This Sunday, we’ll spring forward an hour for daylight savings time. I think the states that have chosen to stick with one time are genius, but until I live in one of them, I’m stuck with time changes twice a year. Daylight savings time begins at 2:00 a.m., at which point we lose an hour.
So, what does this mean for how to pay employees who work the night shift? If they’re exempt (salaried), it doesn’t mean anything. They’ll still get paid the same amount. If they’re nonexempt (hourly), however, they’ll have one fewer hour in their shift since they wouldn’t have worked from 2:00 a.m. – 3:00 a.m.
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes a number of standards for pay practices including how to calculate hours worked and overtime. It doesn’t provide any special guidance for dealing with this missing hour, so employers are able to choose their own policy. You have a few options:
- Do nothing. Just let the missing hour happen and remind your employees that, depending on their shift, they might get an extra hour in the fall when daylight savings time ends.
- Pay for an extra hour. Provide an extra hours’ worth of pay to each affected employee. Take note that this isn’t considered by the FLSA to be an hour worked, so it doesn’t count toward overtime. This would certainly communicate generosity to your employees. It could also cause annoyance from others since you would be giving additional pay for less work. This is my least recommended option since there’s no benefit to the company or to customers.
- Allow employees to work an extra hour. Provide the option for your employees to extend their shift by one hour. For administrative ease, keep this option very simple. Employees can either start work one hour earlier or work one hour later, and this option exists only for this specific evening. This allows them to receive pay for working their regularly scheduled number of hours for this shift. They need to coordinate with their manager ahead of time so that everyone is on the same page and can plan tasks accordingly to ensure there’s work for everyone to do.
Consider what best communicates your company culture and values to your employees. You’ll also want to start thinking about what to do when daylight savings time ends so you can have a consistent approach to time changes.
The “do nothing” option can be very popular given its ease, and it certainly communicates the company is budget-conscious. On the surface, this sounds like it all works itself out given that clocks will “fall back” when daylight savings time ends. However, for your employees living paycheck-to-paycheck, it can be difficult to lose an hours’ worth of pay.
Allowing your employees to work an extra hour is my favorite option because it communicates generosity and flexibility and it allows your employees to decide what’s important to them. Being able to participate in decisions that affect them helps to build trust. Night-shift jobs can be difficult to recruit for, so is it really worth risking frustrating your employees over an hours’ worth of pay? You may still have some annoyed day-shift employees who don’t think this is fair given clocks will “fall back” later. Explain that you want to ensure everyone has the option to work their regularly scheduled hours. If that doesn’t help, they could always apply for a night-shift job themselves.
For most of us, time changes happen twice a year, so it’s important to establish how to pay your employees. By considering your company culture and the values you want to demonstrate, you’ll be able to determine a consistent approach for compensation when we spring forward to begin daylight savings time.
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