Are you paying overtime in compliance with recent rulings?
If your company’s employees are working overtime to help you achieve a profitable bottom line, you’re in an enviable position. But paying people overtime is covered by a variety of regulations that raise important fundamental questions, including: Are your employees classified correctly for overtime? Are their hours being tracked and accounted for correctly?
Recently, pressure to comply with overtime compensation requirements has been mounting on companies. In the case of Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. and Merck & Co, their sales representatives made a claim for overtime pay that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York ruled in favor of. The companies appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court but were turned down. This particular situation involved the classification of workers (exempt versus non-exempt) and the compensation for overtime they asserted they were entitled to. This subject can be particularly tricky when classifying types of sales representatives.
The Department of Labor’s enforcement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regarding overtime pay has become an unpleasant surprise for some employers. Having dynamic and easy-to-use timesheet software for attendance tracking can make it easy to keep your employee records current and give you an accurate view of overtime costs.
To avoid getting on the wrong side of the Labor Department, assess your situation and find out if the time and attendance software you use or are considering helps you address these two main criteria:
- Does a particular employee qualify for administrative exemption?
- Are his or her overtime hours being tracked and paid correctly?
It’s extremely useful to have a time tracking system that lets you easily:
- Establish and apply business rules that ensure each worker’s overtime is accounted for correctly, and that pay is accurate
- Integrate time and attendance data into your HR, payroll, and other systems
- View employee hours in real-time and generate custom reports
A key feature of good timesheet software is the flexibility to incorporate both your company’s policies and state and federal wage laws as rules that are applied to overtime accounting. This should be easy for you to configure for groups or individuals, with exceptions as needed. Replicon’s Web TimeSheet Time & Attendance Edition includes all of the above, making it incredibly easy to automate your compliance with overtime pay requirements.
What other features are you looking for in an employee time tracking system? Please leave a comment for us. You can also monitor our response to changes in employee time and attendance regulations by following us on Twitter and joining us on LinkedIn.
