Ensure That Your Time-Tracking & Payroll Systems are Accurate in Business and at Work

Ensuring that your employee time & attendance and payroll systems accurately track your nonexempt hourly employees’ time worked (including but not limited to, in the State of New York, ensuring that nonexempt hourly employees take their required meal periods) is not only required for employers from a compliance standpoints – the penalties and reputation damage can cost an employer millions of dollars.

The most recent case in point:  the New York state Attorney General’s lawsuit against Domino’s Pizza Corporate and several of its franchisees – from the NYS AG’s press release:

A.G. Schneiderman Announces Lawsuit Seeking To Hold Domino’s And Its Franchisees Liable For Systemic Wage Theft

A multi-year investigation by Attorney General Schneiderman’s office revealed that Domino’s allegedly urged franchisees to use payroll reports from the company’s computer system (called “PULSE”), even though Domino’s knew for years that PULSE under-calculated gross wages. Domino’s typically made multiple updates to PULSE each year, but decided not to fix the flaws that caused underpayments to workers, deeming it a “low priority.”

The Attorney General’s Office has already settled cases with 12 Domino’s franchisees, who collectively own 61 stores and who have agreed to pay approximately $1.5 million to date.  The Attorney General’s investigation uncovered internal documents produced by Domino’s showing that over a two-year period, 78% of New York franchisees listed rates for at least some employees below the required minimum wage, and 86% listed rates below the required overtime rate.  

A few other nonexempt hourly time & attendance and payroll pitfalls for employers to avoid:

• Automatically recording employees’ daily meal periods, rather than recording actual meal periods taken;
• Allowing managers and supervisors to edit their employees’ time-worked records;
• Not paying nonexempt employees for attending employer-required meetings outside of their scheduled business hours;
• Not stopping nonexempt employees from working “off the clock” to save money in the form of regular paid work time as well as paid overtime costs.

How will you and your employees ensure accurate time- and payroll-tracking in business and at work?