Q&A

Ask the Experts: Pay During Power Outages

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Is managing your employees and staying compliant a constant headache? You’re not alone. Many businesses struggle to keep up with the ever-changing HR landscape. That’s why we’ve partnered with Mineral to offer our Benefits clients cutting-edge HR and compliance solutions. Through this partnership, we empower our Benefits clients with the expert guidance, proactive compliance updates and easy-to-use tools they need to build a high-performing, compliant workplace. In this Q&A series, we’ll share a glimpse into the type of valuable insights our clients receive.

Question: Do we need to pay our remote employees for a full day if they lose internet access for a few hours?

Answer: It depends on their status under the Fair Labor Standard Act (FLSA). Your exempt employees need to be paid their full salary for the day if they did any work before or after the outage (or both).

Your nonexempt employees only need to be paid for time worked. So, if your employees didn’t do any other work while their internet was down, you don’t have to pay them for those hours. Note that any time they spent troubleshooting the connection, either by themselves or with your IT department, would likely qualify as work and should be paid.

This article originally appeared on the Mineral blog and is adapted with permission. It does not constitute legal advice and does not address state or local law.

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