To Be or Not to Be (in Compliance, that is!)

With many apologies in advance to the liberties taken with the context of Sir William Shakespeare’s work, we pose the following question to you, dear reader:

“To be (in compliance) or not to be (in compliance)? That is the question.”

“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous lawsuits…”

Or perhaps more to the point of this post, one worries that, “Wise men never sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms.”

Anyone following the recent time and labor management news has seen the articles warning that wage and hour lawsuits are on the rise and declaring that something is indeed rotten in Denmark – and every other city. It is no secret that the Department of Labor (DOL) and other government agencies are stepping up efforts to enforce labor laws. By increasing its enforcement budget for fiscal year 2011 and creating jobs for 250 new investigators in just 2010 alone, the DOL has clearly signaled its intent to see that employees are fairly paid. If your company has taken steps to assure wage and hour compliance, well, then you have nothing to worry about.

But if you haven’t, you’d better prepare. Take some simple, disciplined steps now to avoid unnecessary entanglement with the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the DOL. Three simple steps – education, delegation, and automation will help companies manage and minimize the potential for a WHD investigation or lawsuit.

Education

Education prepares a company to comply with wage and hour statutes and regulations and prevents unnecessary exposure to risk. A central source of information can be found at the DOL WHD’s web site. Begin by understanding some of the larger issues like FairPay, Recordkeeping Requirements, and Overtime Laws by State. The site provides a great deal of information, guidance, fact sheets and e-tools that can help you navigate the

Delegation

Delegate to someone the responsibility for being aware of how labor laws affect your company. If your company does not use an HRIS, Payroll, or Time and Attendance system have this person research the best options for you and choose one. Invest in your business’ success through their attendance of payroll and HR conferences. Subscribe to industry publications like HR Magazine, HR Executive, and Payroll Managers Letter. Join local associations such as the Society for Human Resource Management, or the American Payroll Association. Have them regularly report on trends and appropriate actions that the organization needs to take to maintain compliance.

Automation

Automation minimizes the subjective influence of the human element. Implement a scalable time and labor management solution that consistently applies payroll rules and policies. When implementing an automated time and attendance system, identify and eliminate unwritten expectations and policies that conflict with published policies as well as local, state and federal labor laws and expose the company to compliance liability.

Wage and hour compliance is a very complicated issue. Diligence in education, delegation and automation combined with deliberate and decisive action by management, human resource, and payroll personnel will mitigate the risk to company coffers, capacity and camaraderie.

There are lessons to be learned from Shakespeare, as written in Julius Caesar Act 4:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”

Now is the time to act – get compliant. If you need help, contact us.

Convincing the Boss

TODAY’S BUSINESS CONUNDRUM:

How do you prove to your boss that an investment in HR and/or payroll software will PAY FOR ITSELF?

As an HR or payroll professional, you know intuitively that automating critical business processes will contribute to measurable bottom-line cost savings.

But let’s face it … it can be hard to convince the boss. Your boss WANTS to give you the right tools to do your job well. So it’s not as if he or she is attempting to stop your success in its tracks. At the same, it’s a critical executive function to cut down on expenses during times of economic crises like ours, and it can often be difficult to explain how spending money will actually save it over time.

Because management requires a strong business case to make an investment, we have made it EASY for you to find out (in less than five minutes!) just how much your company could save by using the right software to automate critical HR, payroll and timekeeping processes.

Just click on the Ascentis Cost Savings Calculator, and fill out a brief form that analyzes how you manage core business processes and whether your employees have access to the Internet. In an INSTANT, you will see an estimate of how much your company will save over the course of one year by automating HR, payroll and timekeeping using Ascentis software solutions.

The calculator is fun and flexible, and you can try unlimited process automation scenarios (i.e. HR and payroll, just HR, just payroll, HR and timekeeping, etc.) quickly and easily and show your boss immediate ROI.

Want to see more? Just give us a call, request a quote or schedule a demo to get a more in-depth idea of how investing in the right piece of software can save you tens of thousands of dollars annually. Who knows, maybe now your boss can afford to give you that raise…

Compliance and the Real Truth Behind Those Scary Statistics

By Howard Lennie, Guest Blog Post for Ascentis

Lately, the following statement has been showing up in various articles, blogs and web searches: “the Department of Labor (DOL) estimates that 80 percent of employers are not in compliance with applicable wage-and-hour laws.” The statement is attributed to an Advisen Ltd. report titled “The Threat of Wage-and-Hour Lawsuits.” Since the quote is attributed to the DOL, I thought it would be easy enough to find such a definitive quote on the DOL web site. It was not.

After making an inquiry to the DOL, I was directed to the statistics page of the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) where I found a 2008 fiscal year report with the following statement: “The percentage of WHD complaint investigations that found no violation of WHD laws remained low at 20 percent.” Additional statements in the report indicate that the investigations were in response to registered, screened complaints received by the WHD.

If Advisen drew its 80% estimate from this report, there is the potential for a huge statistical bias that distorts the statement’s accuracy. Not that the DOL, plaintiff’s bar or employer counsel are complaining about the fear factor. But, the increased enforcement and litigation is real enough without citing potentially distorted facts and figures, as is happening in other blog posts we’ve read.

A more accurate statement might be: “Of the cases investigated by the WHD for FLSA violations during the 2008 fiscal year, nearly 80% of employers were not in compliance.” It more accurately states the facts from the report without diminishing the seriousness of the risk of a wage and hour compliance audit.

So yes, Wage and Hour statistics from 2008 DO show that many companies are still out of compliance, and that when investigated, that number is hovering at about 80%. But no, the Advisen report is not nearly as accurate as they would have you believe. It’s important to remember that every company should take the necessary steps to make sure that they are in compliance with Wage and Hour Law but, at the same time companies should have the right to make those decisions based on accurate data.

Enjoy the benefits of SaaS functionality with Ascentis Time

Ascentis Time is a SaaS-based timekeeping solution that offers many advantages for companies of all sizes. The benefits of automation are realized very quickly as the infrastructure is already built and waiting for your team and your employees.

The SaaS model has been created to minimize the technology effort of your organization – no servers or software is required to install and maintain. Ascentis Time is ”evergreen,” – that is always up-to-date - and all updates are provided as part of the service. The transition is almost effortless, all that’s required is the Web browser of your choice.

Ascentis Time supports many options that employees can use to interact with the system, from interactive electronic touch screen information terminals and bio-metric employee verification terminals, to browser-based access for time stamping or timesheet completion and phone reporting.

Executives, supervisors and administrators may access the application from anywhere at any time to review, edit, approve and report on the up-to-the minute labor information stored there. They can also utilize the built-in work flows to approve or deny requests for time off or have their reports delivered to their e-mail inbox at predetermined dates and times.

For more information about the powerful Ascentis time and attendance solution, please visit our Web site or call 1.800.229.2713.

Ascentis Blog

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

Category Archives: time and attendance