Punch In-Out

Those of you who have time clocks for hourly employees; what is your practice regarding the window of time during which they are allowed to clock in either side of start time and not be penalized? Do you allow them to punch in early to keep from having everybody standing at the clock at start time? In this case, no doubt, at the end of the week, the card shows overtime. How do you handle that, knowing you allowed the early punch but also knowing they were not working? We need to clean this up a bit.

Comments

  • 22 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • Our factory's guys punch in early, but unless a supervisor
    says that work was done - we pay them starting at 7.30 am. And yes, in the afternoon, the guys hang around the timeclocks for five minutes , doing no work, until quitting time at 4 pm- we DO pay them until 4 pm. If a guy clocks in AFTER 4 pm, unless a supervisor says work was done - we pay them until 4 pm.
  • I believe the department of labor regs allow de minimus rounding (for example 10 minutes either way) -- but it must be done consistantly. In otherwords, if the employer rounds down 10 min, the employer must also round up 10 minutes.

    Good Luck!
  • We use a window of 7 min's prior to start time for employees to punch in and avoid being considered tardy. We had a problem with too many employees unable to punch in within that 14 min window and resorted to addt'l time clock locations to remedy the problem It worked nicely and have had no issues for last couple of years. We do not permit employees to punch in early (to avoid the congestion), becuz we're then obligated to pay them for time spent working. It was easier to add time clox than to have suprv's verify that the employee punched in early for convenience and just waited for their shift to begin.
  • I'm finding that some ees are punching in as early as an hour early (even more), then hanging out in the breakroom or wherever they want to. I've not really found anything definitive from DOL that matter of fact addresses punch in. I do find language on 'suffered or permitted to work', etc, but our guys are just punching, not working, then supervisors are writing 40 hours on each time card during periods when no overtime is allowed (always the rule unless assigned to work it). My thought is that if it came down to a DOL inspection and ruling, it would hang on the time cards. (?) No CHADS on the cards, but lots of early punches.
  • For whatever value this may offer---------
    I experienced this very same thing years ago, where ee's punched in up to 1 hr early and socialized while waiting for their starting time. A complaint was filed and DOL ruled that the employer's willingness to permit the "punching-in" was more likely than not permitting the employee to work......... We had to change our practice and enforce the punch-in/punch-out requirements. We were very close to being charged with a willful violation (becuz we permitted the practice to continue for so long), so that practice became history. Good luck with your awkward situation.
  • We use the quarter hour principle, which ever quarter the punch time is closest to is what is used. If an employee is consistently punching in early or out late and thus getting overtime it is handled as a disciplinary action.

    Once the employee finds out that clocking in early or out late results in disciplinary action up to the point where they could be terminated they change their ways very quickly.
  • Hi Don

    I totally agree with Down the Middle. If a wage claim is filed, the DOL will assume that the punch in time means that is when work began. Unless you can prove to them that people weren't working, you are now on the hook for all those extra hours. Trying to prove this a year later to a DOL auditor is almost impossible. We don't allow people to punch more than 10 minutes prior to shift.
  • 4 min before and after the beginning and ending of a shift.
  • Don, like your company, we have a company required "preparation for work period"/time which starts 10 minutes before the hour and last for 10 minutes after the hour with everyone ready to begin physical work activities which have been laid out at 15 minutes after the hour. Everyone hits the physical work at 15 after the hour. Anyone not present for the start of the physical work time of 15 minutes after is questioned for explanation and write-ups. We pay the minutes "because of rounding" 15 minutes before the hour and rolled to 15 minutes after the hour. Since we are willing to pay for the preparation time it is included within our disciplinary situations, daily. Tardy and Attendance are the no#1 & #2 reasons the young workers of today to get terminated. We found a strict understanding of the reason for a starting time and the ability to discipline the start time was critical to the belief that the team must "kick off together in order to win". Nice to see you are at it again to day. Pork
  • We have what we call the "7 Minute Rule." If you punch in 8 minutes early (start time 8:00am), your time is rounded to 7:45. If you punch in 7 minutes early (or less), your time is rounded to 8:00. If you punch in up to 7 minutes after, your time is paid from 8:00. If you punch in at 8 after, your time is paid from 8:15. The same goes for clocking out.

    For lunch, employees go at a variety of times, and they have 30 minutes. So, if they take 23-37 they are charged 1/2 hour. If they take 22, we only dock them 1/4 hour; and if they take 38, we dock them 3/4 hour.

    All overtime must be pre-authorized. Therefore, if someone clocks in too early or too late, they are written up for un-authorized overtime, but they still get paid.


  • My question is how many employers have had a problem with Wage & Hour on this? It is my understanding that they will interview the ee and if they know that they can punch in early but are not expected to work until their shift begins then there isn't a problem.

  • Oooohhhhh, you are in for a nasty surprise....

    Yes, DOL interviews ees. The issue: disgruntled former ees do not always tell the truth...or they get amnesia...suddenly, they remember working every morning without pay....in fact, they pull out calendars with copious notes of all the projects they supposedly were working on during that first hour over coffee.....you would fall out of your chair to read it.

    Active ees may also fall into the amenesia trap when they suddenly realize it could mean a huge back pay check for them. Most ees are good and honest. But there are a lot of ees that bend the truth when it benefits them for a potential payout mandated by DOL. The "hey, it's free money and so-and-so is getting it" seems to promote a lot of inaccurate interviews. The problem: the DOL assumes the ee is right and you have nothing to refute their claims.

    I used to represent many employers in wage and hour matters. If you think this can't happen to you, you are sadly mistaken. My best advice to all of you: don't ever allow ees to clock in so early. It serves no purpose and creates the ultimate proof against you that they were indeed working.
  • We had a past experience with the Department of Labor on comp time. The DOL allowed us to do a "self audit". Apparently they were satisfied with what we presented and did not come in to do an audit themselves. Yes, we paid a number of employees based on a misapplication of comp time by our EVP.

    Yes, the DOL takes the word of the employee.....and a time card will support that claim. Yes, they did interview our employees.

    We pay our employees for all time on the clock. We have told employees if they come to work early that they can visit in the staff lounge.....not sit at their desks. We only allow them to clock in a few minutes before 8 am. And, yes, our employees will stand by the clock waiting for it to change to 5 pm...I guess human nature.

    I believe if "prep time" is needed to do the job that it is considered on the clock.
  • Indeed it is. If the employer requires anything in the way of prep time, it must be compensated; changing into special gear, reading a report from prior shift, having a discussion with the staff one is relieving from prior shift, attending a briefing; but not primping at the mirror or adjusting designer safety glasses.
  • We use the 7 minute window as NaeNae does. If they are not authorized to begin work early but show up 20-30 minutes early and do not intend to start work until the shift begins (7am in our case) they are instructed not to punch in until they are to start work. However, we have several ee's who arrive early (avoid rural schoolbus traffic), punch in @ 6:45a and begin work. Those particular employees arrive that early every day and don't pick and choose based on any time losses during the week for personal time away. We don't disallow or make issue over this because this is a work ethic we like to encourage. In fact, those ee's are "in a groove" already, and it discourages timeclock chitchat on arrival.
  • dlail,

    I'm assuming these employees leave at 3:45?

  • Why assume that? They leave @ 3:30 unless they're working overtime.
  • My concern was that they were not working until 4, not the other way around.
  • [font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 12-12-02 AT 10:36AM (CST)[/font][p]7am to 3:30 shift w/ 30min lunch. . .
  • With a former employer, employees were instructed that they were not to punch in for work any earlier than 15 minutes prior to the start of their shift. We had many employees that would report for work 1-2 hours before the start of the shift but did not punch in since they were not working. If an employee's time showed earlier than what would be the normal start of the shift the supervisor was contacted immediately to determine the reason - usually it was that the employee was requested to start early and they were paid for that time.

    In addition we applied the seven-minute rule as well so if an employee punched in five minutes after the start of the shift, they were paid from the beginning of the shift but if they punched in 10 minutes late, it went to the next quarter of an hour. This was also true at the end of the shift - if an employee punched out five minutes late they were paid only until the end of the shift but if an employee punched out eight minutes late the supervisor was contacted. The employee received the OT pay regardless of whether they were working or not at the end of the shift but if the supervisor informed us they were NOT working, the employee was talked to and a copy of their timecard was kept. Continual late punches without working as handled as a disciplinary issue.

    We were not audited by the DOL during my tenure at this company but we never had any employee complaints.
  • Dandy Don: It reads like you need a time and motion study to ascertain the number of time clocks required at entrance points to allow for a number of employees that can be logically processed within a given amount of time. Once you do that you will be able to clean this mess up real quick and everyone will know you are the HR genius that you are! Pork
  • Without assigning our high-dollar industrial engineering staff to perform a time/motion analysis of bodies moving through the door and distance from that point to the timeclocks; I have on my own determined that 34 people ought to be able to migrate past a modern timeclock, each inserting and removing a piece of cardboard stock in a fifteen minute time period. My observation reveals that it takes one person about 6.5 seconds to perform that exercise, even if they drop the card and the wind moves it across the floor.
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