Human Resource Blog

Salary and Hourly on Same Paycheck

	Compensation
Employee Payroll Action Form W-4 Employee Withholding Allowance Cert. Employee Payroll Status/Change Form Direct Deposit Form Total Compensation Summary

We have a promotion going on where some of our salaried personnel will be working 1 additional day per week outside of their normal job duties for extra pay - “Piece Work” totaling $84.00 per day. Should this be entered in as a separate paycheck or should it be included with their regular salaried paycheck?

This is an interesting situation. Apparently, the company is short of hourly workers and is offering salaried supervisors the opportunity to pick up extra cash by working a shift on their day off.

The best way to handle this might be to pay salaried workers who volunteer to work an hourly shift on their day off a “bonus” of $84, on their regular check. The salaried worker is being rewarded for initiative and superior performance, not paid for additional hours.

To answer your question, it is fine to put both amounts on the same paycheck. Combining the two doesn’t alter the legality of this payment process. In fact, putting the “piece work” and salaried amounts on separate checks may be interpreted by the US Department of Labor as an attempt to commit fraud by  avoiding overtime payments – which is the real issue here.

Your title refers to paying  “hourly” and “salaried” wages to the same employee. That’s a problem, whether it’s on one paycheck or two. Once you start paying a salaried worker at an hourly rate, they usually lose the salaried-exempt status. This is true, even if the salaried worker is doing labor normally accomplished by an hourly worker. In that case, the employer becomes liable for back pay for any overtime the employee has worked in the past few years. The back pay would also apply to others in similar positions, even if they never volunteered for an extra hourly shift.

For this reason, many employers would not solve the labor shortage by paying salaried workers to pull hourly shifts. They would schedule hourly workers for overtime, or hire additional workers.

Legally, the employer could require salaried managers to fill in, without additional payment. Ironically, the employer is creating more legal problems by trying to do the right thing.

Before you implement this policy, we would suggest that you check with the state and federal Labor Departments, or with an attorney. It may be perfectly legal if the payment is a bonus, but if not, it could potentially cost the company thousands of dollars.