We have an online training program. We require staff to complete specific courses throughout the year. They are allowed to take these courses during working hours when day to day work is completed or when they schedule time with their supervisors. However, many procrasitnate and they end up completing them at home. We are not violating any labor law by allowing this are we? We have not been paying them to for classes completed at home.
Thanks

I can't tell you if by law it is a violation. However, when we went to online training, I told everyone here is the website, here is your log-in, here is how you log-in, etc... I told them that they had X amount of time to complete each assigned course. The question was asked can we access the site from a home computer. Everyone was told, yes you can, however, you must realize that you will not be compensated for that time. So for us, everyone new upfront when they could use the bank's computers and if they did decide to work on it a home, they would not be paid.

We've done pretty much the same thing, but I thought I had seen just lately, that the bank had to somehow prevent this from occuring if they did not want to pay or be introuble with labor laws. I could have been dreaming or having a nightmare, as the case may be.

Check the Fair Labor (Wages and Hours) laws. While I can't quote chapter and verse, the gist is that if you have an employee work overtime (The training is required for their position) and not pay them for it - even if you tell them that you will not pay them and they take the courses online at home anyway, you are in violation and subject to a fine. There are ways to make time during the day to take the courses. You have to make your managers accountable for themselves and their people completing in a timely manner. Otherwise they will have to explain the overtime. This is a symptom of not so passive resistance to the training. You need to do some positive selling of the benefits of the training, and get senior management buy-in and support. With some laws now requiring annual training, it is no longer a matter of just paying overtime, it could mean a lower compliance rating from your regulator.

Unless an employee is exempt, we do not allow them to complete the courses at home. We do a spot check of times and dates (we only have 100 employees, would be more difficult for a larger shop I realize) and if we see courses accessed by an hourly employee outside of their normal hours, we pay them for the time worked but also counsel them with a reminder of our policy (this seems to have worked as we haven't had this come up lately). We also ask if there is something we are unaware of preventing them from getting the training done during normal hours.