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More of your employees may be eligible for overtime pay under a new rule that is likely to be finalized in April 2024 and could take effect soon. As proposed in August, the Labor Department intends to significantly raise the exempt salary threshold from about $35K to about $55K – meaning your workers will need to earn at least the new threshold to even be considered exempt from OT pay. The White House budget office recently announced that it is reviewing the rule, which is the final step before it is shared with the public. Although the final rule will likely face legal challenges, you can’t bank on a court halting its implementation. Moreover, the higher exempt salary threshold is expected to impact 3.6 million workers, which means you should start planning now. Here’s an eight-step action plan to help you prepare as the rule is finalized.
1. Review Pay Practices and Prepare for Compliance
Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employees generally must be paid an overtime premium of 1.5 times their regular rate of pay for all hours worked beyond 40 in a workweek — unless they fall under an exemption. One of the criteria to qualify for an exemption is earning a weekly salary above a certain level.
Currently, the salary threshold for exempt employees is $684 a week ($35,568 annualized). The DOL’s proposal, if finalized in its current form, would raise the rate to $1,059 a week ($55,068 annualized) or high depending on cost-of-living adjustments. The proposed rule would also automatically update the salary threshold every three years, which means you’d have to adjust your budget accordingly. These are big changes that will require some planning if you have exempt employees who earn less than the proposed amount.
2. Work Through Your Decision Tree
Start by creating a list of your exempt employees who currently earn between $35,568 and $55,068 a year. You will have to decide whether to raise their salary to meet the new threshold or convert them to non-exempt status. If you decide to convert them, there are many considerations to take into account and you should work with legal counsel to review:
Additionally, you may want to start tracking their actual hours worked now to help you understand the potential impact of converting to non-exempt status as those individuals will need to be paid overtime.
3. Consider the Impact on Employee Morale
Reclassifying employees to non-exempt could have a negative impact on morale. Many employees associate prestige with being classified as an exempt-salaried employee, they like the flexibility that comes with being salaried, and they don’t want to track and record their hours worked. Therefore, employees may view a switch to non-exempt status as a demotion.
4. Plan to Provide Advance Notice of Changes
In addition to developing communications focused on employee relations and morale, you’ll want to provide a written communication to each employee about the specific changes to their compensation and what new responsibilities come with the changes, such as timekeeping and record keeping.
5. Review Your Policies on Company Equipment and Personal Devices
Do you have different policies for exempt and non-exempt employees when it comes to issuing company equipment and using personal devices? Exempt employees may have more leeway to use company laptops or their own personal devices – such as smartphones – to conduct business while traveling or outside of their regular office hours. You will have to determine how to address these policies moving forward.
6. Develop a Training Plan for Managers and Newly Non-Exempt Employees
It is recommended that you provide detailed training to newly reclassified employees and their managers prior to the changes taking effect. There’s a lot to learn. The specifics may vary from business to business, but you’ll want to cover scheduled hours, OT approval policies, timekeeping procedures, rules about meal and rest breaks, and more.
7. Ensure Exempt Employees Meet the Duties Test
Besides the salary test, exempt employees also need to satisfy certain duties requirements. Neither their job title nor job description alone determines whether an employee qualifies for a white-collar (or any other) exemption. This is a good opportunity to ensure they meet these standards as well.
8. Review Applicable State Laws
It is important to remember that other jurisdictions can have higher, stricter, or different wage and hour requirements. For example, some states already have a higher salary threshold for the white-collar exemptions than the FLSA’s $684 per week.
Conclusion
You can click here for a more detailed compliance plan and background about the federal overtime rule courtesy of Fisher Phillips LLP.
The suspense is over – the Department of Labor announced yesterday the revised Overtime Rule, which will set the minimum salary threshold for the Fair Labor Standard Act’s white-collar exemptions at $684 per week, or $35,568 per year. The rule, which will expand overtime pay obligations to an estimated 1.3 million additional workers, will take effect on January 1, 2020. The big question is what do you need to know about this breaking news?
It seems an eternity ago when President Obama directed the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) to revise the regulations governing the outdated white-collar exemptions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The proposal eventually released by the USDOL would have radically altered the federal compensation rules. Most notably, the agency would have more than doubled the salary threshold and applied, essentially, a formula to update the amount every three years. This minimum threshold was set to become effective on December 1, 2016, and the “updating” would begin, ironically, on January 1, 2020.
But concerned states and business groups sought to block the rule from taking effect, and, at the last minute, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction preventing the rule from being implemented on a nationwide basis. Since the Texas court put the final nail in Overtime Rule 1.0’s coffin by striking down the rule once and for all in August 2017, employers have been patiently awaiting a revised rule.
Under the current administration, USDOL leadership indicated that it would no longer advocate for the $913 per week proposal but would instead undertake further rulemaking to determine what the salary level should be. In what seemed like a painstakingly long process, the agency held public forums, issued a request for information, and sought comments on a proposed rule that, like Overtime Rule 1.0, focused solely on the pay component but without completely overshadowing the duties tests. After all, the FLSA authorizes the agency to define and delimit the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions – not supplant them. Today, finally, all of the work culminated in the release of Overtime Rule 2.0.
After the drama surrounding the last-minute injunction blocking the 2016 proposal, it would be natural for employers to feel gun-shy about adjusting to these changes. After all, isn’t there a chance that another court will once again block these changes and put us in yet another state of limbo? While there is always a chance for litigation to unfold in such a way that it would impact the implementation of this rule, there are several reasons why you should be preparing as if this rule will go into effect as planned on January 1, 2020.
First, while there is no magic number for setting the salary threshold (that’s the whole point), there is something to be said for certainty. The new rule skirts some of the more problematic areas that existed with the first attempt at revisions. The $684 per week threshold will require the reclassification (or pay increases) of some employees, but a far less significant portion than would have seen increases had the $913-per-week proposal of three years ago was adopted.
Second, while the rule contains some of the same flaws as Overtime Rule 1.0, they generally are not the kinds of concerns that were previously raised in lawsuits. Employer advocates will have more difficulty taking the position that this particular threshold eclipses the duties tests. Likewise, while employee advocates might feel that the threshold is set at too low a level, meeting the pay component does not make someone exempt in and of itself, so this argument is more philosophic in nature and may not warrant the rule being blocked.
Finally, the USDOL must be well prepared at this point to defend the rule. Even aside from the litigation, it has received voluminous public feedback on an increase from $455 per week numerous times, including those shared in 2015, 2017, and 2018. So, while litigation seems inevitable, employers should not be idle in preparing for this rule to take effect.
As recounted above, the drama surrounding Overtime Rule 1.0 was a painfully long process for employers as they waited to see what might happen. The best practice, though, is to assume Overtime Rule 2.0 is the real thing. That said, you should not run out tomorrow and make immediate changes to your compensation structure. Instead, you should use this time to start evaluating not just whether changes will be necessary, but how best to make those changes (timing, communications, etc.).
If you made changes in 2016 in anticipation of the $913 per week threshold, you are certainly ahead of the curve. If you did some of the work but decided to wait to implement once the preliminary injunction was put in place, you also have a great head start. Nonetheless, in both cases, you must keep in mind that three years have passed and it is possible that an employee’s work has changed in the interim.
It is imperative to confirm your prior findings at least for any employee that might receive a salary increase to qualify for exempt status under Overtime Rule 2.0. No employee is automatically entitled to be treated as exempt; in contrast, increasing the salary for an employee that does not meet the duties tests can only make matters worse.
Right now, you should begin: