As the title says, should I be concerned? I get the impression this is just a bureaucratic change (company doesn’t want to deal with both salaried and hourly workers for timesheet reporting). But I’d like to make sure.
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Salary non-exempt guarantees you’re paid at least the 40 hours a week + overtime.
I’d push back and say that this is a terms of contract change and get your peers to do the same.
Edit: I wouldn’t be surprised if they do this and start reducing hours for various reasons. And from there it’s reduction in benefits duce to not hitting certain hours. It’s a pattern that’s been seen in various industries before.
Unless you’re in a union, there’s probably not much you can do when your employer wants to change your contract, other than quit.
I’d assume you meant just the 40 hours right? As far as I can tell I could still get overtime since it’s non-exempt either way.
No, what I mean is that salary guarantees you get @ least 40 hours of pay (assuming salaried full-time). If you show up for work and they send you home, as a salaried employee you still get paid. Or if you finish the alloted work for the week early, you still get paid for 40.
After all of that is when non-exempt comes into play with OT pay according to federal & state regulations and any contract guarantees that go above those regulations.
Its not always sinister, sometimes its just the petty bureaucracy of HR trying to standardize things to benefit themselves. I once got switched from salary to hourly because HR was trying to align job titles across departments.
My title at the time was Sr. Analyst and they were switching to a numerical title system. My boss said to write up a justification for why I should be slotted as an Analyst 3, which would stay salary, otherwise I would be slotted as an hourly Analyst 2. I asked if there was any benefit to the higher title and was told no, so I declined and was switched to hourly. For me it was fantastic because I regularly worked over 40 hours and traveled frequently, so I started getting lots of overtime pay.
I’m going to keep an eye out in the market with these replies. I think I’m still ok if it’s just the possibility of reduced hours because I’m not entirely sure if that’s likely the case. I didn’t mention it in OP, but we already had an “approved” amount of hours to work regardless based on contracts. We also have timesheets regardless due to auditing requirements.
But it probably doesn’t hurt to be cautious.
Does your job normally require you to work more than forty hours or less. Because if it’s less that’s not good for you.
That’s the thing, neither? I get approved a certain amount of hours and it’s always 40 a week.
This definitely sounds like they’re looking for a reason to pay you less, unless they regularly schedule overtime or something
I’d imagine that for nonexempt employees, it’s easier to have it all done hourly. In some older systems, you’d have to manually go in and check who went over 40 to see who gets OT pay (usually 1.5x). Having it all in one place sounds simpler.
As long as your hourly pay rate * expected annual hours worked equals your old annual salary, I wouldn’t worry. Just always double check that you get the OT rate when you work overtime.
I was possibly thinking this too? The email that announced itself mentions “the timing of this change–DATE–will be aligned to the implementation of EMPLOYER’S new payroll cadence and provider”. Also something about manual transactions being unsustainable under the company size.
Yeah, honestly just sounds like they’re switching payroll providers and it’s gonna be more convenient for them. People want to believe corporations are so evil that every single action has to have a hidden motive, but sometimes they just want to simplify a process.
