by, Ali Larson

Today, Ali Larson with Executive Risk at WA Group discusses “Wage and Hour”.

Many of you might not know this, but wage and hour is actually specifically excluded under almost all employment practices liability policies. Yep, that’s right. It is specifically excluded. So now what you might be thinking of is the wage and hour defense supplement that’s endorsed on EPL policies. This is something that I always look for and always put on any EPL policies that I write. So, I’m always doing the hard work for you and I’m looking out for you and I’m making sure that that coverage is on there, but you might not know exactly what wage and hour is and what some types of wage and hour claims are.

Wage and hour claims are when we get into that realm of ‘is somebody hourly?’, ‘is somebody salaried?’ or maybe ‘somebody is hourly and they’re punching out, but they’re still doing work’. That is definitely some hot water that you don’t want to get yourself into.

You really want to make sure that your employees are classified appropriately and if somebody is alleging that maybe they aren’t classified as an exempt employee versus nonexempt or the other way around, you really want to investigate that and make sure that they are appropriately classified so that you’re not looking at any types of wage and hour claims in the future.

The good news is, though, is that there is some defense available on your policies that I make sure that I put on the policies. It’s a small supplement usually around $100 to $150, but it’s some coverage and it’s better than nothing. Right?

So if you are wondering if your policy has this wage and hour defense coverage on it, or you’re looking for an EPL quote, give us a call. We’d be happy to help you out.