Ascentis Blog

Information to help HR and payroll managers, recruiters, and compliance officers become more effective.

Category Archives: time and attendance

Employee’s preparing for a wage and hour lawsuit? Now there’s an app for that.

Today, the DOL released an iPhone application geared at employees who want to independently track their own hours and wages, to make sure their employers are compliant with appropriate regular and overtime pay.

According to the iTunes page for this FREE application, “This is a timesheet to record the hours that you work and calculate the amount you may be owed by your employer. It also includes overtime pay calculations at a rate of one and one-half times (1.5) the regular rate of pay for all hours you work over 40 in a workweek.” The DOL adds a disclaimer for the application, stating “DOL is providing this App as a public service. The regulations and related materials reflected in this App are intended to enhance public access to information on DOL programs. This App is a service that is continually under development and it does not include every possible situation encountered in the workplace. The user should be aware that, while we try to keep the information timely and accurate, there will often be a delay between official publication of the materials and their appearance in or modification of this App.”


With an average of 450 employment related lawsuits every single day, and with 57% of companies being named as defendants in at least one employment related lawsuit in the last five years, applications like this make it even easier for employees to know if and when they are not being paid properly, and gives them easier access to report violations. This iPhone app is free to download, but for employers who don’t have a timekeeping solution in place, not having that solution could cost them millions.

STOPPING POTENTIAL VIOLATIONS IN THEIR TRACKS

Employers: It is critical that your company have in place a timekeeping solution like Ascentis Time which prevents violations of wage and hour laws by ensuring that requirements are automatically monitored and fulfilled. The best defense against an alleged violation is an accurate reporting system and automated documentation of everything related to each employee.

READ: Google Sued over unpaid overtime.

READ: AT&T settles class action misclassification suit for 12.5 MIL

READ: Apple settles Enginners FLSA suit for 1 MIL

Ascentis Time is a part of Ascentis’ full suite of fully integrated human capital management solutions, including Ascentis HR, Ascentis Payroll, Ascentis Recruiting (soon to be released), and Ascentis Self Service.

SWOT Away your Labor Issues

When you put together your annual business plan, you probably do a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis to determine how your company is different from your competition and what actions will keep your business going and growing. But, the biggest threat to your business may be the one thing to which you are paying the least attention.

Based on recent regulatory and court activity, wage and hour litigation is the single greatest threat to your continued business success according to this article on compensationcafe.com.  Misclassification, wage theft and other issues require as much attention from businesses as product, pricing and promotion.

Wage and hour litigation is expensive – costing companies up to double and triple damages plus fines plus attorneys fees. While income from operations usually comes in incrementally, wage and hour settlement payouts are a large sum hit on the bottom line. This can not only devastate an organization it can bankrupt it, affecting every single member of that company.

So, how much attention are you paying to your employment practices? Have you performed a SWOT analysis? What are your strengths? Your weaknesses? Where do you have opportunities? What issues pose the greatest threat?

Conducting a compliance audit is a great opportunity to identify and eliminate your unwritten employment policies and practices. Research best practices through discussions with human resources professionals and your legal counsel and make a plan to implement them.

Stay informed about the latest in HR and payroll news, trends, best practices and evolving legislation. Sign up for the monthly Ascentis HR, Benefits and Payroll News.

Wage Theft: A Two-Way Street? Or is it Three?

By: Howard Lennie

There has been a lot of recent Internet coverage on the subject of wage theft. Just some of the headlines include: “Paterson signs Wage Theft Protection Act”, “Wage Theft: Thou Shalt Not Steal From Your Workers”, “Workers Rebuilding New Orleans Face Rampant Wage Theft”. Even a quick search of YouTube shows over 200 results for videos related to wage theft. It’s an important topic to workers and employers alike.

Most of the stories tell of employers who “steal wages and overtime” from their employees by misappropriating tips, asking people to work off the clock or not paying minimum or living wages.

The reader is left with the impression that wage theft is strictly an employer misdeed and that employers are conniving miscreants who do not want to fairly pay workers.

“Our nation’s workers deserve full and fair compensation, and this Administration is committed to ensuring that they receive it,” said Hilda L. Solis, U.S. Secretary of Labor, in a recent press release. A lot of employers agree and pay workers their due wage. The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Spring 2010 Regulatory Agenda Narrative confirms this belief.  “Fortunately, many employers and other regulated entities have a culture of compliance. Their ordinary, day-to-day business practices include protecting workers against safety and health hazards, assuring workers benefits and family leave, and paying workers the wages and overtime to which they are entitled, among other aspects of “good jobs.” Like the millions of ordinary citizens who pay their income taxes every year without ever coming into contact with the Internal Revenue Service, these compliant employers and other regulated entities should be congratulated for their responsible behavior. No government intervention in their workplaces is required to achieve compliance.”

Yet there is another form of wage theft gets little attention in today’s employee-friendly regulatory environment. Employee wage theft has become rampant within the US. A quick search of headlines across Google yeilds almost two million results.  A very common form of employee wage theft, called buddy punching, is just as illegal and unfortunate as the well-publicized employer wage theft.

What’s interesting is the chasm between the recourse available to the respective victims. When an employer discovers wage theft, their recourse is to dismiss the employee without any real opportunity to recoup the lost wages. Rare is the case that the law becomes involved. However, when an employee claims wage theft, they can file for class action status and cost the employer double damages, fines and lawyer fees, the total cost of which can potentially run into the millions of dollars in high profile cases.

And there may be a third form of wage theft that does more harm to the economy by removing money for reinvestment. As irresponsible as a wage-stealing employer or employee is, the settlements of large lawsuits have far greater consequences when money is siphoned out of local economies when legal fees are paid to out of state law firms and fines are collected into federal coffers. The result is an extension of unemployment because of lost opportunities to create jobs.

Employers who victimize workers should be punished for their misdeeds. But the painting of the entire business community with broad strokes colored by a small percentage of toxic employers perpetuates a bad economic environment.

Implementing an automated time and attendance system with biometric data collection can help economic recovery by eliminating wage theft in all its forms. It stores an accurate record of time punches from which employees can be fully and fairly paid and and shows clear documentation of compliance. Both of which employers can have on hand to greet plaintiff lawyers or investigators from the DOL when they come knocking on the door.

Dancing with the D.O.L.

ABC’s Dancing with the Stars has awakened new interest in ballroom dancing while creating an entertainment phenomenon.

It sometimes feels like conducting business in the marketplace is a dance partnering employers and employees in moves designed to bring mutual success to both parties. Sometimes the dance is a wonderfully choreographed drama of precise dips and turns that ignites passion and productivity. Sometimes it’s a chaotic jitterbug where once you stop spinning you wonder how work got done and business conducted.

Lately, there seem to be a number of partners trying to cut in on the marketplace dance floor to separate employers from their employees. The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) has stepped up enforcement activities to ensure that workers are properly paid and appropriately classified while the plaintiff’s bar has moved in to aggressively pursue class action labor lawsuits in many states across the country.

Perform a Google search on the words “wage and hour lawsuits” and one of the first listings is a Wal-Mart settlement for hundreds of millions of dollars. An even newer suit was filed in October on behalf of Walmart’s janitors.   Lower down on the same results page are dire warnings that should strike fear in the hearts of our nation’s employers.  “The multitude of wage and hour claims and lawsuits that workers have filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), and its state law counterparts, have made wage and hour law the nation’s fastest growing type of litigation”, says the Epstein Becker Green Wage & Hour Defense Blog.   Kiplinger warns that “wage and hour lawsuits are rising, outpacing all other types of workplace class actions” in a February, 2010 article titled “Wage and Hour Lawsuits Costing Employer’s Millions”.

While the headlines provoke fear (and so they should, as these lawsuits are on the rise), level-headed thinking and planning will help you avoid potentially costly litigation. Using an automated time and attendance solution will accurately gather employee time data for the precise calculation of payroll, as well as document this data for your own protection.

Other advantages of automating time and attendance are the consistent application of payroll policies like meal break rules and enforced schedules as well as time savings from eliminating manual processes. It also provides a reliable record of your employees’ time data should you ever be audited by the DOL or be named as a party in a wage and hour lawsuit.

To ensure success in the marketplace, employers must have  supporting infrastructure. Effective HR & Payroll personnel, policies and efficient workforce management tools help employers navigate the congested dance floor while leading their employee dance partners through the original dance of conducting business, without any slip ups or wardrobe malfunctions.

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