Dear HR Capitalist -
I've got a couple of employees who really want to be exempt (salaried) rather than non-exempt (hourly). I've explained to them the benefits of being non-exempt, but they are persistent. What's a quick way to check and see if my classification of the positions as Non-exempt is correct?
Thoughts? - Bucky, Chicago, IL
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Bucky -
Thanks for the note.
It always amazes me the status that being salary vs. hourly carries with employees. To many employees growing up in hourly positions, the move to salary is a coming of age type of experience, and any move back to hourly is commonly seen as a negative event, regardless of overtime potential, etc.
Lots of legal stuff that goes into making the right classification decisions on a job by job basis. My favorite starting point before diving into the legal thicket is a pretty simple question - Does the employee have the opportunity to determine when they will conduct assigned work activities? If the answer is no (think call center or entry level adminstrative job), my experience is that the position is usually safely classified as hourly. Not a legal opinion, just a common sense approach, probably a conservative one at that. But - when was the last time you saw back pay because someone was incorrectly classified as hourly?
For the legal stuff, check out this rundown at Workforce.com and the FLSA home page....
Good luck! Remember, the conservative approach is to classify them as non-exempt when in doubt...
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