Our Overtime company policy states our company’s rules regarding the compensation of hours worked beyond an employee’s standard working schedule. We want to ensure that employees will be consistently and correctly compensated for the time they put into the completion of their job duties. We also want to minimize incidents of abuse of overtime, loss of productivity, health and safety risks and other issues.

This policy is not designed to contradict any legal guidelines that are in effect. The company will abide by relevant legislation when assigning or compensating overtime hours. In cases when legislation does not cover overtime, it remains at the company’s discretion to decide if and how overtime will be compensated.

Scope
This policy applies to all our current eligible employees.

Policy elements
In this policy, the term “standard working hours” refers to the hours specified in an employee’s employment contract and will usually correspond to the daily or weekly amount of hours as stated by law. In cases where the employment contract and the law differ, the policy will follow legal guidelines on working hours. These hours are an employee’s regularly scheduled working time. “Overtime” that qualifies for compensation refers to any amount of time worked in addition to those hours.

So, this policy’s general rules are:

Non-exempt employees who work more than the standard working hours will be entitled to overtime pay

Employee must be classified as non-exempt according to legislation to qualify for overtime pay

Employee may be on company premises or performing work at any place and time of which the company is aware and accepts for its business purposes.

Excessive Overtime
Overtime may be rendered necessary to handle emergencies, heavy workloads or other issues. But, we recognize that frequent and excessive overtime isn’t good for employees’ health and performance. The law may or may not permit excessive overtime, but we want to avoid productivity and morale loss or work-related accidents due to fatigue.

For this reason, we will:

Have all necessary provisions to allow employees to complete their work during standard working hours.

Record overtime hours accurately and consistently.

Advise employees to only work overtime when they have tofinish work that they are unable to complete the next day or at a future time.

Set a daily/weekly cap for overtime. Employees who work more than that will be compensated according to legal requirements. But, we advise employees to respect this limit.

Take measures to gradually reduce overtime when we observe a decline in work quality or other issues due to excessive working hours.

We will not:

Ask employees to work more than the maximum amount of hours per day or week permitted by law

Discriminate when choosing who has to work overtime and how they’ll be compensated for it

When employees are working on a shift-based system, we will not:

Ask employees working on night shifts to work for more than two hours overtime (unless in cases of emergency). We advise them to avoid it whenever possible.

Ask employees who work more than 8-hour schedules to do double shifts.

Encourage more than four hours of overtime for employees who work 8 to 10 hours. For 12-hour schedules, overtime will be limited to two additional hours

Exempt employees
The law may exempt some employees from overtime compensation. These persons will not receive any overtime pay unless otherwise agreed upon through their employment contract. All other company provisions about excessive overtime will apply to exempt employees too.

Abuse of overtime
In order to avoid any incidents of abuse of the overtime system, either by the company or employees, that may result in legal confrontation, the following statements should apply:

Employees must read this policy and ask any questions to the Human Resources Department

The company should compensate overtime pay at the correct pay rates in a timely manner

Supervisors should not ask or encourage employees to work excessive overtime to complete their duties

Employees should not try to work unnecessary overtime aiming for the highest pay, as this may result in a trade off with the quality of their work

All employees should follow the company’s timekeeping systems so we can maintain accurate records

Procedure
To comply with record keeping and overtime compensation requirements, we need a smooth procedure. It’s best if overtime is recorded timely and approved to avoid disagreements concerning the amount of overtime worked. More specifically, the suggested procedure is as follows:

Employees or team leaders identify the need for overtime

Team leaders and employees agree on the hours of overtime needed and when employees will work them. They should not exceed the legal limit (if such exists) and the employee should not end up working excessive hours

The team leader should know whether the employee is classified as non-exempt by legislat