Understand Your Salaried Exempt Status

 
Early in my career I worked for an employer that converted the majority of their salaried employees in their accounting department into non-exempt salaried employees.  I remember the mixed emotions of my team.  At the time I was working for a corporate office of a restaurant concept as a benefits/payroll accountant.  Some of my co-workers were very upset that they had lost their exempt status.

Looking back I can now see that the company realized the liability of not classifying its workers correctly.  Its exempt workers did not meet the criteria to be classified as exempt staff.  When we looked at our paychecks there was no change except- that now we were being paid for overtime.  The company meticulously measured their productivity cycles and while we remained fairly busy no worker was over-stressed with their work load.  The experience was great, and the morale was high.

It's important to understand the difference between salary exempt and non-salary exempt. Are you classified correctly?  Be your own advocate and learn how your role qualifies for the exempt status classification.  At the very least be aware of the minimum salary that should be paid for your exempt role for your organization to be in compliance with its federal and state laws. For the guidelines to determine if your role is correctly classified as exempt please use this link:

 http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/

With making the assumptions that your company has classified your role correctly as an exempt worker you should be aware that the Fair Labor Standards Act does not place a limit on the number of hours or days that an employee (age 16 or older) may be required to work. 
 
The norm in most private-employer environments is for an exempt employee to be expected to work a minimum of 40 hours per week and to work as many hours as necessary to complete all their job duties. It's also the norm in some environments such as retail, restaurants, and hospitality to have extended hours of operation and to have the expectations that its exempt team players will work at least 45-50 hours per week if not more.

While there aren't restrictions on the number of hours an exempt employee may be required to work there are some states that have "day of rest" regulations that require employees to have 24 hour consecutive hours of time off during a workweek-or an average over a month's period.  New York and California have these rest regulations.  Given only limited state limitations on hours and days worked this should not be a green light for employers to lengthen their workweek requirements for their exempt employees.

Numerous studies have proven a connection between an employee's fatigue levels and the bottom line for organizations. It has been shown that employees reporting fatigue have also reported a loss of productivity while at work.  Additionally, fatigued employees were more likely to injure themselves when their hours of worked increased.  Having fatigued employees can actually cause injury events to peak.

Another important consideration for an organization is to understand the correlations of requiring longer workweeks and the effect is has to employee morale.  Employers need to fully consider how increasing work loads and increasing work weeks impact their productivity, safety, employee wellness, and its ability to attract and retain quality employees.

Thank you for reading my blog.