Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth–correcting employee misclassifications

One of the easiest ways to run up penalties with the Department of Labor is to misclassify employees as overtime exempt under the FLSA white collar exemptions or fall for the temptation to avoid overtime and employment taxes and label workers as independent contractors. Both have been under scrutiny by the Department of Labor in recent years who are quite fond of spot audits – showing up announced at your business’s front door. But how does an employer correct a misclassification without alerting the affected employee(s) that he may be due two years of overtime pay? Blame the feds! With the advent of the new overtime regulations increasing the salary threshold, this may be a good time to conduct an audit of your overtime exempt employees. Any corrections can be explained as compliance with the new labor overtime rules. If you would like assistance with an audit of your overtime exempt employees to determine that everyone is properly classified please call Maribeth Meluch at 614-221-2121.