Should we pay an exempt more for extra work

GLC

We have an exempt employee who works in our Finance dept. and has been given a special billing assignment that may require a few months to complete. The problem is her supervisor thinks the company should pay her extra because she will need to do this extra work at night. She would normally accrue comp time for time worked over 8 hrs. per day. We have a counseling dept. where some employees are eligible for incentive pay if they are meeting expectations. These ee are also exempt and are eligible to do extra work, outside there regular 8 hours and get paid for it. The Finance Mgr. thinks her ee should be treated the same way. We have never done this outside the counseling dept. We started the incentive pay in the counseling program was to reward performance. I wanted to get an outside objective opinion. Any comments would be appreciated.

Gillian3

These are the factors that you have to work with. Normally, exempt employees are paid to do their job and extra work is extra work - no pay. There are times when it is reasonable to pay extra, when a project demands a lot of extra work for an extended period, and without the extra pay, the employee makes less money than the non-exempts who work for them. this is fairly common and the extra pay is often straight time, not the overtime rate. You also need to consider the fact that the supervisor wants to pay extra, the fact that you may not want to set a precedent outside of the counseling department, and that maybe comp time is intended to cover these situations. You should also consider basic fairness - how reasonable is to expect an employee to work extended hours on a long term basis without remuneration. That doesn't get you an answer but I think that the best answer will come from inside your organization after you have reviewed all the factors.

HRinGA

We've paid an exempt employee extra after her director moved on to greener pastures and the employee (manager) assumed the extra duties while we searched for a replacement. She received a monthly bonus for the extra work. It was worth every penny! She knew we appreciated her stepping up to the plate. Maybe you could pay her a quarterly bonus, or at the end of the project? Or even monthly?

POPEYE

I would assume since you have referenced "comp" time that you're employed by a public entity. If that is the case then you probably have a written policy on extra compensation for exempts. I agree with Gillian that an exempt should occasionally expect to spend extra time to accomplish their tasks. We also have awarded a completion bonus for special projects as HR in GA alluded to. If this is ground-breaking territory, be careful how deep you plow because you'll have to walk there again.

Hatchetman

I agree with Gillian and th eothers.

If there is partiuclar difficult or legthy extra effort you probably want to reward it in some manner. Comp time is okay at hour for hour for equivalnet of a full day for very increment of a full day worked are certainly good ways of doing it.

Also, I would certainly do it if your company is one that charges exempt emplyees accrued time balances to reoucp the pay out of salary for the hours missed in partial days' absences (while paying the full day's salary). If you do that, it seems more than fair that an exempt employee who puts in the extra effort then is recognized for it as a flipside to charging the emplyee's accrued time bank for the partial day's absences.