A basic FLSA premise for time and attendance is that employers must pay employees for all hours worked. A hotel recently received an expensive reminder of this concept.

The DOL Wage and Hour Division (WHD) concluded an investigation in August where Grand Hyatt Denver and its staffing company, Xclusive Staffing of Denver, were required to pay over $55,000 in wages and overtime to 52 employees. WHD also issued civil money penalties in excess of $11,000.

Here is where the hotel went wrong. Employees worked before and after scheduled shifts but were not compensated. Specifically, housekeepers were required to come early to prepare their carts and to stay late when rooms still needed to be cleaned. When employees worked through meal breaks, they were not paid, and the employer automatically deducted break time, even if breaks were never taken. As you might expect, recordkeeping was not up to standard.

These problems could have been easily solved through the regular use of quality employee time clocks and time and attendance tracking. In this day and age, attendance software is sophisticated enough to prevent violations of this type. The WHD Southwest Region division covers 11 states, including Colorado, Texas and Utah. For the past four years, this division has investigated over 4,000 hotel and motel employers. The non-compliance rate is fairly high, and workers often lack the knowledge or willingness to complain to WHD. The results of these investigations have been fruitful: more than $12.4 million in back wages for more than 23,000 workers.

When considering a compliant time and attendance solution, employers have many choices, including fingerprint time clocks, biometric time clocks, and timekeeping software. One solution is Infinisource's TimeForce system. For more information, please contact us today to view a demo or request a quote.

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