Business

Using A Clock In Clock Out System To Ensure California Meal Break Compliance

Labor law compliance is an issue for every business that exists. However, every state has different regulations that must be met, which can be difficult without the proper systems in place to ensure everyone complies. One of the most common compliance issues for businesses is regarding adequate break time for employees.

California has relatively strict meal break laws that must be enforced for your business to comply with labor laws. If not, you risk the chance of incurring labor law violations, which may result in fines or negatively impact employee morale. However, ensuring that your employees adhere to your break rules can be incredibly tricky without an effective means of tracking employees.

A clock in clock out system has the necessary tools to improve compliance and eliminate many issues plaguing businesses regarding California’s meal break compliance.

California Meal Break Compliance

While there is no federal standard regarding meal breaks, the rules in California are much more strict. An employee must be given a 30-minute meal break for every 5 hours they work. If an employee works only 6 hours, they have the right to waive their lunch break only if they agree to do so; otherwise, a break must be provided.

Employees working 10 hours must be provided a second 30-minute lunch break with an exception if they work up to only 12 hours, they may waive one break but not both. As you can imagine, these complex rules can make tracking employee time and ensuring everyone complies very difficult.

Make It Easier to Clock In/Out

One of the main reasons an employee misses their breaks is not because they don’t want to take their breaks, but because they either don’t want to deal with the hassle of clocking out to take their breaks or take their break without clocking out.

Either way, this can lead to compliance issues because regardless of whether or not employees want to clock out, it’s essential for compliance that there are records of employees getting their appropriate meal break in case of an audit.

An online timecard system makes the process much easier, often taking only seconds to clock in or out so that employees can immediately take their break on time and clock back into work afterward without a lot of hassle.

Track Employees and Send Reminders

When you have a large workforce, it is nearly impossible to track employee time and attendance manually, including whether or not they are taking their meal breaks. This is why compliance is so difficult to enforce.

A clock in clock out system does all of the trackings of employees automatically. Managers can see at a glance what employees are working, which ones are on break, and which ones haven’t taken their meal break. The system can even flag employees who are missing their breaks and send out warnings and reminders to help promote compliance. This allows management to address compliance firsthand, and if an issue persists, they can handle it with the individual employee.

Improve Policies and Procedures

Another reason that compliance is difficult to enforce is that new hires and employees, in general, may sometimes be unaware of the break policy and that meal breaks in California are mandatory. Having a team time tracking system in place that employees can easily understand will help with compliance. Understanding the importance of meal break compliance will improve the acceptance of these regulations.

Online timesheet software can help by giving employees essential updates and reminders and a visual record of their time and when they need to take a break, which is often overlooked with a manual timesheet management solution.

Keep Accurate Records

Lastly, businesses can often find themselves in trouble with the labor board, not because employees aren’t taking their meal breaks, but because they fail to produce proper compliance records. This is one of the significant pitfalls of manual timekeeping because records are difficult to track and may contain errors and inaccuracies.

It is advised to always have at least three years of timekeeping records in the event of an audit by the labor board. A clock in clock out system makes this much easier because all documents are stored and updated automatically. In most cases, this information is kept in the cloud so that there’s no need for paper records.

This also makes the records much more accessible, and a clock in clock out system can generate reports effortlessly for record-keeping. This helps to avoid compliance issues that result from logistical oversights.

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