Exempt to Professional Nonexempt Transition
“Between now and 2028, Washington State will increase the salary threshold that needs to be met to be considered an exempt employee. That means many employees who are currently exempt will transition to nonexempt status over the coming years. Because teachers are excluded from the exempt salary threshold in Washington state, these changes do not impact faculty. Whitman will internally designate these “newly” nonexempt positions as “professional nonexempt.” Increases to the salary thresholds for Washington state will occur each year on January 1 until January 1, 2028, when the state threshold reaches 2.5 times the Washington State minimum wage. From that point on, the state threshold will increase annually each January 1 based on inflation by the same percentage that the Washington State minimum wage does. By 2028, almost all employees at Whitman will have a non-exempt status.”
12.20.2024 email from Dr. Johnson
Following on from Cara Setchell’s visit to the IE Team Meeting on 12.19.2024
Professional nonexempt staff are salaried, not hourly, meaning they are understood to be full-time employees and their salary is based on an assumption of 2,080 (or roughly 1,920 in some cases) hours worked a year. The budget is equipped to pay their annual salary divided by 12 months each month - based on an expectation that the employee worked 40 hours each week.
Professional nonexempt staff are expected to track and report their hours worked each day of the work week (which starts on Sunday and ends on Saturday). It was noted that consistently reporting 8 hours exactly would be flagged as potentially false reporting.
If a professional nonexempt staff member hits their 40 hours/week in a month, they will get the standard salary. If they work more than 40 hours in a work week, they get overtime (1.5 x their hourly rate).
If a professional nonexempt staff member works less than 40 hours/week, they should use some of their accrued paid time off (PTO) to get their full monthly salary. If they don't use PTO, there will be unpaid time and payroll will need to manually reduce their compensation for that pay period.
In our Division, professional nonexempt staff are prohibited from working overtime without preapproval from their supervisor. We also will make an effort to adjust work schedules during the week to avoid the accrual of overtime whenever possible, not just for the purpose of cost savings, but to reduce staff burnout and because the entire exempt threshold process is intended to prevent exploitation. We really don't want staff working more than 40 hours in a given week. As a reminder, our work schedule is 8am-5pm Monday through Friday with a 1 hour lunch break. And any changes to that schedule should be approved by your supervisor and/or documented on your Google calendar.
In a given pay period, if a professional nonexempt employee is under 40 hours in a week, they will have the option to decide if they want to use available PTO to make up the difference. Employees will typically be contacted directly by someone in HR to alert them to the fact that they are not reaching the full hours mark and will be asked if they want to use PTO if they have not already entered it through BambooHR. While it is not a requirement to use PTO to make up the difference (and sometimes people do not have the PTO available), it is always the preferred strategy because our system requires manual adjustments to payroll to account for unpaid time and we want to limit fluctuations in your pay.
Susan Edwards in HR is available to answer any payroll related questions you might have (Susan Edwards, Human Resources Generalist, (509) 527-5172 / edwardss2@whitman.edu)