Is Your Business Prepared for the DOL’s Overtime Rule?

OvertimeEarlier this year, the government passed a bill increasing American workers’ eligibility for overtime pay. The rule effectively doubles the threshold at which an employee of any level would be able to earn overtime pay. The threshold for exempt level employees is currently at just over $23,000 but this new regulation pushes it to over $47,000 (effective December 1). This will allow more employees to qualify for time-and-a-half for anything over 40 hours a week. With that in mind, is your business ready for the Department of Labor’s new overtime rule? Here are a few things to consider.

Require 40 hour work weeks.

If you’re concerned about the increase in employee pay surrounding the new rules, you can enforce a 40 hour work week requirement. If overtime isn’t an issue to begin with, you will not need to process additional payments for your staff. Implementing workplace policies may be necessary to avoid any potential conflicts internally. If you aren’t going to pay them for staying more than 40 hours or for doing work outside of their scheduled hours, state that explicitly.

Hire more employees.

To mitigate this, you may need to hire additional employees. Hiring other full-time employees may still prove to be less expensive than paying overtime hours for your current staff. To offset some of the projects your senior staff is doing, hire assistants to make the work go by faster.

Pay overtime and not increase salary.

You can also look at overtime as a raise for your team. Rather than providing a raise this year for either cost of living or performance, continue business as usual and begin to pay the overtime as they earn it. Over the course of a few months, you and your team can determine if this is a better financial decision all the way around than merit raises in 2017. Once you’ve become accustomed to the new rules, you can reevaluate.

Work with a temporary staffing partner.

Lastly, hiring short-term employees to pick up the slack is also a way that you can increase your production without increasing overtime hours. This is especially useful when your business is affected by seasonal production work. You will pay a fee to the agency to provide qualified individuals for the work that needs to be accomplished. Balancing out the financial differences between overtime, raising salaries or working with a temporary staffing agency should lead you to the best decision for your company.

CornerStone Staffing gives you the flexibility to hire experienced professionals for short- and long-term projects. Contact our great team of recruiters today to work with one of the top staffing agencies in Dallas. 

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