Lunch: Not Automatic
Posted on 16-Dec-09 by The Timekeeper
I’ve often said a modern time keeping system — properly installed, configured and used — can cut payroll expense significantly compared to handwritten time sheets or time cards. One of the key elements, of course, is that properly configured part, as a St. Louis area medical corporation recently discovered.
Seems they had set up their time and attendance software to automatically deduct the unpaid lunch break from their employees’ time worked. This might seem like a good idea — employees don’t have to take the time to clock in and out for their lunch periods, and you don’t have to manually calculate the deduction.
Works like a charm in places where all employees take a standard lunch break every day — as on an assembly line, where everyone on the line breaks for lunch at once and comes back at the same time, because the line can’t operate with only one or two people.
But problems can arise if an employee is asked to work through lunch or called back to work in the middle of their break, and the employer doesn’t remember to “turn off” the automatic deduction for that employee for that day.
That’s apparently what happened to SSM Health Care, which operates seven health care centers and hospitals in the St. Louis area. They’ve been assessed over $1.7 million in back wages for failing to pay overtime to employees who worked more than 40 hours in a given week.
Seems at least part of the problem was that “the company’s timekeeping system automatically deducted time for meal periods whether the employees were fully relieved of their duties or not.”
How’s your timekeeping system set up? Do you automatically deduct for lunch and breaks? If you do, what procedures do you have in place to make sure you don’t automatically deduct when an employee didn’t actually take the full break?
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