Paying your Staff to Attend Conventions

Taking your staff members to a convention is a pretty big thought process and a big expenditure for most small business owners. So let's talk about how you have to make sure that you're complying with all the rules if this is something you decide to offer. As we know, conventions come up all the time and even off site meetings or mini conventions so many times it's worthwhile to take your employees to these because they come up with a lot of great new ideas. They're jazzed up and ready and energized to help you grow your business when they get back, typically. And they've probably made some good connections to help be able to further your business and learn new things from other businesses just like yours. So how do you care for that? Are you responsible to pay for the expenses? What happens to their pay? Let's dive in a little bit. You are responsible, most likely to pay for their convention attendance and maybe any hotel or travel. You don't have to, but most studio owners do want to do that if that's the particular situation where you'd like to ask an employee to attend. Now, if an employee wants to attend on their own dime, obviously you don't have any problems with that. But most cases they don't really want to invest that much. Most studio owners are showing this as an investment in their staff by paying for that. But then the big question comes about what about payroll? How is that handled? What are you legally required to do first? Traveling time. If your staff is traveling during the time when they would normally be working, you're required to pay them their hourly pay. Now, we're going to assume for all purposes here that this is an hourly employee who is not exempt from overtime. And it's very rare that you'd have a case where somebody is exempt from overtime. You'd have to be paying them a good bit of money and they'd have to be salaried. So we're going to leave that consideration up because it doesn't apply to most studios. So assuming they are paid for hourly work, even a part time employee, you're going to have to pay for their hours. So let's take an assumption for a moment. Suzy, studio worker, works from 3 to 7pm Monday through Friday as a part time employee. So she works 20 hours a week. Let's say she's traveling to a convention on Saturday from those normal hours of three to seven. Maybe she's driving or flying. You're going to need to pay her for that Saturday during her normal work hours of three to seven. Now, if she's flying, you really only have to pay for the hours that she's working for. But if she's driving, you're going to need to pay for all the hours of driving. Those are going to be standard hourly wages. So basically they're on the clock while traveling for you. Also, while they're at in attendance at that convention, if they are required to attend sessions, you're going to be required to pay them. That includes overtime if necessary. So if they work more than 40 hours in a week, you're going to need to pay time and a half. That's subject to the Department of Labor rules. So be careful and do some pre planning for this. So if you are taking an employee with you to a convention, maybe they don't work their normal hours earlier in that week, maybe you have somebody cover those hours to alleviate part of the overtime or minimize that. So check those things out and make sure you're running this by the book. I know it comes as a surprise to most studio owners because most figure, hey, I'm already paying for them to attend. Isn't that enough? The Department of Labor says otherwise, so check those rules. If you have questions. We are actually going to be posting out a link for a travel policy that you can create a template that you can use to create for your studio if you would like. So keep an eye out for that. Thanks. Have a great day.