This month’s expert is
Katrina Campbell Randolph, general counsel for training firm Brightline Compliance,
a national employment law and workplace ethics training firm.
In
preventing sexual harassment is standard practice. Most employers know they
must go beyond handing out the policy and therefore implement their
antiharassment policies through training. But the same supervisors who are now
well educated about preventing harassment may not have a basic understanding of
wage and hour law, even though they are likely to have some responsibility for
wage and hour matters and preventing violations.
Human resources staff
may hold primary responsibility for assigning exempt or nonexempt status to an employee,
but the supervisor is usually the one who assigns overtime work and so must
know the difference between exempt and nonexempt employees. The supervisor may
be authorized to establish a “no overtime” rule to control costs but may not
know how to properly enforce that rule. The supervisor may also approve
training requests or decide who needs to attend an external business meeting
but not know how to properly allocate employees’ time for trips and special assignments.
These
supervisors—including team leaders, managers, and senior managers—are not
likely to understand the complex state and federal laws without being given at
least a basic education on wage and hour legal requirements. This training will
ensure that they understand the consequences of their decisions regarding overtime,
work assignments, discipline, and other wage and hour issues. Furthermore, even
basic wage and hour law training for supervisors can help employers avoid
costly and embarrassing government inquiries and lawsuits.
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Industry-Specific Focus
Although wage and hour
training is a good business practice for all employers, those in certain
industries should be especially careful to train their supervisors to
understand overtime and other wage and hour rules because the federal and/or
state agencies are currently focusing on them. For example, the U.S. Department
of Labor (DOL) pays special attention to the following so-called “low-wage”
industries, which represented one-third of the back wages it ordered paid in
2004: agriculture, daycare, restaurants, garment manufacturing, guard services,
health care, hotels, janitorial services, and temporary help.
Further,
commissioner reports that in 2004, it conducted wage and hour enforcement “sweeps”
in seven industries: agriculture, restaurants, garment manufacturing, auto body
repair, real estate, construction services, and courier/messenger services.
Training Basics
What should a basic wage
and hour training course for supervisors cover? At a minimum, it should teach managers
to:
• Know which employees
are classified as exempt (meaning that they are not entitled to overtime) and
which employees are classified as nonexempt (meaning that they must be paid
overtime and compensated for all work performed for the employer).
• Ensure that employees’
work hours are properly recorded and that proper documentation is maintained.
• Understand which
activities of nonexempt employees are counted as hours worked and how to properly
record those activities.
• Avoid job changes and
disciplinary actions that jeopardize the exempt status of an employee.
• Avoid actions that
could be considered illegal retaliation against an employee for demanding proper
wages or complaining about wage and hour violations.
This last training
element is particularly important. In
61 percent of the labor commissioner’s wage and hour investigations in 2004
concerned alleged retaliation and discrimination against employees who
complained or threatened to complain to the labor commissioner about unfair
wage and hour treatment.
Format of Training
What form should this
training take? There are no rules governing how you should do wage and hour law
training. Employers with small supervisory staffs may choose to have their HR
manager conduct informal training. Employers without trained HR staff may resort
to outside seminars or online training. Online training can be efficient and
cost effective because supervisors can take the training at their workstation or
on a computer with Internet access.
Also, regardless of the
training method used, the employer should maintain a record of the supervisors who
have been trained and the dates the training occurred as evidence of the
employer’s good faith effort to ensure compliance with state and federal laws.