With a new federal overtime law just months from going into effect, companies apparently don’t feel the need to train their staff about its ramifications — despite the fact that it will affect more than 4 million workers’ employment status.
That’s what a survey conducted by Navex Global, an ethics and compliance consulting firm based in Oswego, Oregon, found when it polled employer representatives about their training plans. Of all the major training topic categories — discrimination, bullying, harassment, Americans with Disabilities Act — the new wage and hour rules came in dead last in importance.
As reported by the Society for Human Resource Management, the new wage and hour rules that kick in on Dec. 1 will raise the cap on who gets overtime pay, and could shift as many as 4.2 million employees from exempt to nonexempt status.
Navex wanted to find out how concerned employers were about getting the shift right, compared to their priorities for other training topics. But instead of learning that employers were scurrying to create training sessions to inform staff on the new rules, the results showed that most employers are still focused on such old training warhorses as harassment and discrimination — important topics to be sure, but certainly familiar to most by now.
Not only did the wage and hour changes come in last, with just 29 percent saying they would train in the next two to three years, but less than half said they would offer such training more than once a year once they start training. The majority said they would either offer it annually or less frequently.
Navex said it believes this lack of emphasis on wage and hour rule training will likely come back to haunt companies as compliance officers begin to evaluate organizations for meeting the new standards.
Where is the training focus? This is what 644 ethics and compliance officers had to say when asked which areas would be subject of training programs in the next two to three years:
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Workplace harassment: 76 percent.
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Discrimination: 63 percent.
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Abusive conduct and bullying: 53 percent.
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Workplace violence: 51 percent.
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Diversity and inclusion: 50 percent.
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Americans with Disabilities Act reasonable accommodations: 31 percent.
Part of the explanation for this lack of attention to the new rules could be that a high percentage of company training programs are well south of the cutting edge. When asked to describe their programs as either “advanced/mature” or “basic/reactive,” 40 percent chose the latter descriptor.
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
