I work at a private, nonprofit and one of our exempt employees drives a non-passenger vehicle for events set by sponsors. The sponsors have not finalized their calendar of events so the driver is in essence without work. The sponsor is also unable to provide a timeframe for when they will have their schedule of events completed.

My two thoughts were a) temporarily lay him off or b) pay him regardless because he is ready and able to work. What can we do in this situation? We do not want to penalize the employee for the sponsor's inability to perform their job on time. Unfortunately, the employee is not anywhere near an office so he is unable to come in and perform administrative work for even an hour. Help!

If this is an exempt employee, he must be paid his regular weekly salary for any week in which he works. If this is all that this employee does (drive a vehicle for sponsor events), then he wouldn't qualify for exempt status and you need only pay him for the hours he works.