Come December 1, a lot more people must be paid by the hour. For years, many white collar workers have collected salaries. Their paychecks have not been tied to how many hours they worked. In labor law parlance, such workers were “exempt” from regulations requiring overtime pay (generally time and a half) after 40 hours per week. On December 1, the general bar for exemption, based on federal law, will move from $455 per week ($23,660 per year) to $913 per week ($47,476 per year).
So what are managers to do when supervising people earning in this range? Gilbreth notes that there are a few choices. You can increase people’s pay to $913 a week so they stay exempt. You can come up with an estimated average of hours worked, which may be more than 40, and then calculate an employee’s hourly rate based on 40 hours at base pay and north of that at overtime rates.
Or you can try to keep people as close to 40 hours a week as possible to minimize overtime hits. Here are some ways to do just that.
Embrace Tracking: The reality is that you will have to track hours for lots more people anyway.
Streamline And Automate: “At the heart of efficiency is prioritization,” says Beaton. “These new laws can be an impetus to evaluate what actually matters in the grand scheme.
Limit Meetings: One survey found that a quarter of workers say they attend five or more unnecessary meetings per week.
Curtail After-Hours Email: One big headache with the new labor laws: Time spent checking and responding to emails and phone calls is officially work time.
Read the article for for more in depth discussion on these and other ideas. Please feel free to contact us with questions about how this might affect your health club.
Source: Learning How To Keep Staff At 40 Hours Per Week | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
