New Year’s resolutions: Be they professional or personal, simplistic or life-altering, the beginning of the year affords a fantastic—albeit arbitrary—opportunity to effectuate change.
Whatever. I’m not great about keeping New Year’s resolutions. I make them. Usually. Sort of. Sometimes I even pick them back up mid-year, but usually they go dormant long before it warms up outside.
I know the definition of hypocrisy, so I’m not going to encourage you to adopt any work-related New Year’s resolutions. Instead, I’m going to suggest a few things you may actually be able to accomplish before 2025. Maybe some of these have been sitting on your desk for a bit, and you need a nudge to wrap them up. Or maybe they are things that appeal to you, if only because they are relatively easy to check off your list—i.e., easy enough to allow plenty of time for a fourth viewing of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. (Is it just me, or does it get better every year?).
You may have done this exercise recently given the July 1, 2024, increase in the salary threshold for the “white collar” exemptions from the overtime requirement of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Another increase was scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2025, but on November 15, 2024, a federal judge in Texas blocked both it and the July 1 increase, sending the overtime rule back to the Department of Labor (DOL) for further consideration. What will happen to the salary threshold next? Frankly, I’m about as good at predicting the outcome of these types of legal challenges as I am at keeping New Year’s resolutions, so we’ll just wait and see together.
Use the next several weeks to confirm whether your current exempt employees will retain their exempt status. Prepare to make any salary increases needed to retain exempt status—although given the uncertainty of pending legal challenges, I would delay as long as possible providing notice and implementing these changes.
Finally, you know those couple of employees who are currently classified as exempt—the ones you have real doubt about or maybe even know more than likely don’t qualify for their current exemption? Address those, too. The beginning of the year is a good time to implement reclassifications.
Do you want to change from separate sick and vacation banks to a single paid time off (PTO) bank? Do you want to change your accrual schedule or put new limits on rolling over of accrued but unused PTO?
The beginning of the year is a great time to implement these types of changes.
Surely you revised your policy to reflect the Oklahoma laws on medical marijuana. But if you haven’t, now is a great time to do it.
Address the use of medical marijuana during work hours and on worksites. Discuss the impact of medical marijuana use for employees in safety-sensitive positions. Remember, any change to your drug and alcohol testing policy must be rolled out at least 10 days before it becomes effective. During this transitional period, you may continue to administer your prior testing policy.
Use the new year as a target date to roll out payroll deduction agreements for your workforce.
Here in Oklahoma, deductions other than those allowed by law can be made only under the terms of a written deduction agreement signed by the employee.
If you decide to overhaul your health and well-being beginning in January 2025, best of luck to you! Hopefully you can use the rest of 2024 to make some small changes and tweaks for the workplace in 2025.
Courtney Bru is an attorney in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, office of McAfee & Taft. You can contact her at courtney.bru@mcafeetaft.com.
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