California has been reaping the financial benefits of your timekeeping efforts. Over the past couple of years, more and more companies are getting caught by insufficient proof that they’ve properly tracked (and paid for) employees’ time.
A proper time card shows:
- exactly what time your employee started work,
- exactly what time your employee left for a meal break,
- exactly what time your employee returned to work, and
- exactly what time your employee quit working for the day.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Then why are so many companies paying huge fines and penalties? Because they aren’t doing it correctly.
I recently viewed a company’s time cards for all of 2009. Every time card for every employee said exactly the same thing: in at 8:00a, out at 5:00p, one hour lunch. Let’s face it, there is no way even one employee clocked in and out at exactly the same time every day for a year. Don’t even get me started on the impossibility of taking exactly one hour for lunch every day.
Those time cards do not protect that company from claims because they aren’t truthful. It doesn’t matter that the employees filled them out… they aren’t believable and certainly not honest.
You can’t afford to let your employees get away with “easy” time cards. You need a time card that will back up your own claims that you have paid employees for any overtime worked, that they took at least 30 minutes for a meal break every day, and that the meal period began within the first five hours the employee worked.
If this sounds like too much work for you, do the math. Every day that a non-exempt employee misses at least one rest break or takes less than the 30 minute meal break required, you have to pay that employee one hour of penalty pay… plus a half hour of overtime if the missed meal break caused them to work more than 8 hours.
Let’s go over those rules again. Non-exempt employees must take a 10-minute rest break (not 8-minutes and not two 5-minute breaks) for every 4 hours worked. In addition, if they are working more than 6 hours that day, they must take at least a 30-minute meal break that starts within the first 5 hours of work. One skipped rest break or a meal break that is interrupted by work results in the need to pay one hour of penalty pay for that day.
So, let’s go through that math again with the lowest denominator. If one minimum-paid employee misses one rest break one day each week, you have to pay the employee:
- $8 (one hour) penalty pay for the rest break that was missed that week
- Multiplied by 52 weeks in a year
- Equals $416.00 just in penalty pay for the year.
Give some thought as to what poor timekeeping records could cost you in a year, then ask yourself if it’s worth throwing away that much money just to make it easier for your employees.
Can you address this in the context of very small businesses, as in with only one or two non-owner employees? Thanks.