Hi Everyone!
I’ve known for quite some time now that the MN legislature has made some changes to employment law that will affect us.
Sara and I have been working for months now on understanding these changes and preparing for them. Here’s what you can expect:
We’ll post these changes in the following places:
- Updated employee handbook and accompanying video explanation. You’ll need to use Docusign to re-sign your acceptance of this handbook within 5 days of receiving it. Failure to sign this within 5 days will result in a conversation with management and will not absolve you from the policy updates.
- Uploaded handbook and video to our company training website
- Email to each employee with new handbook and video
- Posters added to the office bathroom about new policies
- Pinned message in Group Me with summary of changes
Here’s a summary of the changes (PS – they’re all good!)
1) Non-competition agreements are now banned. We never enforced this type of agreement previously, but have always and will continue to have a “Non solicit” agreement. REAL TALK – Sparklean employees are welcome to work for other cleaning companies during or after their employment with Sparklean. They are also welcome to start their own cleaning businesses during or after their employment with Sparklean. What’s not allowed is soliciting (or taking) Sparklean employees or Sparklean clients during or after employment to either another business or their own business.
2) Cannabis is now recreationally legally in MN – so the drug testing laws have changed. Sparklean cannot refuse to hire someone because that person will not submit to a drug test. And Sparklean cannot punish or terminate someone simply because of a positive cannabis test. (Because obviously that stays in your system for several weeks). We’re not punishing anyone for what they do off the job. REAL TALK – In the typical day to day operations of Sparklean, there’s not many instances where we would have someone do a drug test. Discipline and termination decisions are based on a person’s work performance on the job. If any employee is impaired by any substance (alcohol, prescription drugs, other legal or illegal drugs) while they are working, they will be subject to discipline because of their inability to perform their job. There’s a very clear distinction there.
3) Sick and Safe Leave. This law allows for employees to take time off work when they need it for health reasons regarding themselves or their families. It also allows you to be paid for those instances (up to a certain amount).
PTO is increasing! It's officially called "sick and safe time" but we'll refer to it in most of our employee communication as paid time off/PTO. Here's what you need to know.
As of January 1st, you'll start accruing (building up) PTO at the rate of 1 hour of PTO for every 30 hours you work. We'll keep track of this in your scorecard and you'll also be able to see it on your paystubs. (You are required to know how to access both of those documents).
You'll accrue PTO at your cleaning rate AND at your non cleaning rate. And you'll be able to use PTO at each of those rates as well. You’ll be adding and subtracting PTO from your “account” at both of those rates.
You can use PTO in increments of 1 hour. Basically, you could boost your paycheck every time you have 1 hour accrued. You don’t have to wait until you have a whole day’s worth of PTO built up.
Here's the part I want to make super clear. Sparklean's absence and write up policies are NOT changing. And if you can't come to work for a day for whatever reason, you could still get paid for it if you have enough PTO accrued, AND the absence would be tracked in your scorecard the same way it is done now. Just because you have PTO and you get paid for that day, does NOT mean that the absence for that day will not count.
We're excited to be able to offer more PTO, and encourage you to use this extra money for the days when you have requested off from work. Your number of days calling in sick should NOT be increasing because of this change in the law. It simply means your paycheck will be increasing from time to time.
We know that questions may come up and we strongly encourage you to bring those to us. We're here to talk and clarify all of the possible scenarios that could come up because of this change so that we're all on the same page.
4) Nursing mothers. REAL TALK – nothing really changes here. If you’re pregnant or nursing, please let us know and we’ll provide any accommodations that you need!
5) Employer sponsored meetings. It is now illegal to penalize employees for not attending meetings or reading communications in which the management discusses religion or politics. REAL TALK – faith is the foundation of my life and I’m happy to share it IF you ask! But unless you initiate a conversation about faith, we’ll only be discussing work at work.
6) Wage Disclosure protections. This change means that employers are not allowed to require employees to keep their wages a secret. REAL TALK – I thought this was always the case, so nothing changes. We will never ask anyone to keep their pay a secret.