Do/Should we pay?

nietra

Our company services persons with mental illness and/or mental retardation. We have a sheltered workshop where each client is assigned a service coordinator for work related issues. Our clients also have service coordinators for their residential supports.

We have clients who call our vocational service coordinators at home (their number is in the phone book). It is in their crisis plans that they are to call the residential coordinator for any emergency. The vocational service coordinator reminds the client of this and the phone conversation is less than 5 minutes long.

The service coordinator put this on her time card each time it happens. A large majority of the time this creates an overtime situation.

How would you handle the situation and are we required to pay for this?

juju

I can't cite any wage & hour regs but if the coordinator just refers the client to someone else in a minute-long conversation, it seems ridiculous to expect to be paid. She is not providing a service to the client (if she were, it would be a different story). To me, there is no difference between this and being called at home when sick, on vacation, etc. to ask where a particular file or phone number is, for example. I would never expect to be compensated for providing such a small bit of info.

If the employee is particularly annoyed about receiving these calls, perhaps she should elect to have an unlisted number, get caller ID, or screen calls. I also think clients should continue to be reminded to follow their crisis plans and maybe some of these instances can be prevented.

marc

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 12-23-04 AT 04:23PM (CST)[/font][br][br]I would first review job descriptions with the idea that these vocational service coordinators might be exempt from overtime. There is probably a wide gap between needing some information or advice and an emergency. If they do no meet the requirements for being exempt, I would think you would want to encourage a good relationship between these clients and the coordinator. A few minutes here and there may not seem like much, but a few calls a night, a few nights a week, and suddenly you have some time to capture. With some judicious management, these individuals could flex out some time during the same payweek and avoid the OT, unless the calls happened on the final night of your payweek and the individual did not have an opportunity to flex out the time.

If that were the case, then so be it - I would pay them.