It happens every year: The clock rolls back one hour — and Payroll has to deal with confusion about how to pay shift workers during that “missing hour.” The basics: If your company has any shift workers on duty at the time that Daylight Savings Time (DST) ends, they’re working an hour longer than the usual shift. To meet its obligations, your company has to pay those workers one extra hour  — and that hour must be included for the purposes of calculating the regular rate of pay and any overtime.

Don’t forget: DST officially ends at 2 a.m. on Nov. 2. Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands don’t observe DST.

To head off questions, make sure you explain how the calculations work to any affected workers – and their managers. Otherwise, you could have to deal with a lot of grumbling from misinformed workers who think they’re going to get “cheated” out of extra pay.

Tags: Communication, Daylight Savings, IRS regs, OT pay, Payroll