In the state of Pennsylvania, I have a salaried employee. If that employee does not show up at his scheduled shift time, or there is an emergency at the office outside of his shift that requires information from him, is it legal to call him on a phone number not listed on his corporate documents (e.g. outside of work he gave me his cell number, or a friend of his working the current shift has a number for him).

Second question:
Same employee setup. If the employee works from home, with the expectation that they send an e-mail at the end of their shift with a list of what they accomplished, but do not, must they be 'clockedin' and payed for that day? What if an employee repeatedly fails to clock-in, but claims they were at the office? Must they be clocked-in and payed for those days, or can they be docked pay (clocking in is a requirement for working and being payed).

One point of clarification, this employee is a Salaried Exempt employee.

If all of your questions are related to a Salaried Exempt employee, then your "clocked in" question just became meaningless. Salaried Exempt employees are not paid based on actual hours worked. Is this supposed to be a back handing docking question related to the 541.602 rules where you want to the employee to work at home, but where you also want to be able to claim that the employee voluntarily did not work so you can dock that day's wages? I can say that working at the home is legally the same thing as working at the office. Some employers try to draw this distinction but the law does not.

Regarding what phone number you contact an employee on, this is not normally something addressed in law. I am getting the impression that there is a lot more to story then is being provided and that this is a carefully worded question trying to support an action already taken for which some type of "blow back" has already occurred. Your decision, but if this is true, it is easier to give a good answer if all relevant facts are available.

If all of your questions are related to a Salaried Exempt employee, then your "clocked in" question just became meaningless. Salaried Exempt employees are not paid based on actual hours worked. Is this supposed to be a back handing docking question related to the 541.602 rules where you want to the employee to work at home, but where you also want to be able to claim that the employee voluntarily did not work so you can dock that day's wages? I can say that working at the home is legally the same thing as working at the office. Some employers try to draw this distinction but the law does not.

Regarding what phone number you contact an employee on, this is not normally something addressed in law. I am getting the impression that there is a lot more to story then is being provided and that this is a carefully worded question trying to support an action already taken for which some type of "blow back" has already occurred. Your decision, but if this is true, it is easier to give a good answer if all relevant facts are available.

DAW,
Thanks for the response. Same employee, yes. No one is trying to do anything underhandedly and no situation has yet happened, I am trying to make sure (and am consulting with our HR department) that things that happen remain legal.

I recognize an employee working at home is the same as working at the office. My question boils down to: If an employee is working at home, but does not (as agreed upon) produce an e-mail stating what they worked on that day and that they 'clocked-in' at such and such a time, must they be clocked-in? When an employee is at the office, I see them, and can see they are working. When they are working from home, I can not see them, and without information about what was worked on I have no idea if they were actually at their home office working, or off walking around the shopping mall. (Yes, I recognize this is an integrity issue).

As you have probably figured from the phone part of the question, the employee is playing some games (e.g. did not show for shift, claims he was working at home, I call him on his cell phone when he does not arrive he says that number was not provided when he was hired so don't call him on it and he could press harassment charges).

He is very close to having action taken against him, but I wanted to run the situation past the board here.

I'm going to give you an answer from an HR perspective, but I can back it up with law.

Whether an employee did or did not work is not determined by whether or not he sent an e-mail explaining what he did that day. Unless you have EVIDENCE that he did not work, you will run the risk of being on the wrong end of a DOL investigation (and possibly fined) if you do not pay him.

If he's supposed to send an e-mail with an account of how he spent his day and he did not, fine. Write him up, revoke his permission to work from home, or find some other means of discipline, but do not discipline him in a way that affects his pay. To not pay him for the day, you'd better have a witness that saw him at the shopping mall during work hours, and it sure wouldn't hurt if that witness had a video camera with him (one with a digital clock).

There are only limited circumstances under which an exempt employee can be docked in any case (for exempt employees "clocked in" is meaningless) so you need to have more than a missing e-mail to support not paying him. What if the e-mail got lost in cyberspace? That's been known to happen, too.

By all means discipline him if he deserves it, but you're on VERY thin ice using his pay as a weapon. There are other ways of managing it.

I'm going to give you an answer from an HR perspective, but I can back it up with law.

Whether an employee did or did not work is not determined by whether or not he sent an e-mail explaining what he did that day. Unless you have EVIDENCE that he did not work, you will run the risk of being on the wrong end of a DOL investigation (and possibly fined) if you do not pay him.

If he's supposed to send an e-mail with an account of how he spent his day and he did not, fine. Write him up, revoke his permission to work from home, or find some other means of discipline, but do not discipline him in a way that affects his pay. To not pay him for the day, you'd better have a witness that saw him at the shopping mall during work hours, and it sure wouldn't hurt if that witness had a video camera with him (one with a digital clock).

There are only limited circumstances under which an exempt employee can be docked in any case (for exempt employees "clocked in" is meaningless) so you need to have more than a missing e-mail to support not paying him. What if the e-mail got lost in cyberspace? That's been known to happen, too.

By all means discipline him if he deserves it, but you're on VERY thin ice using his pay as a weapon. There are other ways of managing it.

That's what I was wondering, thanks for the information. The employee may very well get written up very soon, I'm just investigating all angles. Thanks for the input.