HELP!! Exempt Employees

cwells

I would like to know how other companies manage exempt employees hours? We have some "exempt" employees who work less than 40 hours. At the end of the year, they don't have their 2080 hours. x:-/

HRinFL

We have an Excel spreadsheet that has to be completed on a weekly basis (by Moday afternoon). Fields include start time, end time. We subtract entries in the lunch, dinner, and personal time fields from the daily total. Travel time is not deducted (if in the course of business). Each week, the timesheets are reviewed. If someone is conssistently not meeting the minimum hours, it is addressed individually with that person.

Gillian3

Exempt employees are paid to do their job, not to work 40 hours. If someone can do their job in less than 40 and can do so consistently, perhaps they have a 3/4 or whatever time job and should be paid accordingly.

System

O=* You can either give them more work or tell them to work slower.

James Sokolowski
HRhero.com

Down_the_Middle

cwells:
I would really question the "exempt" status of anyone working < 2080 hrs for an entire year. While # of hrs worked is not an indicator of exempt status, one must remember that the position has to be unique and complex enuf to become exempt and I would question the appropriateness of that status. Moving the person to exempt .7/.8 FTE might be the correct thing to do.............

nietra

Can someone please help me out here.... we have very few exempt employees. Several of them work less than 40 hours a week and the salary has been adjusted to reflect this (but still well above the minimum required)... is there a reason I should be concerned? This question has me wondering if we are doing something wrong?

Down_the_Middle

If the salary has been adjusted to reflect less time needed (presumably not based on actual hrs worked tho), I don't see a problem............

Geno

James Sokolowski may be on to something, you may have stumbled across the need to raise the performance bar a little. That said however, I think most would agree that you are stepping onto a slippery slope when you try to enforce a “minimum hours” of work (by day, week, month or year) with exempt employees. When in doubt, remind yourself what “exempt“ means in the first place, i.e., exempt from overtime regulations – and when you benefit from not having to pay overtime, you inherit the obligation to pay the position(s) in question on a salaried basis.

You can make absence an issue with exempt employees, but it must be cautiously framed as an attendance or performance issue – not an hours-worked issue. A subtle difference I admit, but there is a difference. You can also safely deduct for full-day absences and, assuming the employer has a bona fide paid leave system in place and, depending on the laws in your state, there may be some safe ways to deduct for partial day absences as well. However, it would be ill-advised to have a discussion about a “minimum number of work hours-worked” in reference to the exempt employee because in the hands of a disgruntled employee, you run the risk of losing the exempt status for the position in question as well as other similar positions.

With all due respect to Down-the Middle, and I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that you will find the words unique and complex in any of the Department of Labor’s distinct tests for whether a position is or is not exempt from overtime regulations. Do yourself a favor and initiate a search on the internet using words such as Fair Labor Standards Act, Overtime Pay, and Exempt Status etc. In addition to HRHERO (by far the best) there are a myriad of free help websites dedicated to this issue. I’m attaching the Department of Labor’s to get you started.

[url]http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17a_overview.htm[/url]

Geno
SPHR

cwells

I can't seem to get my managers to get away from "hours" worked and focus on tasks completed. I explained to them that "tracking" hours could make us lose our exempt status. However, they feel that the employee's salaries are based on 45 hours and week and they want them to work 45 hours a week. They said they will continue to track hours unless I could come up with a way to manage hours. :-S