Time Clocks

MarilynR · June 2002

Our company is a small engineering/manufacturing firm that employs 29 people. We have 4 departments that have a mixture of exempt and non-exempt. After discovering some 'discrepancies' on time sheets in one department, management has decided to start using a time clock. Is it legal to require the use of the time clock for just one department, or once started should all hourly employees, regardless of the department, use it?

Gillian · June 2002

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 06-13-02 AT 09:44AM (CST)[/font][p]There isn't any legality involved, just the morale impact of making people use a time clock when they didn't before, made worse if just a certain group is required to use one. This could be an example of punishing everyone in order to address the errors of a small group. Not a good idea. How about just making sure that the errors, whatever they were, are corrected with the current system?

Carol CA · June 2002

I would agree with Gillian. If your company is that small and only a couple of people abused the system in one department, I wouldn't install a timeclock at this time. People do not like using them and you run into a whole other bucket of worms with people "forgetting" to clock in or out. There is a good chance it wouldn't even solve your problem. I would suggest counseling those individuals who had the discrepancies. Failure to accurately state your time worked resulting in overpayment is considered to be stealing from the company. Pursue these couple of abusers with disciplinary action instead on punishing everyone with the timeclock.

MarilynR · June 2002

If it were just a couple of people, that would be simple. Unfortunately, it's not. My only concern was that management wanted to have only one department use the time clock, not all hourly in all departments. I was hoping there might be a legal reason to present to them as we have already discussed what this could do to the morale of the employees.

Carol CA · June 2002

I am not aware of a legal requirement to have all time data collected the same way. Perhaps someone else is aware of something? We currently use timeclocks for our non-exempt, but don't require exempt to swipe. I would repeat my earlier suggestion, however.

"Our company is a small engineering/manufacturing firm that employs 29 people. We have 4 departments that have a mixture of exempt and non-exempt." How many non-exempts can this one department have? It sounds like you need to sit down with them and discuss the seriousness of the situation before jumping to timeclocks. As I mentioned before, we have a whole other set of problems with incorrect swiping that just ends up making more work.

Don D · June 2002

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 06-13-02 AT 12:15PM (CST)[/font][p]I agree with Carol. Federal law does not require time clocks and there is no law regulating an employer's right to use one method of time keeping in one department and another method down the hall in the other. Federal law only requires employers to "keep records of hours worked, wages paid and other conditions of employment." So, there's no legal issues, as she stated. There's nothing to suggest time clocks or legal pads or calculators or any other particular method. Even if there were a law addressing a consistent method throughout the company, I would not use that as my reasoning when I explained it to the employees. I would rather they know straight up that the reason the clock is now hanging on the wall is because the company has reason to believe that employees were not being honest in the process and that the time clock method is one of the best methods we can use to accurately record time worked. You also should state a strong policy on early/late punches, forgotten punches and other violations such as John punching for Mary equals potential termination of both. ///ON SECOND THOUGHT I DON'T THINK I WOULD SPEND THE MONEY ON A TIME CLOCK. THEY'RE EXPENSIVE! YOU HAVE LESS THAN 30 PEOPLE WORKING THERE IN 4 DEPARTMENTS. I'D GUESS YOU HAVE MAYBE A SUPERVISOR OVER 5 OR 6 PEOPLE OR 8 AT MOST. A SUPERVISOR WHO CAN'T BE 'ENCOURAGED' TO ACCURATELY TRACK TIME FOR THAT FEW EMPLOYEES' IS THE PROBLEM. SOMEBODY'S NOT SUPERVISING.

MarilynR · June 2002

DonD - You have hit the nail on the head!!!!

ritaanz · June 2002

Bingo! For a minute there I thought you were losing it.

Rockie · June 2002

I think you will find that it will be expensive to install time clocks for just 29 employees and this will not solve your problem of abuse, I assure you. People that abuse time find all sorts of creative ways to do it,even with a time clock...like conveniently "forgetting" their badges or "forgetting" to clock in and out and stating they did not take a lunch break and worked through so you need to adjust their time sheet. There are all sorts of things that come up. I agree with others...just address the issues that have come up with the offending parties and take action where necessary.

I would definitely not just have one segment of the employees punch a clock and the others not do this. It's probably not a legal issue unless DOL comes in for an audit and asks why you are using separate time tracking systems...but I don't know that this would even be questioned. You would more than likely have a lot of resentment and trust issues from employees.

Time Clocks

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