Three HR lessons to educate you in the middle of the week.
The US Department of Labor is one of those agencies that have been fully funded during the shutdown. Their activity continues, thus it is important to not let your adherence to the FLSA lapse. My friend, Jon Hyman, publishes a weekly curation of articles he read and I use it as a source for things I feel I should read and write about. Thank you Jon for this great work. In his most recent issue (WIRTW #537) Jon posted several articles links to blogs dealing with the FLSA. There are three I thought I should pass on to you.
First up is one by Robin Shea. She wrote Breaking News: New Overtime Regulations are on the way! I have written about this as well. Robin says there is some definitive work now being done on revising the wage level that will be used to determine, as a first step, whether someone can be classified as exempt from overtime or not. This is going to be a big deal. The last I heard it may be in place in March, but we will have to wait and see.
The second post is by Bill Pokorny. He asks Are your bonuses really discretionary? The reason for the question is that non-discretionary bonuses paid to nonexempt employees must be used to calculate the regular rate of pay in the calculation of overtime pay. When the FLSA revisions are published they will create a new group of nonexempt employees, employees who may have regularly received bonuses and will now have to be paid overtime on those bonuses. This is very important information.
The third post is by Courtney Bru. She wrote What Exactly is ‘de Minimis’? Working Off the Clock in World of E-Mail, Texts . This will be a major issue with a whole new group of newly nonexempt employees who, in many cases. were used to working after hours as exempt employees. Tracking that time and teaching them new rules may be a challenge. You need to make sure you read and understand this.
That ends the lesson for the day.
