FLSA Overtime Proposal sent to the White House by the Department of Labor

By Shannon Corgan, Director of Marketing

You may be wondering what’s happening with the federal overtime rules. In 2017, the Department of Labor was ready to drastically increase the salary threshold, but everything was brought to a screeching halt in 2017 by a Texas Federal judge concerned that the salary threshold was too high and would include management workers exempt from overtime pay. After the ruling was struck down by the federal judge, the Department of Labor (DOL) in 2017 put out a Request for Information (RFI) to gather comments from workers and businesses regarding needed changes to the overtime rules in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In 2018, the Department of Labor also continued to gather additional feedback with in-person listening sessions to work on revisions to the overtime salary threshold. According to the FLSA, employers are required to pay employees overtime if they work more than 40 hours in a week.

In late July, the new acting Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella stated the Labor Department staff should “focus like a laser beam on completing items on the Department’s Regulatory Agenda,” Pizzella told employees in a July 22 email obtained by Bloomberg Law. One of their top agenda items is to clarify the overtime pay qualification. As a result on August 12th, the DOL sent over their proposed recommendations to the White House Office of Management and Budget to change the current salary threshold for overtime in the FLSA. These recommendations were based on the over 200,000 comments from the DOL’s Request for Information in 2017 and additional feedback from their 2018 in-person listening sessions. The proposed changes to the overtime rule in the FLSA sent to the White House were solely related to the salary test and did not include any recommendations to the job duties test. According to the DOL, 1.1 million employees that are currently exempt from receiving overtime pay and earn at least $455 per week, but less than the newly proposed salary threshold of $679 per week would become eligible for overtime.

The proposal increases the minimum salary required for an employee to qualify for exemption from the currently-enforced level of $455 per week to $679 per week (equivalent to $35,308 per year). The proposed changes would increase the salary threshold for the FLSA to $35,308, up from the current salary threshold of $23,660. Under currently enforced law for the FLSA, employees with a salary below $455 per week ($23,660 annually) must be paid overtime if they work more than 40 hours per week. Workers making at least this salary level may be eligible for overtime based on their job duties. This proposal doesn’t include any changes in overtime protection for police officers, paramedics, fire fighters, nurses, laborers including non-management production-line employees, non-management employees in maintenance, construction and similar occupations such as carpenters, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, iron workers, craftsmen, operating engineers, longshoremen, and other construction workers.

According to the FLSA, the employees that are generally exempted from overtime pay must fit three criteria. First, they have to be salaried employees paid a predetermined and fixed salary not subject to reduction because of variations in the quality or quantity of work performed. Secondly, they have to be paid at least a specified weekly salary threshold of $679 per week under this new proposal. Thirdly, they must perform executive, administrative, or professional duties as defined by the Department of Labor. Based on the swift action by acting Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella in his first month, it’s looking promising that the new overtime rule for salary thresholds could be effective sometime in 2020.

If you are looking for an employee time tracking solution to help you to accurately pay your hourly and exempt employees with unlimited pay groups and job classes, click here to learn more.

5 Critical Job Cost Features in an Employee Time Tracking App

By Shannon Corgan, Director of Marketing 

With so many employee time tracking solutions on the market, how can controllers and financial managers be certain that they select a time tracking solution that collects the job cost data the right way to achieve the accuracy you need in a timely manner without too much time and effort spent on reallocating job costs? Controllers, job cost accountants, and construction financial managers need to make sure they’re asking the right questions to select the right employee time tracking solution that is easy for the field employees to use but most importantly provides you better more accurate job cost data without considerable manual intervention and reallocations. When you do your homework upfront and have a team evaluating the employee time tracking solution to make sure it works for all the stakeholders in the organization from users, to supervisors, to project managers, and accountants, it’s easy to find the right solution that’s easy for field employees to enter time and achieve accurate job cost data in real time.

Here’s a list of the five must-have features for accurate job costs:

What’s the difference between face capture and facial recognition and how does it help me control my labor costs?

Face capture requires manual review by an employee to compare photos to see if the same person that clocked in is the same person that clocked out. It doesn’t automatically compare photos and alert you when photos don’t match. When you select an employee time tracking solution with facial recognition like WorkMax TIME, it will automatically compare a source image photo to the clock IN/OUT photo and provide a match percentage. If the match percentage is below the threshold you choose, you will be alerted. Facial recognition will help you control your labor costs because you know that the employee that’s doing the work is the one clocking IN/OUT. When you combine GPS with the WorkMax true facial recognition, you know it’s the right employee clocking IN/OUT and that they are in the right location when they are clocking IN/OUT. No more paying employees when they are not clocking IN/OUT from the job site they are assigned to. We’ve seen customers save two direct labor hours per employee when they enter their hours in real time and use facial recognition. It can total up to over $141,000 in direct labor cost savings in one year with WorkMax TIME. To read the case study, click here.

Can I set up the project cost structure in an employee time tracking solution the same as it is in my accounting system for more accurate job costs?

To save you time on your job cost and Work-In-Progress reporting, you want to select and employee time tracking solution that integrates with your business systems and allows you to mirror your accounting’s project cost structure. WorkMax TIME has robust integrations with the top accounting, ERP, payroll, and HR systems used by the construction industry. Every time you add a new employee, project, task, or cost code to your accounting systems, they will automatically be updated in WorkMax and employees will be able to select the new projects, tasks, or cost codes to provide you with the most accurate job costs. Click here to view videos to see how easy it is to integrate with WorkMax. 

Can I limit the jobs, cost codes, locations, tasks, or assets that employees see in the app so that they can provide me more accurate job cost data?

One of the most frequent challenges we hear from Controllers or Financial Managers is that they can’t get accurate job costs from the field because it takes too much time for their employees to enter it while they’re in the field. This is primarily due to the vast number of projects and tasks/cost codes that are presented to their employees when they are entering time, tasks, and production units in the field. With WorkMax TIME’s automated permission profiles, you can set up WorkMax to display only the relevant projects, tasks/cost codes, and production units to your employees. Gone are the days when your employees will have to scroll through hundreds or thousands of picklist options for projects or tasks/cost codes to quickly and accurately assign their labor hours to the right project, tasks/cost code. This dramatically decreases the amount of time project managers, controllers, and financial managers have to spend reallocating job costs and completed work for accurate reporting. To learn more, watch this short 3-minute video on how easy it is to set up automated permission profiles. 

Can I have multiple ways to enter time and allocate it?

The answer is yes. Some companies have salaried employees and want them to only use a digital timesheet, while other companies with a mix of hourly and salaried employees want an option to track hourly employees in real time and use digital timesheets in an app for salaried employees. Some companies prefer to have supervisors allocate time, tasks, and track completed work at the end of the day, while other companies want the information in real time. If you choose an employee time tracking solution like WorkMax, you have all of these options available to you. WorkMax works the way you work and fits your business no matter how you want your employees to enter time, allocate job costs, or track completed work. Here’s our 3 time entry and allocation workflows:

Click here to see videos of all 3 Time Entry and Allocation Workflows in WorkMax. 

Can my employees enter time, tasks, and completed work without an internet connection or cellular service?

When your employees enter time and tracking tasks as they happen, you will get more accurate actual labor costs and completed work. If your employees are depending on internet access or cellular service, you’ll get much less precise job cost data because they’ll just be entering estimates and relying on their memory. Your employees may or may not always have internet or cell service at your job sites, but that’s not an issue if you select an employee time tracking solution like WorkMax TIME. Not all mobile employee time tracking solutions allow you to collect data without access to the internet or cellular services and that can be a problem.

Click on the buttons below to see a demo of WorkMax TIME or get pricing to get started today!