Make wage and hour compliance priority during time of COVID-19

Wage and hour compliance is an area that can trip up even the most diligent employers under the best of circumstances—let alone during a global pandemic when you're trying to keep employees healthy, safe, and employed. While the health and safety concerns are unquestionably important, it’s prudent to make wage and hour compliance a priority, too. Frankly, it would be foolish to think employees and their legal counsel are going to take it easy on employers simply because of COVID-19 and the ensuing and still ongoing business complications. Given how technical the wage and hour laws are, this can be seen as low-hanging fruit to plaintiffs’ lawyers. In fact, we’re already seeing wage and hour cases related to COVID-19 being filed across the country.

Wage and hour areas that need extra attention

Given the landscape, Jim Davis was kind enough to have me as a guest on the HR Works podcast so we could unpack some of the areas that may need extra attention right now and how they tie into the litigation trends we’re anticipating. I’m going to run through the key takeaways from my chat with Jim, but for a more in-depth look, give the entire episode a listen—“HR Works COVID-19 Update: When the Pandemic Creates Wage and Hour Violations.” (And stay tuned for part two in which we talk more about the expected wage and hour litigation.)