not become effective until the anniversary hire date. The employee will not be reimbursed for any PTO leave not utilized. PTO leave is not considered working hours and will not be compensated in overtime.
• If taking an entire day off, PTO leave must be taken in the same increments as your work schedule. For instance, if you are working 10-hours a day the PTO leave needs to also equal 10-hours a day.

Special arrangements can be made with your manager if PTO leave needs to be utilized for other emergencies beyond this policy.

To keep the utilization of PTO leave to a minimum, Northeast Data, Inc. has structured the following Progressive PTO leave Discipline Policy for the PTO time allotments exceeding 2-consecutive working days PTO leave.

If the full-time employee has been issued paid PTO leave for a benefit year and qualifies as an hourly or salary employee:

1. The full-time employee can take paid PTO leave with or without a doctor’s excuse if they have benefit hours available to them (This includes carry over hours.) Paid PTO leave may be broken up into hours and does not have to be taken in a full day block.
2. However, any employee who uses more than 2-consecutive PTO days in a row must submit a doctor’s excuse or manager’s approval or the days will become unexcused and will result in an incident
3. Any unpaid days taken will result in an immediate incident for the day. On the third incident, the employee will be subject to termination from employment. (Hourly time taken unpaid will equal one incident for the day even if the time is minimized to hourly increments.)
4. Northeast Data will allow PTO days to be carried over to the following year and PTO hours may accumulate up to a maximum of 240 hours. The hours of carried over time will be deposited into the category Reserved PTO Bank.
5. Any PTO time that can’t be rolled over can be applied to one or more of the following selections:
   1. Remaining non-eligible rollover time over 240 hours can be applied towards
      1. Employee portion Stipend of Health Care
      2. Employee portion Stipend of Vision Care / or Buy-Up Vision Care
      3. Employee portion Stipend of Dental Care / or Buy-Up Dental Care
      4. Employee portion Stipend of Voluntary Paid Life or Aflac Insurances
      5. Employee 401K contribution without match
6. PTO days are not considered a privilege, therefore, if any employee leaves employment or is terminated with Northeast Data, all PTO days will be forfeited to the company.

Note: Any Northeast Data employee who fails to report to work or leaves work without notification will be subject to the corrective action process.

All employees must report these leaves to their immediate Northeast Data Manager prior to leaving any customer site.

Illness During Work Hours

In the event a Northeast Data employee becomes ill during work hours, which requires the necessity to leave work, they must provide their own transportation home from any Northeast Data work location. Any exceptions to this policy must be discussed with Northeast Data Management prior to making any commitments to provide transportation.

Note: In the event an employee is injured on the job it remains a top priority to arrange transportation either by ambulance or company vehicle to the nearest emergency room for treatment. (See emergency procedures for more information).

Note: Employees must utilize all PTO time/PTO Bank / and Vacation Time prior to being allowed to take unpaid absences and prior to the use of Short Term / Long Term Disability.