Wage & Hour Compliance: A DOL Update and Ways to Avoid Common Overtime Liability Landmines

Now that the dust has settled since the election, the DOL and Congress are updating their wage and hour agendas and undertaking new initiatives through new opinion letters, regulations and laws. The courts are also chiming-in on the legality of recent initiatives. Employers are also grappling with conforming to this changing landscape and adapting to the post-COVID culture of workplace management, including remote work issues. Along with adapting to what's new, employers are discovering that the FLSA still presents ongoing challenges with respect to determining who's exempt vs. non-exempt, which hours count for determining overtime pay eligibility, and even how to calculate the regular rate of pay for overtime purposes. These issues will be discussed and explored during this highly interactive session, with the goal being that employers will lessen their chances of incurring avoidable and inadvertent, but still potentially very expensive, FLSA compliance mistakes.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the latest trends in the DOL's overtime enforcement priorities and approaches, the latest on DOL compliance and regulatory initiatives (particularly in light of the recent election outcomes and issues resulting from adapting to the COVID crisis), as well as what's on the Congressional wage and hour agenda.
• Discover how employers may be vulnerable to wage and hour litigation and techniques to help avoid litigation or limit or eliminate exposure in the face of litigation or DOL audits.
• Hear the major problems employers regularly face with respect to misclassifying employees as exempt from overtime pay, as well as techniques for analyzing jobs so that employees are properly classified as exempt vs. non-exempt.
• Receive insight on how employers too often become liable for miscounting time worked for overtime pay calculation purposes, and how to avoid such practices in your workplace.
• Gain an appreciation of the nuances involved in properly calculating the regular rate of pay for overtime pay purposes, and thereby being better able to avoid making little mistakes that could cost massive amounts of unpaid overtime pay, liquidated damages and attorneys' fees.