Workplace Q&A: Our power went out midway through our regular shift. We waited a couple of hours to see if it would come back on but eventually sent our employees home for the day. How much time do we need to pay them?
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Q: Our power went out midway through our regular shift. We waited a couple of hours to see if it would come back on but eventually sent our employees home for the day. How much time do we need to pay them?
A: FLSA outlines a few factors in determining how much an employee needs to be paid for a partial day's work when, as in this case, their inability to work is not due to their personal need for time off.
Exempt employees need to be paid for the full day if they work any part of it. In fact, if the outage lasted longer than a day, they need to be paid their full salary for any week in which they worked at all regardless of how much or how little that was.
Non-exempt employees need to be paid for all compensable time. This is where it may get tricky.
Of course, they need to be paid for any time they actually worked.
If you required them to stay on-site while waiting for the power to come back on, they are considered to be "engaged to wait" which is also compensable time.
However, if they took a break (i.e., they ate their lunch) while waiting, then that can be considered their usual break time which can be unpaid if longer than 20 minutes in duration without interruption.
Once you let them leave, they are off-the-clock and no longer need to be paid unless they are doing work for the company (i.e., running errands or delivering a shipment) on the way home.
To add a bit more confusion, some states have reporting pay or predictive scheduling laws which require employees be paid a minimum amount of time if they report in as scheduled but are sent home before the end of their shift.
The safest course of action is to pay all employees for the full day if they intended to work but were unable to due to circumstances beyond their control.
