Time Records For Exempt

Tish

Went to a seminar today where the speaker (lawyer) when asked if an employer should keep time records on their exempt employees was very adamant that an employer SHOULD NOT keep time card records on exempt employees.

What are your thoughts and why.

Shadowfax

I think he is dead wrong. In the first place, DOL has already told us the exemption is not lost just by the fact of time records being kept. Second, if you have no way of proving what kind of time ee put in on any given pay period, and, you find ee was not properly exempt or you are otherwise responsible for some o/t, you will be screwed. In my experience, every ee keeps a record of hours worked, ot thier wife does, or they make it up after the fact and say they kept the record, and if ee has records and you do not, then ees records are automatically the best evidence of time worked and o/t owed and you are shol. Third, there are lots of other good reasons to keep some rudimentary record of hours worked, like tracking time off, benefits qualification, etc. Did the lawyer speaker give resons for not doing it? If yu are absolutely dead sure that ee is exempt and will never be otherwise, then my second reason is of no consequence to you - but one and three are still good reasons to do so.

Tish

Exactly for the reasons you stated is also why I disagreed with the speaker. I also addressed the fact that here when an employee goes exempt it is discussed with them that management expects them to work at lease 40 hours as a norm. The work they do would certainly take anyone that amount of time if not much more.

We had a situtation where a manager was gone most of the day on Friday's - this was causing many problems - explained the situation to the speaker that we needed documentation to show the history of this. We did not dock pay but did address the performance/attendance issue with EE. Explained that his input on Friday was vital to start ups on Monday and many vendors where asking for him on Fridays. The speakers response was that we could have still addressed the issue w/o a time card. I don't feel that we could have done it as effectively.

pork1

TISH: I believe that as long as you have a justifiable reason to keep time cards on EXEMPTS then do it; however, keeping time on exempts to insure they are working at least 40 hours is "verbotin", We do not keep time cards on EXEMPTS except for a small set of unit managers that have a need to know and prove they are on site at any particular time of the day. They come and go as they want to as long as they are running their part of the business. I come and go as I please but you can bet it is in concert with my General Manager. My vacations and sick times are coordinated and accounted for in a manual accounting system. Our payroll system does not account for vacation and sick time for the EXEMPT personnel like it does automatically for the hourly employee. I have voiced my opposition and encouragement to all new and old HR personnel to leave time keeping and the comings and goings to the Department Managers. We HR personalitizes have a lot more important things to do than to be the time policeman!!!
Thus, my vote is do not keep time on EXEMPTS, keep manual records of attendance by day week and year not by the hour!

PORK

jmcaa

I disagree with Pork. We keep time records on our Exempt Employees. IF you have job costing, then you need the records of which jobs they worked on and how much time they put in. So that's another reason to have exempt time cards.