5 Reasons Churches Need Legal Review of Church Jobs

by Josh Bryant | Managing Attorney

Remember a few years ago when the Department of Labor announced that it was going to double the salary requirement for exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act? What a disaster for churches that would have been! Fortunately, the courts intervened and struck that particular regulation down before it went into effect. But now it seems many churches have been lulled into a false sense of security. We cannot forget that proper classification of job positions is important; failure to do so can bring a lot of liability on your church. Here are five reasons why you need to have Josh Bryant and Church General Counsel review your job descriptions to determine whether the job could or should be classified as exempt or non-exempt.

1. It may make sense for you to reclassify some of your positions. A great many people work above the $455 per week limit for non-exempt employees right now and qualify as exempt under the salary level test. Simply paying them a guaranteed minimum amount (a salary instead of an hourly wage) would allow them to qualify under the salary basis test. By adding a few duties that qualify under the duties test to classify a position as exempt, you can eliminate your overtime exposure, obtain a greater degree of certainty in personnel costs, and maybe even protect your church from liability in other areas of law. Josh Bryant will help you walk through that analysis to determine what is best.

2. Churches are staffed with many creative and ministry professionals still earning an hourly wage. Some positions within the church are truly administrative and involve little more than copying, filing, answering phones, greeting people, entering data, and so forth. However, many ministry assistant or secretarial positions in churches also require a very special skill set. For example, do your ministry assistants use InDesign or another piece of creative software to create slides, flyers, and so forth? If a good amount of their job involves duties like this, they could be exempt and not subject to overtime requirements. Do you require your ministry assistant's to have any spiritual duties? You should. If spiritual duties occupy a good portion of their time, they could be exempt as well. In addition, courts do not often get involved in employment disputes between churches and employees with spiritual duties. Josh Bryant can help you reclassify those jobs to help protect your church if it is appropriate to do so.

3. Churches are also staffed with many senior administrative personnel. Do you have someone on staff responsible for all technology, including computers, sound equipment, projection devices, televisions, and so forth? If so, they could be considered exempt under the administrative duties test. Do you have a human resources professional? They could be exempt too. There are many people who work for churches earning an hourly wage that do office work directly related to the general operation of the church which primarily involve the exercise of independent judgment and discretion about significant matters in the church. As such, they could also be classified as exempt. Josh Bryant can help identify these employees and reclassify their jobs accordingly.

4. It may make sense for you to seek more non-exempt employees. If you have jobs in which work is high volume in some seasons and slow in others, it may make sense to have that position classified as non-exempt to the extent possible considering all the factors. This can help you save money by only paying for hours worked instead of a salary when a person only has part time work to do. If your church grants different fringe benefits to different levels of employee, it may save money to get more non-exempt employees than exempt ones. But you have to remember that you may gain overtime exposure with non-exempt employees. Josh Bryant can help you with this analysis as well.

5. You might need to consider contract labor. If there is a singular task that needs to be done, you might could hire an independent contractor to do it, even on a full time basis. Your pastor could even be an independent contractor if you wanted him to be. The downside is that contractors must have absolute discretion in how they carry out their jobs. You only get to negotiate what job is done and the cost of doing that job. The contractor then determines how, what employees he or she needs to get the job done, and so forth. The upside is that you do not have the administrative hassle of wage withholding - that shifts to the contractor. Furthermore, your contractor is responsible for any damage caused to others during the scope of their employment rather than the church as is most often the case. Josh Bryant can help you with the contracts necessary if contract labor is more appropriate.

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In short, job classification is very complicated, and they don't teach it in seminary. You have to consider not only the duties assigned to the person and their educational needs, but also the other policies of the church, your budget, and the pros and cons of having a job be classified as exempt, non-exempt, or contract. Below is a sample policy and procedure document designed to help you classify your jobs. Of course, we're here to help at Church General Counsel. Give us a call at (866)597-5621 for any help you may need.

FLSA Compliance Policy

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This is a policy and procedure document designed to help you properly classify your positions.

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