The Fair Labor Standards Act now requires employers to pay 1.5 times their hourly wage when workers spend more than 40 hours per week at work, and that could have an impact on medical practices, according to Medscape.
Here are five key thoughts:
1. The new regulations take affect Dec. 1, 2016 and are expected to boost wages by $12 billion over the next decade.
2. The regulations require employers to guarantee overtime for hourly workers and provide overtime to salaried employees unless they are exempt; employees who provide primarily executive, administrative or professional duties are exempt. However, exempt employees’ salaries must meet another threshold.
3. Practices that currently underpay their staff will see overhead increase, according to the report. In 2004, the threshold was $455 per week or $23,660 per year. With the new regulations, the threshold will increase to $913 per week or $47,476 per year.
4. The salary floor will update automatically every three years.
5. The average office manager salary is $52,822 but around 25 percent received $42,536 and 10 percent earned $35,983.
6. Medical practice owners should make sure employees are properly classified as exempt or non-exempt from overtime pay. Converting and employee from one status to another could have drawbacks, especially for an office manager going from a salary to hourly wage.