Early in 2016, the President signed a bill meant to increase the overtime pay for millions of American workers. The new regulation nearly doubles the threshold at which employees of any job title would be able to earn overtime. The current threshold for exempt level employees is at just over $23,000, but the new rule increases it to over $47,000. This allows more employees to qualify for time-and-a-half pay for any hours worked over 40 each week. Is your business ready for the new overtime rules? Here are ways you can prepare for 2017.

• Enforce 40 hour work weeks. The easiest way to avoid paying for overtime is to ensure that everyone on your staff only works 40 hours per week. If overtime isn’t clocked, it will not need to be paid. Encourage your team to leave when they hit the 40 hour mark. This not only help with the new rules, but can also help increased your staff’s work/life balance.
• Hire additional employees. To help mitigate the need for overtime, you can hire more employees to take up the slack in the office. Hiring another full time employee may be less expensive than paying overtime hours to your current employees. Hire assistants to help your senior staff work more efficiently.
• Don’t offer a salary increase for 2017. In some cases, the new overtime pay can act as a raise for your current staff. Rather than increasing their base salary with a merit raise next year, continue on with business as usual and pay the overtime as necessary. After a six months to a year of this new process, you can evaluate how it is working for your business.
• Utilize contract staff. Of course, another solution would be to work with temporary or contract employees through a staffing partner. They can help increase your production and not your overtime hours since they are employees of the firm, not your company. Your fee to the agency will cover the necessary costs and you will not bear the employment burden.

Do you want to work with a staffing partner that you can trust? We have offices located in Phoenix, Denver, Los Angeles and Orange County, so contact us today!