Occasionally, an exempt employee may be absent for jury duty. During these jury duty absences, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) mandates that exempt employees may not be deducted in increments of less than one work week. As a reminder, exempt employees, often referred to as "salaried," are generally not entitled to overtime. The examples below help illustrate this law.

• Example 1: The Director of Operations works Monday and Tuesday, then serves jury duty for the rest of that work week. She would be entitled to her entire week's pay since she worked during the week she served on jury duty.
• Example 2: The same employee then has to serve jury duty the entire next week. She does not come into the office, but responds to an email from work using her iPhone. Even though the work was brief and only done on one day, she is still entitled to her entire week's pay since she performed work during the week she served on jury duty.

If planning to deduct pay, it is important that the salaried employee perform no work of any kind during that entire week of jury duty. A clear policy on handling jury duty for exempt and nonexempt employees is a vital part of a company's employee handbook and can help set expectations. For questions on handling your company's jury duty policy, please contact Nextep's HR Department.

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