Employers sometimes think of wage-and-hour compliance as a math problem: pay the correct hourly rate, calculate overtime, issue the check, done.

The Department of Labor keeps reminding employers that there is another part of the equation: Can you prove the hours and wages were calculated correctly?

On July 28, 2026, the DOL announced the recovery of approximately $613,000 for 46 workers after an investigation of Minnesota restaurant NY Gyro found minimum wage and overtime violations. The agency also reported that the employer failed to maintain required records of employees’ hours worked.

That recordkeeping issue deserves attention because poor records can turn a manageable payroll error into a much larger compliance problem.

Under the FLSA, covered employers must maintain specified payroll information for nonexempt employees, including hours worked each day and total hours worked each workweek. The DOL also requires employers to preserve certain payroll records for specified periods.

Best Practices for Employers

First, distinguish between a schedule and a time record. A schedule tells you what the employee was expected to work. A time record should tell you what actually happened.

If someone was scheduled until 5:00 p.m. but stayed until 5:45 handling customers, completing paperwork, or closing the facility, payroll cannot simply default to the schedule.

Employers should also make it easy for employees to correct mistakes. If a missed punch requires three signatures, a printed form, a trip to HR, and the blessing of the payroll gods, employees and managers will eventually start taking shortcuts.

Automatic deductions deserve special attention. Automatic meal deductions can create exposure when employees frequently work through lunch but there is no practical way to cancel the deduction.

Multi-location organizations should make sure hours follow the employee. When the same employer has an employee working at multiple locations or in multiple roles, separate schedules or cost centers should not prevent payroll from identifying total compensable hours that must be considered.

What Employers Should Do Next

Conduct a focused payroll audit using a sample of nonexempt employees from different departments, shifts, managers, and locations.

Compare scheduled hours to punches and payroll. Look for missed punches, recurring manual edits, automatic deductions, unexplained reductions, employees consistently recording exactly 40 hours, and workers with multiple job codes or locations.

Then test the overtime calculation itself. Confirm the system is using the correct workweek—not simply the pay period—and verify that all compensation that must be included in the regular rate is being captured.

Employers should also review state and local requirements, particularly where minimum wage, record-retention, meal-period, or timekeeping requirements exceed federal standards.

The takeaway is straightforward: Accurate payroll depends on accurate records.

You do not want to discover during a DOL investigation that the company’s answer to “How many hours did this employee work?” is essentially, “We’re pretty sure.”

Lisa Smith, SPHR, SCP

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Q: I’ve already talked to the employee. Why does documentation matter?

Because a conversation nobody wrote down effectively didn’t happen. Documentation serves three purposes: it gives the employee a clear record of what’s expected, it keeps managers consistent over time, and it demonstrates that any eventual decision was based on performance rather than something else. If you ever need to justify a termination, your notes are the evidence.

Q: What separates strong documentation from weak documentation?

Strong documentation is specific, factual, and dated. Weak documentation is vague and evaluative.

• Weak: “Jordan has a bad attitude and isn’t a team player.”
• Strong: “On April 8, Jordan was assigned the Miller report with a Friday deadline. He submitted it the following Tuesday without notifying the team. This is the third missed deadline since February.”

The strong version describes what happened. The weak version describes how you felt about it, which is much harder to defend and easier to challenge.

Q: How quickly should I write it up?

Same day when you can, within a few days at the latest. Memory fades fast, and contemporaneous notes carry far more weight than something reconstructed weeks later. A brief, timely note beats a detailed one written after the fact.

Q: Should the employee see what I’ve written?

For anything formal — a written warning, a performance improvement plan, a documented coaching conversation — yes. The employee should know what’s in their file and have a chance to respond. Ask them to sign acknowledging receipt, and note clearly that signing means they received it, not that they agree. If they refuse to sign, write down that they were given a copy and declined, and have a witness present if possible.

Q: What about my own informal notes?

Managers commonly keep working notes. Write them as though someone else will read them one day, because they may. Keep them factual, store them consistently for all employees rather than building a file on one person, and avoid speculation about health, family situations, or motives.

Q: Should I document good performance too?

Yes, and this is where many managers fall short. A file containing nothing but problems looks like a case being built. A file showing praise, growth, and correction over time looks like actual management. It also makes your feedback more credible to the employee.

Q: Can I go back and add to older notes?

Don’t edit past entries. If you remember something later, add a new dated entry noting when you’re writing and what you’re adding. Altered documents undermine everything else in the file.

The bottom line: Write it down soon, keep it factual, share the formal pieces with the employee, and document the wins alongside the problems. Documentation isn’t about building a case against someone — it’s about making expectations clear enough that most people can meet them.

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Q: What if the complaint seems minor, or the two people just don’t like each other?

Personality conflicts are still worth your attention as a manager, even if they aren’t legal issues. And complaints that sound trivial in isolation sometimes look different once HR sees the fourth one about the same person. Report it, and let the people with the full picture make that call.

The bottom line: Listen, document, escalate, and follow up. Those four steps handle the vast majority of complaints correctly, and they protect the employee, the company, and you.

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Hybrid work has created a wage-and-hour question that barely existed for many employers a few years ago: What happens when a nonexempt employee works from home, travels to the office in the middle of the day, and continues working there?

On July 22, 2026, the Department of Labor issued two FLSA opinion letters dealing specifically with remote work and commuter travel. One addressed voluntary mid-day travel between an employee’s home and office. The other addressed employees who receive pages, communicate with clients or coworkers, schedule appointments, and then drive from home to a first client appointment.

The first opinion letter concluded that, under the particular facts presented, voluntary mid-day travel between home and the office could qualify as ordinary commuting rather than compensable worktime. That does not mean every mid-day drive by a hybrid employee is automatically unpaid.

Under longstanding DOL guidance, ordinary home-to-work commuting generally is not compensable, while travel from job site to job site during the workday generally is.

That distinction makes the facts incredibly important.

Best Practices for Employers

Start by defining your hybrid arrangement. If an employee independently chooses to work from home for part of the day and voluntarily travels to the normal office later, the analysis may be different from a situation where a manager directs the employee to leave one work location and report to another.

Employers should also distinguish travel time from work performed during travel. An otherwise noncompensable commute does not give an employer a free block of labor. If a manager expects the employee to handle calls, respond to messages, coordinate appointments, or perform other work during the drive or immediately before it, additional compensable-time questions arise.

Mobile workers need even more attention. Home-health employees, technicians, sales employees, inspectors, maintenance workers, and other employees traveling directly to customer locations can present significantly different facts from a conventional office commute.

Timekeeping systems should accommodate split workdays. A hybrid employee who works from 7:00–10:00 a.m. at home, stops working, commutes, and begins again at the office needs a way to accurately capture those work periods.

What Employers Should Do Next

Review your remote and hybrid work policy for nonexempt employees. If the policy explains where employees may work but says nothing about recording remote time, travel, calls, texts, or split schedules, it needs another round.

Train managers not to assume that “driving” automatically means “off the clock.” Instead, HR should evaluate why the travel occurred, whether the employer required it, where the employee was traveling, and what work occurred before, during, and after the trip.

Employers with mobile workforces should consider having their specific arrangements reviewed because small factual differences can change the result.

The new opinion letters are useful guidance, but they are not a universal “midday commuting is unpaid” rule. In wage-and-hour compliance, the sentence employers should probably frame and hang on the wall is: It depends on the facts.

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Q: What information should a manager document when an employee makes a complaint?

Write down what you were told, in the employee’s words where possible, plus the date, time, and who was present. Stick to observable facts. “Employee reported that on March 3, her supervisor commented on her appearance in front of the team” is useful. “Employee seemed overly sensitive” is not — it’s a conclusion, and it will read badly later.

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Q: How much should a manager investigate on their own?

Generally, less than you think. Your job is to listen carefully, ask clarifying questions so you understand what’s being alleged, and hand it off. Interviewing witnesses, pulling records, or confronting the accused employee can contaminate an investigation and expose the company to claims that the process was unfair. If the situation involves an immediate safety risk, act to protect people first, then escalate.

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Teen workers can be a fantastic addition to restaurants, retail businesses, bakeries, hospitality operations, and other organizations struggling to fill entry-level positions. But employers cannot treat minors like smaller versions of adult employees. Federal and state laws place specific restrictions on how young an employee may be, when the employee may work, and what work the employee may perform.

The Department of Labor reinforced that point in an August 4, 2026 enforcement announcement involving three San Antonio bakery and café locations. The DOL reported child labor and wage violations, including employment of a 13-year-old and impermissible work hours involving a 15-year-old. The employer ultimately paid back wages and penalties totaling about $45,000.

For employers, the case is a reminder that child labor compliance cannot live solely in an onboarding file.

An employer may properly verify an employee’s age on day one and still violate the law three months later when a supervisor schedules that employee too late, assigns a prohibited task, or asks the minor to cover for an absent adult employee.

Federal child labor requirements under the FLSA establish age-based restrictions for nonagricultural employment, including limits affecting younger employees’ hours and occupations. State child labor laws may impose additional or more protective requirements.

Best Practices for Employers

The strongest approach is to build the employee’s age directly into the scheduling and management process.

HR should maintain an accurate list of all employees under 18 and, where applicable, distinguish employees who are 14 or 15 from those who are 16 or 17. Scheduling managers should not have to remember the rules from memory. Configure scheduling software to flag or block shifts that violate applicable hour restrictions whenever possible.

Employers should also create an age-based prohibited-duties matrix. This is especially important in restaurants, bakeries, warehouses, construction operations, manufacturing, landscaping, and other environments where equipment or job duties may be restricted for minors.

Multi-location employers need centralized oversight. A teenager working at Location A on Monday and Location B later in the week should not disappear into two separate management silos.

And beware of informality. “She’s the owner’s niece,” “He’s just helping for a few hours,” and “She volunteered to stay late” are not compliance exemptions.

What Employers Should Do Next

Run a minor-employee audit now. Identify every worker under 18 and confirm age documentation, job duties, scheduled hours, actual hours worked, and the equipment each employee uses.

Then review federal requirements alongside the law of every state where minors work. Do not assume a scheduling practice that is legal for a 17-year-old is also legal for a 15-year-old.

Finally, train frontline supervisors. They are usually the people making real-time decisions about staying late, covering shifts, cleaning equipment, or changing assignments.

Hiring teenagers can absolutely work. The key is designing the compliance controls before the Friday-night rush when someone says, “Can you stay another couple of hours?” That is usually when good intentions and wage-and-hour law start having an awkward little meeting.

The post Hiring Teenagers? Child Labor Compliance Needs More Than a Work Permit appeared first on Your HelpDesk for HR .

Q: What if the employee asks me not to tell anyone about a complaint they made?

Don’t promise confidentiality you can’t deliver. A better response: “I want to help you with this, and I have to loop in HR so it gets handled properly. They’ll share information only with people who need to know.” Saying this up front is more respectful than agreeing and then reporting anyway, which damages trust far more than the initial disclosure would have.

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Question:

Q: An employee complained to me about a coworker. Do I really have to report it?

Answer:

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