As you know, on November 22nd, a federal judge in Texas issued an injunction, temporarily stopping the new Department of Labor guidelines related to the exempt minimum salary standard from going into effect. See a summary here. This is only a pause in the timeline, and right at the proverbial 11th hour.
A significant number of businesses are using this added time (and the impending regulations themselves) as an opportunity to shore-up their wage and hour practices. Remember, for many wage and hour violations, fixing the problem may alert employees that they’ve been inappropriately handled by the company. (Get more data in the webinar Wage and Hour Best Practices Given the On-Again, Off-Again DOL Regs)
Some examples of what businesses are focusing on during this pause:
Tweaking Specific Processes It’s likely you have a list of changes, whether big or small, you would like to make to your wage and hour processes. Given the constant discussion about the new guidelines, now is an excellent time to tackle those needed changes. Business leaders are as warm as they’ll ever be to a conversation about needing new software or resources. Whether your payroll software does auto-punching (yikes!), your software doesn’t have the required audit trails, your time cards lack compliant language, or your pay stubs are missing required fields, HR leaders are working with their operations teams and even with their payroll providers to make the needed changes.
Correcting Misclassified Employees Every employee who follows the news (whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, or a major network) is getting an education in Wage and Hour 101 this month. Employers who believe they may have misclassified some employees as exempt have an opportunity to adjust that classification as part of the overall changes to their organization that are taking place due to the new regulations.
Refreshing Leaders on Best Practices You never want your employees to know more about wage and hour guidelines than your leaders do. The consequences for wage and hour missteps are huge. Absolutely huge. Warn leaders about saying things like, “Do whatever it takes to get this project done,” and other statements found to be thinly veiled instructions to employees to breach wage and hour laws. Do your leaders know how to address an employee who is working overtime due to poor productivity? Do they know that they cannot move non-exempt tasks away from the newly non-exempt employees and give these tasks to exempt employees?
Take advantage of the publicity around wage and hour concerns to get critical practices modernized and compliant. Join us for the webinar Wage and Hour Best Practices Given the On-Again, Off-Again DOL Regs. We’ll go into depth regarding specific strategies businesses are using to take advantage of this gift of time!
