Paying Employees During Inclement Weather

Your company closed because of a snow storm. Do you need to keep paying employees during inclement weather?

Non-exempt employees need to be paid only for actual hours worked plus any reporting time pay that may be required by the state. In accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act, however, exempt employees must be paid when the employer closes due to inclement weather.

This is an area where you should also be consistent with your own policy and practice. If you have been paying all employees—regardless of their employment classification—for hours they would have worked had you not closed for bad weather, then you should continue to do so. If you would like to end that practice, create a clear written policy with alternative guidelines and distribute it to all employees prior to implementation.

If, on the other hand, you pay non-exempt employees only for actual hours worked, be sure to compensate them for any applicable reporting time pay. In many states, hourly employees who have arrived at work and are then sent home early as a result of lack of work, or inability to work, must be paid for a minimum portion of their scheduled shift. In New York, employers are required (with some exceptions) to pay employees for their scheduled shift up to a maximum of four hours. This payment may be at the applicable minimum wage.

As an alternative to having an idle workforce for a day, you could look for creative workarounds. Can employees complete their work at home? This option might save you from having to pay employees for time they haven’t worked or from reducing the number of hours they expected to work.

For more information on how GTM advises businesses on HR issues like this one, contact us at (518) 373-4111.