You don’t need us to tell you that it’s not an easy time to be an employer.  With ever growing concerns over employee safety, business operations, costs, and complying with new and rapidly evolving legislation as a result of COVID-19, getting your business through the next day can seem overwhelming enough.  However, it is important to remember that the current crisis will eventually pass.  And when it does, the last thing you’ll want to do is defend against a class or collective action lawsuit, particularly when it could have been easily avoid  To help make sure this doesn’t happen, we have identified below five important issues to consider as part of your COVID-19 response.  [*Note: For a comprehensive analysis of employment-related COVID-19 issues and how to navigate them, please check out our COVID-19 response site at https://www.bakerlaw.com/Coronavirus-COVID-19].

Make sure your telecommuting non-exempt employees are recording all their time, including boot-up/boot-down time

It goes without saying that if you are one of the many employers who have non-exempt employees working from home, they need to be paid for all their worktime done at home.  However, it is important to remember that compensable worktime includes things such as logging into and out of computer systems for the day – processes which can be unexpectantly delayed and complicated in a mass work from home situation.  Therefore, it is crucial that you reiterate in writing that all such time is compensable, and that your non-exempt employees have a way to record such boot-up and boot-down time.  One option is to allow telecommuting employees to record their time on paper or e-mail and make them responsible for submitting that time for payment.  You should also ask your employees if they are having any issues logging in/recording time as part of your regular check-in sessions.