The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to compensate their non-exempt (hourly) employees for all hours of work. To comply with this requirement, employers must keep track of the number of compensable hours employees work during a workweek.
Time in Training, Meetings, and Lectures – In general, employee attendance to lectures, meetings, training programs, and similar activities is considered compensable time unless all of the following are true:
- Employees attend outside their regular working hours;
- Employee attendance is, in fact, voluntary;
- The lecture, meeting, or training is not directly related to the employee’s job; and
- Employees do not perform productive work while attending the meeting, seminar, lecture, or training.
Time Traveling
- Special one-day assignments in another city – Employees who regularly work at a fixed location in one city may be given a special one-day assignment in another city with the expectation of returning home the same day. The time these employees spend traveling to and returning from the other city is work time. However, employers may deduct from this time the period employees would normally spend commuting to their regular work site.
- Travel away from home community – Travel that keeps employees away from home overnight is travel away from home. The U.S. Department of Labor has indicated that “traveling away from home is clearly work time when it cuts across any employee’s workday.” This time is not only hours worked on regular working days during normal working hours but also during corresponding hours on nonworking days. However, employers are not required to not consider as work time the time employees spend traveling away from home outside of regular working hours as a passenger on an airplane, train, boat, bus, or automobile.
Compensable time includes all hours during which employees:
- Perform productive work; and
- Are required by their employers to remain available for the next assignment.
Compensable time does not include periods where individuals are relieved of all obligations and are free to pursue his or her own interests.