May I round when computing the number of hours of paid sick leave I must provide an employee with an irregular schedule or the number of hours I must pay such an employee for each day of expanded family and medical leave taken?

As an employer, generally, yes but with great caution and should be consulted with an attorney. It is common and acceptable for employers to round to the nearest tenth, quarter, or half hour when determining an employee’s hours worked. But if you choose to round, you must use a consistent rounding principle. You may not, for instance, round for some employees who request leave but not others. For the purposes of computing hours under the FFCRA, you may round to the nearest time increment that you customarily use to track the employee’s hours worked. For instance, if you typically track work time in quarter-hour increments, you may round to the nearest quarter hour. But you may not round to the nearest quarter hour if you typically track time in tenth-of-an-hour increments.

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As an example, the number of hours of paid sick leave for the first employee discussed in Question 81 is computed as 14 days times 1,200 hours divided by 183 calendar days, which is 91.803 hours. If you typically track time in half-hour increments, you would round to 92 hours. If you typically track time in quarter-hour increments, you would round to 91.75 hours. And if you typically track time in tenth-hour increments, you would to round to 91.8 hours.