Remote and hybrid workers present wage and hour compliance challenges for employers managing hourly workers not exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act's (FLSA's) overtime rules, said Brenda S. Kasper, SHRM-SCP, speaking June 15 at the SHRM Annual Conference & Expo 2022 in New Orleans.
Employers that don't set and enforce policies on where and when nonexempt employees can work risk expensive class-action lawsuits that can combine small wage and hour mistakes into big liability packages, said Kasper, founding member of the law firm Kasper & Frank LLP in San Diego, during the concurrent session "Managing Employees in the Virtual/Hybrid and In-Person Worlds: Avoiding Wage and Hour Pitfalls."
While HR teams can never eliminate all overtime risks around fully remote and hybrid work arrangements that mix onsite and offsite work, they can take steps to lower the odds of being sued by employees or of facing enforcement actions brought by regulators.
A Multitude of State and Local Laws
Many states and localities have statutes that go beyond the federal FLSA, and the law deemed most favorable to employees generally will apply, Kasper said.
The local/state exempt-pay threshold for crossing from overtime-nonexempt to overtime-exempt is higher than the federal threshold in many states and some localities, meaning more workers qualify for mandatory overtime pay.
State and local statutes can also be more generous to workers on issues including minimum wages, mandatory paid and...
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