Hi there,

I am currently trying to pull together some guidelines regarding how we process employees’ leave for jury duty.

At the moment, we simply process this as unpaid and leave it with the employee to claim as much of this back from the courts. However, we would like to look at this and see if there is some small way we could ‘reward’ our employees to ensure that they do not lose out financially (due to the fact that the courts do not normally reimburse a full day’s pay, particularly for our senior staff who are paid a considerable salary).

We are a production based environment, with around 500 employees, c.75% of which work within production, the remainder being our support functions. I also need to consider only offering this benefit to certain groups of employees in order to keep absence costs to a minimum, however am fully aware of the backlash this could cause from those who are excluded.

Has anyone had experience of a similar situation, and how did they approach this? I also need to pull together guidelines to communicate to the entire company, as not all managers handle this the same – eg, some do not notify HR or payroll of this absence and therefore the employee is paid as normal.

Thanks in advance.
Donna