Yesterday’s Advisor featured BLR Legal Editor Susan Prince, JD’s take on the Department of Labor’s (DOL) wage and hour audits. Today, Prince’s 10 strategies for reducing wage and hour exposure, plus an introduction to SourceCast Sponsored (Free!) Webinar.
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Prince’s 10 Strategies
The following are 10 great strategies to prevent or handle a wage and hour investigation, says Prince:
- Avoid unfair compensation practices. Make sure employees are compensated in a consistent manner. If an employer’s pay practices are consistent, complaints are less likely to arise, and the employer will be in a better situation if the DOL does launch an investigation.
- Understand the regulations. It is important that employers take the time and make a concerted effort to understand and familiarize themselves with the FLSA. It is the law, and if employers fail to follow the law they may face litigation or a DOL audit.
- Train managers. Train managers so they are fluent in the language of the FLSA.
- Analyze state vs. federal law. Determine whether the state’s wage and hour laws conflict with federal law; then follow the law that is most beneficial to the employee.
- Pay past overtime due. If it is determined that an employee is wrongly classified as exempt, the employer should determine how many overtime hours the employee has worked in the past 2 years, then pay the employee the overtime due. The employer should also have the employee sign a release to free the employer from further liability. Paying past overtime due to employees now will be far less expensive than paying them in a DOL settlement.
- Respond to internal complaints expeditiously. If an employee files a wage and hour complaint internally, the employer should take it seriously. Since many investigations are prompted by an employee’s complaint, employers might be able to prevent an investigation by addressing an employee’s initial internal complaint.
March 24 deadline! Get ready, join us for a free interactive webcast Get Ready for OFCCP’s New Regulations Now!. Learn More
- Seek compliance assistance from the DOL. Various compliance tools and information are available on DOL’s website.
- Conduct a self-audit. Employers can hire attorneys to audit their companies–or they can do it themselves before the DOL initiates an investigation. Conducting a self-audit helps ensure compliance with federal and state laws.
- Cooperate. Employers should demonstrate their willingness to cooperate with DOL investigators and to adjust their procedures and policies as necessary to avoid violations in the future.
- Keep accurate records. Employers are required to make, keep, and preserve employees’ records, including wages earned and hours worked, for a specified period of time. Although there is no particular form for the records, they must include certain identifying information about each employee and accurate data about the hours worked and wages earned.
Wage and hour, always challenging, and here’s another HR challenge— U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs’ (OFCCP’s) new disability and veterans regulations take effect March 24, ready or not. Fortunately we’ve got a free (thanks to sponsor SourceCast) webcast that will explain it all—Federal Contractors Get Ready for Change! What OFCCP’s New Disability and Veterans Regulations Mean for You.
Join us for this free webcast, and we’ll show you how the new regulations have changed contractor’s obligations to recruit veterans and individuals with disabilities, as well as new requirements for affirmative action plans, data collection and recordkeeping. Most importantly, this webinar includes step-by-step information on what you need to be doing to ensure you do not get caught unprepared.
Register today for this interactive webinar. Find out more
New OFCCP Regs! Join us for a free interactive webcast—Get Ready for OFCCP’s New Regulations Now!. Register Now or Get More Information
By participating in this interactive webcast, you’ll learn:
- What is happening at OFCCP?
- Upcoming deadlines.
- Changes to the rules governing Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.
- OFCCP’s new utilization goal and analysis requirements.
- New rules for outreach and recruiting individuals with disabilities
- New disability data collection and recordkeeping requirements
- How and when to solicit disability self-identification
- Changes to the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA)
- The 8% hiring benchmark (or how to set your own benchmark)
- Who is a protected veteran?
- How to list job openings
- Complying with the new veterans’ outreach and recruitment rules
- Soliciting veterans’ self-identification
- New veterans’ data collection and recordkeeping requirements
- How to prepare for the March 24, 2014 compliance deadline (and beyond)
Register now for this free event.
February 26, 2014
2:00 p.m. (Eastern)
1:00 p.m. (Central)
12:00 p.m. (Mountain)
11:00 a.m. (Pacific)
Approved for Recertification Credit
This program has been submitted for 1 recertification credit hours toward recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI).
Join us on February 26—you’ll get the in-depth Get Ready for OFCCP’s New Regulations Now! webcast AND you’ll get all of your particular questions answered by our experts.
Train Your Entire Staff
As with all BLR/HRhero webcasts:
- Train all the staff you can fit around a conference phone.
- You can get your (and their) specific phoned-in or emailed questions answered in Q&A sessions that follow each segment of the presentation.
ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER:
Susan Schoenfeld, J.D., is a Senior Legal Editor for BLR’s human resources and employment law publications. Ms. Schoenfeld has practiced in the area of employment litigation and counseling, covering topics such as affirmative action, disability discrimination, wrongful discharge, sexual harassment, and general employment discrimination. She has litigated numerous cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals, state court, and at the U.S. Department of Labor. In addition to litigating employment cases in state and federal court, she provided training and counseling to corporate clients regarding employment-related issues.
Prior to entering private practice, Ms. Schoenfeld was an attorney with the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., where she advised federal agencies, drafted regulations, conducted inspector training courses, and litigated cases for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, the Directorate of Civil Rights, and the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Ms. Schoenfeld received her undergraduate degree, cum laude, with honors, from Union College, and her law degree from the National Law Center at George Washington University.
ABOUT YOUR SPONSOR:
SourceCast is the leading provider of Web-based HR compliance solutions with unsurpassable results. SourceCast specializes in providing Human Resources with hassle-free job distribution, reporting, and local outreach. With the inception of VETcentral, our VEVRAA solution, and VOCcentral, our Section 503 solution, SourceCast is able to build upon a 100% flawless audit success rate, 11 million jobs to date—delivered to career centers nationwide, first-in-class product features, some of which the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCCP) has adopted as new mandatory regulations, the only solution guaranteeing local outreach, and 700 committed, satisfied customers.
Originally, SourceCast provided compliance through our two main flagship products: VOCcentral and VETcentral. Recently, we added Divercity Outreach to the fleet, our unique local outreach tool. With this latest addition, we are proud to announce that we now provide an all-encompassing compliance solution for Section 503 and VEVRAA. SourceCast provides each product with a commitment and excellence, paired with a flawless audit success rate in order to deliver the only solution that accurately addresses OFCCP compliance requirements.