Communicating FLSA to staff

Caroliso · February 2005

Staff's understanding of their status and the organization's overtime policies is so important. I'm wondering how people communicate to an exmployee their ex/non-ex designation, and make sure they understand how overtime, recording of time off, etc., works.

What do you do upon hire? How do you inform a person that they are exempt vs. non-exempt? Do they sign that they understand? Do you highlight your exempt/non-exempt policies in orientation?

What do you do on an ongoing basis? Re-issue the policy? Hold informative meetings?

Thanks.

Parabeaglex2 · February 2005

We set out the criteria in our policy, "Employee Classifications," contained in the Employee Handbook. It's one of the first policies in our handbook and supervisors are required to go over it with new hires along with employment-at-will, harassment policy, etc. We do not require them to sign, indicating they understand it, but that's not a bad idea.

Only once since I've been here have I had to issue a clarifying memo that discussed the differences in employee classifications - and that was only for our home office folks, the people in the field seem to understand it just fine.

DB · February 2005

Our conditional offer letter defines the position offered by title, duties and FLSA status and the applicant must sign the letter to continue the process

Exempt vs non-exempt is defined in general terms in the Personnel Code which all new employees sign for and are responsible for reading. (I don't spoonfeed it to them.)

New employees also sign a job description and the header of the job description includes a line called FSLA Status which lists Exempt or non-exempt.

Supervisors are responsible for ensuring that time is properly recorded although the centralized payroll person also does try to watch for things.

We don't do anything on-going except update job descriptions and get new signatures as needed.

Caroliso · June 2005

DB (or anyone) can you suggest some language that would go into the offer letter communicating the exempt status? Is something like "an exempt position according to the FLSA regulations" what you say?

Thanks, Carol

HRLASS · June 2005

We have two FLSA policies: one re employee classifications which includes exempt, nonexempt, probational, part time, job share, etc., and the other addresses overtime, on call, call out, critical coverage, etc. We do have regular updates, some company wide, others just for managers and supervisors, on what exempt and nonexempt mean and how overtime works. We seem to have more problems educating supervisors on not letting people work off the clock, at work or at home. Other folks don't understand that overtime means an adjustment in base rate as well. Our in-house legal dept. had to be completely educated on the meaning of nonexempt after the FLSA changes last August when 1/2 the dept (paralegals and admin) became nonexempt for the first time in most careers.

Communicating FLSA to staff

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