Non exempt payment of wages while traveling
Wildsporty
283 Posts
I am new to the forum, however, have been in the Payroll and HR field for a number of years.
I am currently rewriting some policies that were written by a former HR Manager several years ago.
The travel policy I am looking at is paying our non exempt employees for the time they attend conventions or seminars from the time they leave their home until they reach their motel. This is resulting in some rather large overtime payments.
I looked up the FLSA and I am pretty sure that it says we only have to pay for the time corresponding with their daily schedule. Thus if the employee worked from 8-5 that would be the hours we would pay be it on Monday or on Sunday.
How do you have your travel payments written for non exempt employees? I want to be fair, but I need to be fair to both the employee and the company. We already pay a per diem and all the travel expenses and lodging. One person's overtime not counting their regular time for attending a convention was 574.00. This is way too much.
Thanks for your help.
Shirley McAllister
Aim International, Inc.
HR MGR
I am currently rewriting some policies that were written by a former HR Manager several years ago.
The travel policy I am looking at is paying our non exempt employees for the time they attend conventions or seminars from the time they leave their home until they reach their motel. This is resulting in some rather large overtime payments.
I looked up the FLSA and I am pretty sure that it says we only have to pay for the time corresponding with their daily schedule. Thus if the employee worked from 8-5 that would be the hours we would pay be it on Monday or on Sunday.
How do you have your travel payments written for non exempt employees? I want to be fair, but I need to be fair to both the employee and the company. We already pay a per diem and all the travel expenses and lodging. One person's overtime not counting their regular time for attending a convention was 574.00. This is way too much.
Thanks for your help.
Shirley McAllister
Aim International, Inc.
HR MGR
Comments
Hi, Shirley, and welcome to the forum!
I think what you need to be looking for are Federal Travel Regulations. The way I interpret them (and it's been a while since I've had them hanging over my head) is that if a person is driving the car, piloting the plan, skipping the boat, etc. for their travel, they must be paid for all their travel time. If they are a passenger, they are then paid for the hours they travel during their regular schedule.
Let's say my normal hours are 8-5. However, I have an 9 AM flight out of Lincoln. In order to get there, I leave home at 5 AM. From 5-7 AM I am driving myself, so I am paid for that time. I arrive in Lincoln at 7 AM (aren't you supposed to be 2 hours early now?), check in for my flight, and sit for an hour unpaid. At 8, my normal time, I begin getting paid. Let's say I'm flying to Alaska for a very important conference. I'll get there at 5:15 PM my time (let's not get into time changes here), so the last 15 minutes of the flight were unpaid. I then am driven via taxi or shuttle to my hotel, unpaid.
That is how I understand it, and I hope someone will correct if I am wrong. You might look up Pork and e-mail him directly - he has a very good handle on the ins and outs of how to pay travel time.
Good luck!
And that's a great example. I would have a tendency to make it confusing by stating that the shuttle from the Alaska airport broke down and wasn't able to run, so I had to spend 5:30-6:30 (paid) locating a rental car and a half hour (paid) driving myself to the hotel.
This all rests on the "engaged to wait" or "waiting to be engaged" definitions of Work. I tell my employees that if you can sleep (whether it's in a car or on a plane, etc.), then you're not working. With that in mind, whenever possible/feasible, we send an exempt employee along with the non-exempt, and make the exempt drive.
Oh, and you don't have to pay for all the time from home to where ever the travel ends; pay only for the time that it would typically have taken to drive/fly from work to the convention. As an example, say EE is making a day trip to Kansas City. She lives halfway between KC and Columbia, and works in Columbia. It typically takes her an hour to get to work. It also typically takes her an hour to get from home to KC. We would not pay her extra for driving from home to KC; we wouldn't consider this work time for her. If we made her come to work in Columbia first and then sent her to KC for an afternoon meeting, then we'd pay her for two travel hours (Columbia to KC), but her trip from KC to home would be unpaid, since that's usual and customary travel time for her anyway. This day's total travel time would be four hours, but since she drives the same road two hours every day anyway just to get to and from work, it's not considered work time.
You know, as I'm typing this, there's a little alarm going of in the back of my head... ??
PORK
Again, my interpretation, so I hope Abby or Richard or someone else speaks up if I've made a mistake. When travel is a normal part of a person's job, I believe their compensation should reflect pay for their time. Many travel jobs are exempt, so late nights in airports (a la Gene/TN HR) should be built in to some degree, as is being paid for the whole day when you work a couple of hours and then fly to Miami for a conference! But for the nonexempt jobs - especially the ones who travel infrequently - they are (for the most part) traveling to benefit the company and should not be penalized in their pay. That's not to say they should be allowed to milk it, but I think this is one instance where it behooves an employer to be a little more fair to an employee than the law dictates. Just make sure it is clear to the employees and you always follow the same policy for everyone.