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DOL: Workers taking online training course at home must be paid

Sam Narisi — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:00:27 +0000

The Department of Labor published a new opinion letter, giving some guidance on whether employees need to be paid for time they spend taking online training courses at home.

An employer asked the DOL about this situation:

Employees are offered an optional training course on a computer application they use to do their work. Everyone is already trained on the basics and has enough skills to perform their duties. But the optional course provides advanced knowledge, which lets them work more efficiently.

The training includes online courses employees are expected to take at home on their own time. Most of the employees taking the course are nonexempt — do they need to be paid for what they do at home?

The DOL’s answer: Yes.

Time spent attending training doesn’t have to be paid if all of these criteria are met:

the training occurs outside the employee’s normal working hours
attendance is voluntary
the information learned is not directly related to an employee’s job, and
the employee doesn’t do any work during the session.

In this example, the training was directly related to how employees did their jobs — it helped them perform their work more easily — so the time had to be paid.

Telecommuting arrangements quickly on the rise

Sam Narisi — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:00:42 +0000

Telecommuting sounds like a great idea to a lot of employees. But how many companies offer the arrangement?

A lot, according to staffing agency OfficeTeam. In a recent survey, 69% of managers said it’s common for their company’s employees to work off-site. Furthermore, 82% said telecommuting is likely to increase in the near future.

What’s it mean for HR?

On one hand, offering a work-at-home (sometimes, or all the time) can be a way to keep employees and job candidates on your side, instead working for companies who will let them stay home.

On the other hand, a lot of employees may be asking to telecommute, and it’s often impossible, due to factors like a person’s duties, managers’ opinions or company culture. Companies need to be careful when coming up with policies and prepare for complaints about unfairness.

What about your organization? Do you allow telecommuting? Have employees suggested it? Leave us a comment and let us know how you’ve handled the situation.

DOL: How to keep track when nonexempts take work home

Sam Narisi — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:00:36 +0000

These days, employees can get a lot done from just about anywhere. That can cause headaches for HR, because with a lot of them, you still need to record all the time they spend working.

A recent Department of Labor (DOL) opinion letter tackled the question of how to track time when nonexempt employees take mandatory online training on their home computers. A company asked if that time can simply be added to employees’ time sheets.

The answer: Paper time sheets are fine. The Fair Labor Standards Act mentions that all time spent working must be paid for, including hours worked at home, as long as the employer “knows or has reason to believe” the work is being done.

But it doesn’t tell companies how that time needs to be tracked, as long as the information is collected and can be preserved. Therefore, the DOL said, old-fashioned paper time sheets still get a passing grade.

Read the opinion letter here.