Human resources professionals are often responsible for verifying that employees receive the pay they have rightfully earned for their time and attendance, but they must also ensure workers are not taking advantage of payroll policies by monitoring records.

If they fall behind on these duties, they can run into issues such as those caused by Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) employees in North Carolina, according to WRAL-TV. According to a recently released state audit, a handful of workers received $580,000 in overtime pay over the course of five years that they should not have received.

"That is a lot of money, and almost half of it went to one person," said State Auditor Beth Wood, as quoted by the media outlet. Wood was referring to Angie Sligh, the Medicaid Management Information System program director, who secured 41 percent of the overtime totals. "I would say it's fair to call this abusive, (an) abuse of the system," Wood added.

The audit found that because the overtime wasn't approved on record, an employee at the DHHS had to enter the extra compensation into the payroll processing system manually.

Companies can avoid these types of issues by restricting access to important payroll documents to employers or human resources personnel.

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