Time Sheets for Exempt Employees
942831
10 Posts
Is there a legal requirement as to how exempt employees show actual hours worked on their time sheet? i.e., if they work only 5 hours one day, do they show as 5 hours on the time sheet -or- do they show 8 since they will be paid for the entire day).
NOTE: We are located in the state of Ohio.
THANK YOU!
Comments
Now: that being said, I do require "time keeping" for a certain set of managers in remote locations, so that, we can legally validate the presence of the manager during times or events, alarms, adverse actions or conditions at the remote site, proof that the manager as the senior leader in the work site who is called upon to witness or give written testimony. We use the manual time clock and collect the cards for record keeping; but we do not use the time cards for calculation of compensation. The remote location manager uses the time cards to collect time worked by all employees. T hey transmit time worked on all employees by fax. Pork
Currently we have exempts signing time sheets with actual hours worked which I learned was a no no when I was first put in charge of HR. Long standing system that previous HR Mgr went along with so I thought it OK.
Am I suggesting the right thing?
A department head and VP were required to sign off on each form and this enabled them as well to accurately check their record of vacation and sick as well as FMLA.
We had several audits and the process, once explained, was never criticized. All that is required is an HR manager who can recite to the auditor why it is done. Piece of cake. You will not lose exempt status if your rationale serves a legitimate company purpose and you can recite it. It's not a matter of convincing a government employee that you ought to be able to track exempt time. On the other hand, if you use any system of tracking time to dock exempts, that's where your problem will surface in an audit.
Although disclaimers are fine, HR doesn't have enough reams of paper to type out disclaimers and explanations of why we do everything we do. When the first investigator asked me "Why do you track time this way?" my question to her was, "Can you tell me some reasons why we should not?" That put the ball in her court and she went down her short list, primarily the subject of docking time. I countered with our reasons and she went on to other business.
Every other company I've worked for, you just had a blanket 40 hr entry and the only thing that would change was if you had vacation or a sick day.
[url]http://www.hrhero.com/hrquicklist.shtml[/url]
Click on "You're deciding whether an employee is exempt" and go to page 132 to "Managing salaried exempt employees." Be sure to click on the blue box at the bottom of the page, which will take you to a good article from New York Employment Law Letter.
Modesty prevents me from mentioning that I was the lead writer of HR Quick List. Oops - it just slipped out. x:-8
James Sokolowski
HRhero.com
I still don't get that if a normal work week is 40 hrs, you work 70hrs but on Wed. you call in sick, that you still have to use a PTO day even though as an exempt employee, you've satisfied the required hours that your pay was based off of.
Of course, calling in sick can affect other policies, such as a strict attendance policy or point system.
You're looking for a short answer to an FLSA question??? 8-| And you won't even look at my book!?! xx( And you won't click on the web pages that Christy created just hours before giving birth?!? x:o
Well, off the top of my head I'd say that the white-collar exemption gives you a lot of leeway in managing employees. In fact, you can exercise quite a bit of control over the work hours of a white-collar exempt employee. But this could be used against you if the employee or DOL claimed that he really was nonexempt. The DOL says you can do the following things without destroying an employee’s exemption, though you might want to check with a lawyer to be sure that courts in your state would agree.
➣ Required work hours — The DOL says you can require exempt employees to work specific hours, obtain permission before taking time off, and even clock in and out.
➣ Leave by the hour — When an exempt employee misses a day or partial day for any reason, most courts would allow you to reduce his sick leave or vacation time by that amount. But if you allow employees to cash in unused leave, some courts would consider that to be compensation that can’t be cut for a partial day’s absence.
➣ Overtime pay — You may be able to give overtime pay to employees without destroying their white-collar exemption. DOL regulations allow you to give compensation in addition to a salary, and an increasing number of courts have said this includes overtime pay.
➣ Comp time — Some courts have said you can give comp time to white-collar exempt employees without destroying their exemption — similar to giving them overtime. It can be on a regular basis or occasionally. But if you’re in the private sector, you never can give comp time to nonexempts in lieu of overtime pay.
➣ Paying partial salary during beginning and ending weeks. Failing to pay an employee's full salary in the first or last week of employment isn't considered inconsistent with the salary basis of payment. In those weeks the payment of a proportionate part of the employee's salary for the time actually worked will meet the requirement.
Like I said, that's just off the top of my head. :oo
James Sokolowski
HRhero.com
My non-lawyer read betw/ the lines comes out like DD: absent some specific state issue, FSLA appears to make no prohibition of such tracking. In this context, FLSA is only concerned with what you pay people, not how you log their presence. And, of course, time tracking of exempts can be useful in some circumstances.
Now, if other facts lined up such that it was a close call in an FLSA audit, obsessive time tracking might not be favorable evidence. But it does not seem substantial, and certainly not evidence per se of non-exemptdom.
But please correct if I am wrong.
Steve
Steve McElfresh, PhD
Principal
HR Futures
408.605.1870
JAMES HOW DID "DANDY DON" GET TO KEEP HIS POSTINGS AND TRANSFER THEM FROM ONE COMPANY TO A NEW COMPANY. HE WILL REALLY CATCH THE EYE OF ALL THE NEW READERS AND HIS WORDS MIGHT CARRY MORE WEIGHT THAN THOSE OF US WHO ARE MORE CONCERNED FOR OUR PRESENT COMPANY AND THE AMOUNT OF HR TIME SPENT TEACHING AND LEARNING FROM THIS FORUM.
MAY EVERYONE HAVE A BLESSED DAY, AND MAY GOD CONTINUE TO BLESS AMERICA and OUR MILITARY FORCES, AND SISTER TERESA, TOO (P.S. you should open your HRero Profile, the Sister Teresa would be more believed). PORK
At my office we do track exempt time - because we have to apply the billable time against projects - sort of like an engineer or architect's time against a client. We also track PTO via time sheets. This in no way is used for payroll info - just project management and cost accounting - and it costs my company dearly to maintain all this data. Our client billing is then generated from the time spent on the project. We keep the time sheets in a totally separate department from payroll.
We normally don't have too much trouble with our exempt level people as they typically work over 40 hours a week, so it's not a problem if they don't come back for a couple of hours on a seminar day. Most of our exempts are pretty good at policing themselves. They know what has to be done and accomplished in their jobs and they are held accountable for getting the work done.
If we do, by chance, notice that an exempt person typically is not working a full schedule week after week, it is called to their attention...but most of the time you can tell by the lack of work they are getting accomplished.