Do You Offer Makeup Time?

Makeup time gives employees who are entitled to overtime flexibility so that they can attend to personal matters without using vacation time.

Makeup time is available to California employees and allows the employee to “makeup” work hours during a week that would otherwise be lost because of some personal obligation. 

For example, an employee has a doctor’s appointment on a Friday afternoon that will take 3 hours. Makeup time allows the employee to work 3 extra hours earlier in the week so they will not have to use paid time off or take the hours as unpaid.

In this example, if the employee works 9 hours on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, they would not be entitled of overtime for the ninth hour worked on those days, because those hours are applied to the hours lost on Friday afternoon.

Things to keep in mind:

• The employee needs to provide a signed written request to the employer for each occasion that they want to make up time 
• Employers should have a carefully drafted policy on makeup time and a system to document employee requests
• Any hours over 11 in a day or 40 in a week must be paid as overtime, even if makeup time is used during that week
• Makeup time for a recurring obligation can be requested up to 4 weeks in advance
• Makeup time must be for time missed during the same week
• Employers cannot solicit or encourage employees to request makeup time, but employers may inform employees of this option

Developing a compliant policy and procedure can be easy to administrate and would provide an excellent option to offer your non-exempt employees.

Lauren Sims is the article’s author and the Director of Human Resources.

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