There’s still a lot of uncertainty across industries about when you must pay your employees for training hours. Businesses know that underneath the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) they’re responsible for compensating their employees for all the hours they’ve worked. But when does training fall underneath the umbrella of “hours worked”? Does it apply to all training? And is there ever a case where not paying an employee for training is acceptable? Continue reading to learn more.
When Is It Mandatory to Pay Employees for Training?
According to FLSA regulations, an employee’s time attending a meeting, seminar, lecture, or training must be counted as “hours worked” if it is during regular working hours. It need not be compensated if it meets the following criteria:
- The employee is attending the training outside of the employee’s regular working hours.
- The employee’s attendance to the training is completely voluntary and not mandated by the employer.
- The meeting, seminar, lecture, or training the employee is attending is not directly related to the employee’s job.
- The employee does not perform productive work while attending the meeting, seminar, lecture, or training.
Benefits to Compensating Employees for All Types of Training Anyway
Here’s the real caveat. Even if every training you offer may not require you to pay your employees under federal law, you should still consider the benefits of paying them for their training efforts anyway. Here are two important benefits to consider for paying your employees for all their training efforts.
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Highly Motivated and Highly Skilled Workforce
If you offer training opportunities where employees don’t have to sacrifice their regular work hours (hard-earned income) to attend, it’s a win-win for everyone. Even if you’re only paying them their usual salary or hourly rate, by paying them, you’re investing in them and their skill sets. And employees will apply their newly acquired skill sets directly back into the betterment of your organization, ensuring it runs more efficiently. And if you pay fair rates, you’ll also be able to be more selective with who attends your more specialized training programs (i.e., leadership development), as well as have higher expectations for completion requirements (i.e., where a passing score is above 85%).
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More Loyal Employees and Lower Attrition Rates
If you invest in developing your employees, they’ll want to stick around, and they won’t start looking for opportunities elsewhere. They won’t want to go anywhere else for learning and development opportunities if you’re providing those opportunities, especially if they don’t have to spend their own money or sacrifice time away from earning money at work to pursue such learning opportunities.
Even if you don’t pay employees with a salary or hourly wages for their training efforts, you can still offer some type of incentive for them to pursue learning and development opportunities. You could offer discounted rates on courses they took to get a certification, or offer other programs within your organization that have advancement opportunities and opportunities to build in-demand skill sets (i.e., leadership development or cross-training opportunities).
At the end of the day, there is no real downside to paying your employees for training, only lasting benefits.