Makeup Time Guidelines

If you choose to allow makeup time, you must comply with the following rules:

• While you can inform an employee of the makeup time option, you cannot encourage or otherwise solicit an employee to request the makeup time.
• An employee can work no more than 11 hours on another workday, and no more than 40 hours in a workweek, to make up the time off.
• The time must be made up within the same workweek.
• The employee must provide you with a signed, written request for each occasion that they desire makeup time.
• Exception: If an employee knows in advance that they will be requesting makeup time for a personal obligation that will recur at a fixed time over a succession of weeks, they can request to make up work time for up to four weeks in advance. For a recurring obligation, a written request must be made every four weeks. The makeup work must be performed in the same workweek that the work time was lost. For example, an employee who wants to leave an hour early every Monday and Wednesday afternoon for a college course (making up the extra two hours every Thursday) can turn in one makeup time request every four weeks, rather than two requests per week.

If an employee requests time off for a personal obligation, but does not submit the written request that is required for makeup time, you can inform the employee of the makeup time option. However, because you are prohibited from “encouraging or otherwise soliciting” an employee to request makeup time, you cannot condition granting the employee’s request for time off on their agreement to submit a written request for making up the time. If the employee does not want to make up the time, you can grant or deny the request based on organization policy and business needs.

On occasion, after working makeup time to take time off later in the week, an employee may not want to take the time off after all. You are not liable for daily overtime pay for the makeup time that was worked if the employee did not end up working more than 40 hours that workweek, nor more than 11 hours in any workday.2 This is based on an opinion letter from the DLSE. Courts may choose not to follow this opinion letter. Employers may wish to pay the overtime pay for the makeup time, require the employee to take the time off anyway, or seek the advice of counsel.

Makeup Time Example

An employee might request three hours off on Monday to go to an appointment with a financial planner. The employee might then make up the time by working:

• 11 hours on Tuesday or any other day during that workweek.
• One extra hour each day on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, or any combination of days during that workweek.

The employee is limited to 11 hours per day and 40 hours per week when working makeup time.

Time Records for Makeup Time

When using makeup time, maintain a time record system that shows which hours you pay at an overtime rate and which hours you pay at straight-time for makeup time.

• You can require that the employee attach a copy of the signed makeup time requests for that pay period to their timecard when they turn it in at the end of the period.

Makeup Time Versus Alternative Workweek

You cannot require or encourage employees to submit makeup time requests each week to create an alternative workweek schedule, without complying with the legal requirements for creating an alternative workweek; using makeup time in this manner violates the law.

On the other hand, neither the law nor IWC Wage Orders limit the number or frequency of makeup time requests each employee is allowed. An employee could submit a request each week and, with your approval, work more than eight hours a day on a regular basis without receiving overtime pay.

• Makeup Time Checklist
• Makeup Time Request
• Makeup Time Request - Spanish

1. Lab. Code sec. 513