Keeping exempt jobs exempt: How to avoid wage and hour litigation

Employers are stumped. How can they run efficient businesses and generate profits that investors and the street expect and not run afoul of wage and hour litigation? What is sometimes good practice in management can lead to claims of misclassification of nonexempt workers as exempt. Plaintiff awards in wage and hour litigation can be as much as ninety million dollars, as it was in Bell v. Farmer's Insurance Exchange. The challenge is to understand how well-conceived management practices, when taken to an extreme, may create an environment in which exempt employees turn themselves into non-exempt employees and later, become plaintiffs in wage and hour suits.