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Time Reporting 3-27-13 CITY OF SCHERTZ EMPLOYEE POLICY HANDBOOK Time Reporting PREPARED BY: Human Resources APPROVED BY: City Council DATE APPROVED: 3/26/2013 EFFECTIVE DATE: 3/27/2013 REPLACES VERSION: 2.2; 4.1.7; 4.3.10 Purpose To comply with federal, state, and local laws, and provide employees with specific policies and procedures regarding time and attendance reporting. Policy All city employees are expected to report punctually for duty at the beginning of their assigned workdays and to work the full workdays established. Hours worked can be defined as time that an employee performs principal activities related to the job on the employer’s premises or at the prescribed workplace whether suffered or permitted by the employer. All employees are required to report hours worked and leave taken accurately and to abide by the city’s time reporting and leave policies. Failure to adhere to the Time Reporting Policy may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination. Applicability This policy applies to all city employees. Procedures Employees shall keep records of all hours actually worked and leave time taken and, where appropriate, hours credited to particular projects. Each employee shall be responsible for the accuracy of his/her own time sheet. Each supervisor is required to approve their employees’ time sheets, verifying the timesheet accurately reflects the time worked and leave taken by the employee. Approved time sheets must be received in payroll no later than Noon on each Monday following the end of the pay period unless prior arrangements have been made with payroll. CITY OF SCHERTZ EMPLOYEE POLICY HANDBOOK If a supervisor makes an adjustment to a time sheet and the employee is not available to sign, the supervisor must inform payroll of the change in writing, including a statement that the employee was unavailable, and forward the time sheet to payroll. Supervisors shall notify employees of any changes to the time sheet. In general, time worked includes all the time an employee is:  Required to be on duty;  Required to be on the work premises or at a prescribed workplace; or  Permitted to work for the city Meal Period With few exceptions, meal periods spent away from the employee’s work station are not considered time worked. Non-exempt employees (regardless of status as full-time, part- time, or temporary employees), who work more than five (5) consecutive hours shall be allowed a meal period of at least thirty (30) minutes beginning no less than two (2) hours or more than five (5) hours from beginning of shift. Employees who work more than three (3) hours of overtime are required to have an additional thirty (30)-minute meal period prior to or during the overtime period. Neither state nor federal law requires an employer pays for these meal periods if the employee is completely relieved from duty during the break. Rest Periods Coffee breaks and other brief rest periods of 15 minutes or less are considered time worked. Stand-by Pay City Council has authorized some Departments to pay stand-by pay (also known as on- call pay) to designated employees, who are on call at designated times. Stand-by time is defined as time worked if employees are required to be available by phone or at certain locations such that they cannot use the time for their own purposes. Qualification for stand-by pay is coordinated with and must be approved by the employee’s Department Head and is available only when the needs of the City and its customers require it. Whether time spent on stand-by is considered time worked is a question of fact to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Generally, stand-by time is considered time worked for the amount of time spent:  Performing work-related activities, such as phone calls;  Driving to and from the location of an emergency situation; and  Responding to an emergency situation CITY OF SCHERTZ EMPLOYEE POLICY HANDBOOK Stand-by time is not considered time worked if the employee can leave word as to where they can be reached, or if the employee carries a pager or phone and does not have to stay at a certain location as defined above. If stand-by time is considered time worked, the employee(s) on stand-by shall receive their regular hourly rate until they work over forty (40) hours within a given workweek, which would then place the employee(s) in an overtime status. Reporting Leave Time It is the responsibility of the Department Head to submit all leave information to the Finance Department with timesheets so leave information can be properly recorded on each employee’s personnel record. A deliberate misrepresentation of time worked or leaves taken, or unauthorized absence may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination. According to the Fair Labor Standards Act, hourly, non-exempt employees must be paid overtime at time and one-half their regular rate of pay for all hours actually worked over forty (40) in a single workweek. Thus, in calculating how many hours a non-exempt employee actually works in a week, the city will not count paid vacation, holiday, comp time, or sick time towards the forty (40)-hour workweek. For example, an employee who normally works Monday through Friday, eight (8) hours a day, is off on a Monday because it is a paid holiday. The employee then works Tuesday through Friday, eight hours a day, and is asked to work four (4) additional hours on Saturday. The employee’s pay for the week would reflect a total of forty-four (44) paid hours. However, since the employee actually worked only thirty-six (36) hours, he/she would not receive any overtime pay. Leave Substitution The city’s policy requires all applicable paid leave to be used concurrently with a qualifying leave of absence with the exception of an employee, who is serving suspension. In accordance with this policy, other leaves will be automatically substituted when there is an insufficient balance of a requested leave or substitution type (e.g. If ten (10) days of leave are requested to take care of an ill child, but the employee only have five (5) days of sick leave, then any vacation balance followed by any comp time balance will automatically be substituted, if available. However, if an employee is out for an illness for themselves or qualifying family members, they must declare the sick leave on their time sheet. Employees may not use comp time or any other leave in place of sick time unless the employee has exhausted his/her sick leave. It is important to refer to the city policies on the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) POLICY and Leave of Absence POLICY for clarification. CITY OF SCHERTZ EMPLOYEE POLICY HANDBOOK Work "suffered or permitted" The FLSA clearly states that it is the employer’s responsibility to enforce the overtime rules, not the employees.” Overtime must be paid if the employer "knows or has reason to know" that the employee is working. The location of the work (e.g., at the job site or away from it) is immaterial if the employer knows or has reason to know of the employee’s work. Supervisor’s Note: To prevent incurring wage liability for work time not requested or desired, supervisors should instruct non-exempt employees that any overtime must be approved by them in advance and in writing. Good two-way communication about this is very important. Training Time Time spent studying and attending classes for courses which are required by the supervisor for an employee’s current job is considered time worked. Time spent in training, lectures and meetings need not be considered time worked if all the four of the following conditions are met:  Attendance occurs outside of regular work hours.  Attendance is totally and completely voluntary. To meet this criterion, the employer cannot require employee attendance; and the employee must not be led to believe that non-attendance would adversely affect their employment.  The employee does no productive work related to the employee’s job responsibilities while attending training; and  The training is not directly related to the employee’s present job o Training is "directly related" to the employee’s job when it is designed to make the employee more effective at his or her present job. o Training is not "directly related" to the employee’s job when it prepares the employee for a different job, including a promotion, or teaches the employee a new or additional skill.  When training is attended for the bona fide purpose of preparing for advancement through upgrading the employee to a higher skill, and is not intended to make the employee more efficient in his/her present job, the training is not considered directly related to the employee’s job even though the course incidentally improved his/her skill in doing his/her regular work. Time spent by an employee on his/her own initiative attending an independent school, college or independent trade school after hours is not considered as time worked for the city even if the courses are related to the job. CITY OF SCHERTZ EMPLOYEE POLICY HANDBOOK For the benefit of its employees, the city may establish a program of instruction, which corresponds to the courses offered by independ ent bona fide institutions of learning. Voluntary attendance by an employee at such courses outside of working hours would not be considered hours worked even if the instruction is directly related to the job, or paid for by the city. Travel Time The principles that apply in determining whether time spent in travel is time worked depend upon the kind of travel involved. When travel time is integral to performing the employee’s job, the time must be treated as work time. When travel time is merely a normal incident of employment, it need not be treated as such. Time spent traveling during normal work hours is considered hours worked. Time spent in home-to-work travel by an employee in an employer -provided vehicle, or in activities performed by an employee that are incidental to the use of the vehicle for commuting, generally is not "hours worked" and, therefore, is unpaid. Medical Attention Time spent by an employee waiting for and receiving medical attention at the work place or at the direction of the supervisor is considered time worked if it occurs during the employee’s normal working hours. Time spent waiting for and receiving medical attention as a result of a workplace injury is considered time worked. Volunteer Work FLSA covered employees may not volunteer to work in excess of 40 hours in a workweek without compensation. All time worked must be properly recorded. Voluntary work by an employee for the city shall not be reported as time worked and shall not be compensable as long as the voluntary work is totally and completely voluntary. In order to classify an employee as a volunteer and not an employee under the FLSA, all of the following requirements must be met:  The services must be offered freely by the employee without pressure or coercion (direct or implied) from the employer. Therefore, requests from the employer to participate in “voluntold” activities are not permissible.  The activities are predominately for the employee's own benefit. CITY OF SCHERTZ EMPLOYEE POLICY HANDBOOK  The volunteer must not receive or expect to receive any compensation for work performed.  The services must be different from any service that the individual is employed to perform for the employer.