In the last decade the relationship between employers and employees has witnessed many overtime disputes which consumed considerable amounts of human and financial resources. Due to this, labour legislations should be taken into consideration when developing and implementing HR overtime policies and procedures to have a solid case for any anticipated challenge in the judicial system.
Getting promoted to a managerial position is a common desire for many employees, yet employers will be more generous in giving managerial titles if they can save money by exempting the managers from overtime pay. So are all managers holders exempt from overtime pay? To answer this question there are three ...view middle of the document...
The policy, procedure, nature and justification of overtime are all critical factors. The policy should be distributed, clearly communicated through appropriate channels of communication and in an easily understandable language to all employees. This is to reduce any misunderstanding between employees and their direct manager, especially if the company is more generous than the provincial legislations and at the same time to have a safe harbour for the employer. The appropriate use of overtime forms for pre-approval and post-approval by the employees is highly recommended. Also monitoring and maintaining overtime records is an essential responsibility of the employer. Many employees do not obtain pre-approval for working overtime and further more some of the employees do not ask for over time pay until they leave the organization. In this case maintaining overtime records is vital. Another aspect related to the procedure of overtime recording, is if the mangers’ work is conducted outside the office site or at the employee’s home. It would be the managers’ responsibility to track the time and overtime worked.
The nature of the overtime work is a controversial area of discussion. The question arises on whether the overtime work is directly related to the essential job functions of the manager or if it is related to the essential job functions of one of their team members? If it is the function of one of the manager’s team members, this could be due to the inefficient management practices of the manager or it could be related to external factors such as sick leave or the end of the fiscal year. In general, the manager is entitled to overtime pay, if the performed work does not meet the elements of the general guideline (control and authority, subordinates and salaries deductions). Does the justification of the overtime meet the standard performance expectations of the job and do other managers with same duties meet the standard performance expectations without overtime? Well, this needs a high performance management system to decide on whether the manager is effective in his/her work as the extra needed hours to perform regular duties should not be paid as over time. Does the employer know that the manager is working overtime to obtain more commission or incentives compared to the average manager? This is another factor to be considered when determining if the overtime should be paid. In this situation the overtime is...
