Exempt/Non-exempt
bbeisly
1 Post
I am a Training Specialist for a large national company. Recently, each of the trainers in our Learning and Development group was reclassified as non-exempt employees. Our HR Manager advised us that the company has to comply with a federal law that requires companies to reevaluate exempt employess to determine if they should be classified as non-exempt. I cannot find this federal law researching the Web, so I'm asking for some direction. It's hard for me to understand why we have been reclassified to non-exempt because the overtime pay will quickly accumulate. We were advised the change would take effect at the beginning of the next pay period.
Comments
Your HR Manager is referring to the Fair Labor Standards Act. In order to be classified as an Exempt employee, you must meet the test for the executive, administrative, professional, computer employee, or outside sales exemption. The criteria can be found on the Department of Labor's website:
http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/hrg.htm
There is no recent law that says companies must re-evaluate their employees. A couple of years ago DoL updated the regs, changed the weekly minimum salary to $455, etc. Many companies chose that time to re-evaluate their employees.
I know some companies re-evaluate yearly or every other year to ensure the jobs hadn't changed.
[quote user="bbeisly"] I am a Training Specialist for a large national company. Recently, each of the trainers in our Learning and Development group was reclassified as non-exempt employees.[/quote]
I went over classifying trainers once before with a company. My opinion is that most exempt classroom type trainers are improperly classified. No law forces reclassification, but every company is well served by re-examining classification on a regular basis. Hourly is actually better for the employee if there was no net change on pay for the same hours worked.