Business Resolutions: Ensuring Your Business Starts the New Year Off Right
When was the last time that your business had a wage audit to evaluate whether your employees are properly classified under the Fair Labor Standards Act, or had your employee handbook reviewed and revised to bring it up-to-date with the law and current company practices? If it has been a few years, then this may be the year that your business resolves to invest in a wage audit and/or handbook review.
Wage audits include an evaluation of your job positions, pay and overtime policies, as well as payroll records of each position within an organization or department. Sometimes, audits can also include interviews with employees to ascertain if there are any issues that management should be aware of. Audits can reveal if a business has any issues with, not only misclassification of employees as exempt when they should be non-exempt, but whether managers are following the organization’s policies regarding overtime. As a company grows and changes, often the duties of its employees also change. Sometimes these changes are significant enough that a change in classification is in order and a failure to adjust the classification could result in liability. Further, a wage audit can often help to determine if an organization’s accountant or payroll company is calculating overtime in accordance with the applicable regulations. Many a lawsuit are filed against employers who believe that since they have enlisted the assistance of a third party, employee overtime is being calculated appropriately. That is not always the case.
Employee handbooks should be reviewed every couple of years, not only to ensure that the handbook reflects the current state of the law, but also that it reflects the actual practices of a company. Businesses grow and change, and actual practices can start to diverge from what is reflected in the handbook. It is always better to have a handbook that provides policies and procedures that the company is currently using and enforcing. It is never recommended for a company to have policies that it does not follow.
This post is part of a series of business resolutions to consider for the new year. In case you missed them, our previous posts in the series discussed Florida minimum wage and employee performance management.
Jennifer Fowler-Hermes
jfowler-hermes@williamsparker.com
941-552-2558