Fixing Pay Errors
Even if they love their job, most workers still are in it for the paycheck.
So it’s probably no surprise that half of workers say they’ll start searching for a new job if their employer twice pays late, incorrectly, or not at all, according to a survey from The Workforce Institute at Kronos.
It pays to examine your paystub, since the survey finds that 26 percent of hourly workers and 15 percent of salaried employees spotted underpayment at least once.
Being short-changed could be an honest mistake, however, says Bill Dunn of the American Payroll Association.
When hourly workers are paid at a differing rates per hour, depending on when and how long they’re logging work hours, there can be “miscommunication between the employee, his manager and the payroll [administrator],” Dunn says. A common problem involves “people not turning in their time sheets,” Dunn says. “If just one worker doesn’t have his in or the manager hasn’t turned it in, the payroll department has to run the payroll and work out problems later.”
Take payroll errors to the payroll administrator first, Dunn advises. “Payroll will have the best understanding of what went wrong with the pay,” he says. If a worker can’t resolve the issue with payroll, Dunn advises taking up the matter with “your manager or HR.”
While there are honest mistakes, the study did find that 23 percent of workers have had pay delayed at least once and nine percent had a paycheck bounce.
Those mistakes are more serious, Dunn says. Anytime there is “wage theft” –the employer doesn’t pay on time, at all or deliberately under-pays – workers can file a complaint with their state labor department or the U.S. Dept. of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.
The U.S. Department of Labor reports that it recovered some $266 million in back wages for 280,000 workers in 2016.
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