There are more and more cases concerning employees not being paid for overtime. The bottom line is if an employee works more than 40 hours in their regular work week, you must pay the overtime rate (1 ½ times their regular rate) for hours over 40.
Oh, but you made an announcement that no overtime work will be permitted. Well, if that’s the case, you still must pay overtime to the person that worked more than 40 hours.
Or the employee tells you they don’t expect to be paid overtime, it’s important to them to finish what they are working on. The overtime requirement may not be waived by agreement between the employer and employees.
Of course, you don’t want an employee to hang up on a customer or walk away from one saying ‘time for me to go’. Make sure they know they are expected to finish with the customer, then simply allow them to leave early on another day as long as it is in the same work week. If it’s the last day of a work week, again overtime pay would be needed.
There is more information on this Fact Sheet from the U.S. Department of Labor.
https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs23.pdf
Contact CyQuest should you have any questions!