Get Ready for Changes To the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)

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where employers and employees thrive together. Don’t
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Over the past few months, we’ve
talked about the upcoming changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). You’ve probably already seen them, but just
in case, here are a couple of those articles for your reference:

Legislative
Update: New FLSA Overtime Changes Proposed

New
FLSA Changes 2019 – – What You Need to Know

But that’s not really the purpose
of today’s post. We’re less than 30 days out from the new FLSA changes going
into effect. If your organization hasn’t put together an implementation plan,
now’s the time. The first step toward putting together a good plan is finding
reliable sources of information. I’d like to think you consider HR Bartender a
reliable source (and I thank you).

Another reliable source is SHRM. As a member,
we have access to several resources that can help us stay informed. In the case
of this upcoming FLSA change, SHRM
has put together a resource guide including forms, seminars, and a toolkit.
A couple of weeks ago, SHRM’s Knowledge Advisors hosted an online chat about
the changes. While the live chat has passed, if you want to view the archive, you
can access it via the event page.

Assess Your Organization’s Readiness for Change

In addition to being equipped
with good information when developing your implementation plan, it’s important
to know where your organization currently stands. Are you in compliance? And if
we’re not, what does it take to become compliant? So, the next logical step is
to conduct an organizational readiness assessment.

As one HR pro to another, we know
that when changes in the law happen, there are times when we can easily bring
the organization into compliance. And then there are moments when changes in
the law take a lot of conversations and convincing to bring the organization
into the compliance.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a
tool that provided a risk assessment? You know, something that gave you an
indicator of the company’s current level of compliance and if necessary, what
it would take to bring the organization to full compliance. Well, I recently
discovered that SHRM has a tool like that for the FLSA. The tool allows HR to
understand FLSA risk by individual job profiles in addition to an overall
organizational risk score.

1. ORGANIZATIONAL RISK AUDIT: The FLSA audit tool allows HR to answer some high-level questions about the executive, administrative, professional, and outside sales exemptions. And don’t worry if you don’t remember the specific legal definitions of these terms. The software has the definitions available. The organizational audit will also ask how the company handles on-call employees, breaks, training, and travel time.

After
entering the information, the final report can be customized with your company
logo. It will provide an overall risk rating as well as individual ratings for
each area. HR can then use the report to conduct audits of individual job
profiles.

2. JOB PROFILE AUDIT: The job profile audit is like the organizational one in that it takes you through a series of questions about the job. At this level, HR can add a department and even an employee’s name to the job profile audit.

Let’s
say you have a job title that’s held by two different people in two different
departments (i.e. administrative assistant). But their responsibilities are a
little different. You want to make sure that both positions are compliant. This
tool would allow you to do that. Same could be true of multiple people holding
the same title in the same department. For example, the sales department might
have multiple people with the title account manager. The final report will
provide you with your answers as well as the determination about whether the
job profile qualifies under one of the FLSA’s exemptions.

I could see SHRM’s FLSA Audit
Tool being a part of a company’s readiness assessment and preparations for the
upcoming changes to the FLSA. But I also asked SHRM a couple of questions about
using the audit tool after the FLSA changes go into effect.

On the organizational front, HR
professionals could use the software to run regular compliance audits. HR could
monitor the company’s progress and share it with the senior management team. For
the job profiles piece, it’s not possible to change a job classification BUT it
is possible to have multiple classifications under the same title. For example,
in the administrative assistant or account manager examples above, the
organization could decide to have different classifications within the same
title (i.e. senior account manager or administrative assistant II).

Wage and Hour FLSA Issues are Business Priorities

According
to SHRM research, the top employment-related lawsuits are in the areas of
workplace discrimination, employee benefits, and wage
and hour claims. While the threat of lawsuits
shouldn’t be our primary motivator for complying with the law, part of our
responsibility as HR professionals is to manage risk. And to do the right thing
by paying employees according to the law.

The
FLSA Audit Tool can allow us to manage organizational risk. It can be done
quickly, efficiently, and cost effectively. This allows HR to spend time on
things that software can’t do – like recruiting, engaging, and retaining the
best talent. For more information about SHRM’s FLSA Audit Tool, check out the demo on the
SHRMStore website.

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