EMPLOYEE HANDBOOK

HOURS & TIME TRACKING

Hours of Work

Employees and contractors of Mellenger Interactive should be available for team collaboration by 9:00am PST from Monday to Friday. This ensures there is time each day when team members in various time zones can work together in real time. Requests for accommodations can be made to your supervisor. If employees or contractors will not be available by 9:30am from Monday to Friday, they should alert the project manager.

Tracking Time

Track your time in Harvest daily. Yes, daily. Don't be that person who tries to remember what they did three weeks ago. Harvest has built-in timers for most operating systems and integrates with BugHerd, GitHub and other platform to make this painless. You can ask Francois for a copy of his "Get Time" script if you want a summary of your github commit messages.

Full-timers should be tracking 7.5 hours a day with a 30-minute unpaid lunch.

Payroll

Employees of Mellenger Interactive are paid twice a month on the 15th and last day of the month. Because of processing time, vacations and sick days are calculated a few days before payday.

Sick Days

Employees are encouraged to stay home when sick. Every employee is entitled to a week's worth of sick days a year. For example, an employee who typically works 30hrs/week would have 30 hours of sick time for the year. You also get 3 unpaid days a year of sick days.

Sick days (hours) are tracked in QuickBooks Workforce and reported just like vacation time.

Please enter your sick days as Mellenger→ Leave→ Sick. For a half day sick day, please record 3.75 hours of sick time; for a full sick day, record 7.5 hours of sick time.

Medical Appointments

We encourage employees to schedule appointments (e.g. doctor, dentist, massage therapy etc) outside of normal working time. Time off for appointments that can only be scheduled during working hours must be approved by the employee’s manager. Employees are expected to make up the time taken for personal appointments. For example, if an employee is away from the office for two (2) hours to attend an appointment, the employee is expected to make up that time during the same week in which the absence occurs.

Statutory Holidays

Employees of Mellenger Interactive receive paid days off on all Canadian national statutory holidays as well as provincial statutory holidays in their Canadian province of residence. For B.C.-based employees, annual statutory holidays are: New Year’s Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, B.C. Day, Labour Day, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Thanksgiving Day, Remembrance Day and Christmas Day.

If an employee wishes to work on a designated stat holiday and take a different day off that is significant to their religion or culture, we have a form that you can fill out at the beginning of each year.

Holiday Substitution

Vacation Time

Taking Time Off

You earn vacation time with every paycheck—typically 4% of your pay, bumping up to 6% after you've been here for 5 years. You can check how much you've got banked on your paystub that is in your QuickBooks Workforce account.

Vacation time is for actual vacations, not extra cash. We don't pay it out unless you're leaving the company. And you've got 12 months to use it before it disappears, so don't be that person who hoards it all year then panics in December.

Before you go: Get your vacation approved first—we're pretty reasonable about it, but we need to make sure we're not all gone at the same time. Then do your teammates a solid and prep a quick handover. Nobody wants to come back to angry emails about things that could've been handled while you were gone.

If you don't have enough vacation days saved up for your trip, the extra time comes off your pay. We understand that there are things more important than work and will try to accommodate your situation whenever possible.

The boring but necessary part: Enter your time off in the system under Mellenger → Leave → Vacation. Half day = 3.75 hours, full day = 7.5 hours.

Now go take that vacation. Seriously. Burnout helps nobody.

Unpaid Leave

Sometimes life happens and you need more time off than you've saved up. Talk to your manager about unpaid leave—we'll work around project deadlines when we can.

If approved, please enter unpaid leave as Mellenger→ Leave→ Unpaid leave. For a half day of unpaid leave, please record 3.75 hours; for a full day of unpaid leave, record 7.5 hours.

Mellenger Days

Occasionally we'll declare bonus paid days off because we're awesome like that. Great for turning long weekends into extra-long weekends or making the holidays feel like actual holidays. When this happens, just log 7.5 hours as Mellenger Interactive > Internal > Mellenger Day.

Winter Shutdown

Mellenger endeavours to close the office between Christmas and New Years while providing Mellenger Days (see above) to employees. However, this is at the discretion of management and is dependent on how busy the company is and upcoming client deadlines.

Note: Employees who join Mellenger Interactive after September 1st will get a pro-rated number of paid days off at Christmas. Their manager will discuss this with each affected employee.

The Legal Stuff

The Employment Standard Act (ESA) sets out several different statutory leaves of absence that can be taken by employees. For a complete list and details regarding each leave, please consult the ESA. When an employee takes a statutory leave of absence, the employee must make management aware by submitting a Form B (Statutory Leave Notice Form), notifying the manager in writing.

Below are the available statutory leaves prescribed by the BC Employment Standards Act (ESA) that require employees to submit a Form B and notify management in writing prior to commencing the leave:

Sick Leave
Personal Illness or Injury Leave
Bereavement Leave
Family Responsibility Leave
Maternity and Parental Leave
Reservists’ Leave

Employees who have been employed by the Business for at least ninety (90) days can take up to five (5) paid days and up to three (3) unpaid days of Sick Leave each employment year based on their start date because of personal illness or injury. These days cannot be carried over into the following year and cannot be used to extend vacation time. Employees must notify their manager in writing as soon as is reasonable before taking the above statutory leaves by submitting a completed Form B. However, if, due to their circumstances, they must commence the leave before notifying management, they must submit the completed Form B as soon as possible.

Mellenger may require that the employee provides evidence reasonable in the circumstances that they were entitled to the leave.

Below are the available statutory leaves prescribed by the ESA that require employees to notify management in writing prior to commencing the leave:

Leave Respecting Domestic or Sexual Violence
Compassionate Care Leave
Critical Illness or Injury Leave
Leave Respecting the Disappearance of Child
Leave Respecting the Death of Child

Employees must notify their manager in writing as soon as is reasonable before taking the above statutory leaves of absence. However, if, due to their circumstances, they must commence the leave before notifying management, they must do so as soon as possible.

EFFECT OF A LEAVE

The purposes of the foregoing leaves, their length, and eligibility criteria vary. An employee may be entitled to more than one leave for the same event. Each leave is separate and the right to each leave is independent of any right an employee may have to the other leave(s).

Please read the ESA for a detailed explanation of your leave entitlements. Unless otherwise required by law, while an employee is on a leave, their terms of employment will remain the same and Mellenger will continue to pay its share of the premiums required to maintain benefits, if any, which were available to the employee prior to the leave.

OTHER LEAVES OF ABSENCE

Mellenger recognizes that there may be times when employees need to take a leave of absence from work for reasons other than those identified above. While it is impossible to define all the circumstances in which an employee will require time away from work, this policy is intended to provide some general guidelines. We will consider, among other things, the following factors when it receives requests for a leave of absence not otherwise legislated:

Previous requests for a leave of absence;
The availability of suitable replacement staff;
The time of year at which the request is made;
The purposes of the leave.

All requests for a leave of absence will be considered on an unpaid basis and without acontinuation of benefits, unless otherwise stated and expressly indicated in writing by Mellenger or required by law.

If an employee wishes to request an additional leave of absence, they must provide at least 30 days’ notice to their manager by submitting a completed Form C (Non-Statutory Leave Notice Form). However, if, due to their circumstances, the employee must commence a leave before notifying management, then they must submit the completed Form C as soon as possible.

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