Under California law employers are liable for all the time the employee is subject to the control of the employer, whether the employee is performing mental or physical activity or not. Employers need to reimburse common expenses such as work-related travel and expenses incurred within the scope of employment.
Employee expenses should be paid for costs associated with required training, obtaining a required vaccine, or other meetings and the time traveling to and from the event site (in excess of the employee’s regular commute time).
The rate of pay for non-exempt (hourly) employees the time spent during non-productive work time can be a paid at their regular rate of pay or reduced rate no lower than current state or local minimum wage. For higher wage earners, the recommendation is the employee is paid at one-half the employee’s rate of pay (no less than state or local minimum wage).
If employers should choose to establish a second reduced wage for non-productive training time, administrative work and travel time, employers should notify employees in advance (at least 15 days) of the new non-productive wage rate.
When employers require employees to attend training, or other required non-productive events after work hours or on a day off, this may result in overtime of over eight hours a day, or over 40 hours in a workweek. The overtime calculation of two or more rates of pay must include a "weighted average" of all rates of pay resulting in the employees "Regular Rate of Pay". Visit dir.ca.gov for more information.
Use a Change in Relationship Form to document the reduced training and non-productive time rate and provide an updated Notice to Employee form.