4 Common Wage and Hour Pitfalls

Wage and hour laws are a complex problem for every HR manager. Federal laws end where state laws take over, and both are always in flux. It can be a full-time job to keep them all in order.

Compliance with wage and hour laws is critical to your business. Compliance problems can accumulate federal or state penalties over employee wage and hour claims. In the past two years, wage and hour claims have tripled in cost. Employees are more aware of their rights, and attorneys have learned how to take advantage of the system. It makes good sense to learn the basic pitfalls of wage and hour laws.

Workforce management tools take the work out of compliance. Cloud-based solutions such as Swipeclock WorkforceHub include legal updates that keep you covered.

There are four common pitfalls to avoid:

1. Compensable Time

When your employees are working, their time is compensable. It doesn’t matter if your employees are working “voluntarily.” If your employees are on the job, you are required to provide compensation. This means that you need to track every minute your employees are working.

2. Pay Stubs

Employers are not required to provide a pay stub to their employees by the federal government. Some states require you to provide a pay stub with your payroll. Regardless, you are required to provide them to your employee when they ask for one. This means you need to keep secure, accurate records. Swipeclock WorkforceHub includes employee self-service to help with this problem.

WorkforceHub employee self-service allows employees access to their payroll history including pay stubs, historical time and attendance, and schedule. Employees can access their self-service portal any time and have all their data at their fingertips.

3. Compensation For Breaks

There are regulations that dictate when an employer must pay for meal and rest breaks. Generally speaking, employers must pay for meal breaks if they are less than 30 minutes. Employers must pay for break times that are less than 20 minutes. Most meal breaks are at least 30 minutes or more and are not paid. The critical point here is to measure and record meal breaks so that you have a defensible record of time and attendance.

Swipeclock WorkforceHub includes intelligent clocking to assure that your employees are clocking in and out at the right times. It also assures you have a complete record for audit protection.

4. Off The Clock

Employers appreciate when an employee goes the extra mile. The problem is that these “off the clock” moments are actually compensable. Assuming work is off the clock comes with a twist; it is covered by law and you are required to pay for it. The way to avoid this pitfall is to assume all time is compensable, and to measure it accordingly.

Swipeclock WorkforceHub provides employee portals to help deliver information to employees about policies and procedures. Helping your employees understand the regulations, and letting them know that you are aware, too, is a good measure toward common understanding.

Swipeclock offers WorkforceHub, the unified Human Resources portal that makes it easy to optimize the performance of your supervisors, employees, and organization. WorkforceHub includes TimeWorksPlus, TimeSimplicity, and TimeWorks Mobile. Onboarding, benefits enrollment, performance reviews, and employee engagement have also been added. WorkforceHub is designed for busy employers who need to streamline scheduling, automate time and attendance tracking, maintain regulatory compliance, and lessen labor costs.

We can get you up and running with WorkforceHub immediately. Contact us today to request a demo.

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