Wage and hour missteps are common—but that doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly damaging to employers. Today, here are four you should avoid at all costs, plus an introduction to a comprehensive 1-day seminar that will answer all of your California wage and hour questions once and for all.
1. Providing inaccurate or falsified payroll records to the government
Obviously, providing falsified records is not a wise practice. However, many submitted records are merely inaccurate. In fact, most experts state that probably no organization has perfect pay records. But there are common problems that you can watch out for:
o Clock-in and clock-out procedures—especially time-rounding rules that favor the company and not the employee.
o Automatic deductions for meal periods. Problems tend to occur when an employee works through part or all of the meal period, but the time tracking system deducts the time. For example, if employees are taking phone calls during lunch, they are probably working.
o Changes made by supervisors and not checked or initialed by employees.
2. Failing to keep accurate records of hours employees worked
Records must be detailed. For example, noting “8 hours” worked in a day is not enough. Note time in, time out for lunch, time in from lunch, and time out at the end of the day. Have employees sign that their time card or other record is “an accurate and full accounting of hours worked for the period.”
3. Failing to pay for all hours employees worked
This tends to arise when employees take work home or work before clocking in or after clocking out.
One important point: If employees do work extra hours, you have to pay them, even if you have specified that they can’t work extra hours without permission. (You can discipline them for doing the work, but you still have to pay them for it.)
One new twist here is the rise of smartphone/e-mail use outside of work hours. If nonexempt employees are answering phone calls or dealing with e-mail off hours for more than a very small (the law calls it “de minimis”) amount of time, they are probably working and need to be paid for those hours.
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4. Improperly classifying employees, resulting in the underpayment of wages and fringe benefits
Misclassification (calling employees “exempt” who should actually be classified as nonexempt) is a sticky problem. There is a lot of grey area in the supervisory ranks.
The general rule is that it’s better to sort out these difficulties before work begins. After the fact, there are lawsuits, class actions, and other expensive challenges to be dealt with.
If you realize you have misclassified one or more workers, talk to a qualified California employment law attorney before taking any action—you don’t want to compound the problem, and there are some ways to fix this that are legally much saf