Must you pay your staff for being on call?March 19, 2019Suppose you operate a 24-hour emergency hospital. In this tight labor market for veterinary technicians, you are faced with a staffing shortage for the night and overnight shifts. It occurs to you that requiring existing technicians to be on call from time to time may be a way to help solve the staffing dilemma. But how would this affect your budget? More specifically, would you be required to pay your staff for being on-call even if they are not actually called in to work? What is considered compensable? Well, that depends. Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), employees in on-call status must be paid if they are "engaged to wait," but not if they are "waiting to be engaged." Hmmm. How does this obtuse rule of thumb work in the real world? The key is whether the on-call time is predominantly for the practice's benefit. The more the employee is under the practice's control, the more likely it is the on-call period will be viewed as benefiting the practice and, in turn, as being compensable. Requiring technicians to remain on the premises during their on-call time will almost certainly render this time "hours worked" under FLSA. In …
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