The regulations surrounding wage-and-hour law have long bedeviled employers. Who’s exempt from overtime rules? How do you calculate time-and-a-half when employees work off the clock and fail to record their hours? And how about those remote back-office workers, spending a few minutes here and there tackling business emails?

The wrong answers can lead to costly penalties. “Employers who fail to correctly pay overtime must make up back wages plus ‘liquidated damages’ equal to an equivalent amount,” says Douglas E. Witte, who represents businesses in labor and employment law matters at Boardman & Clark LLC, Madison, WI. “If the Department of ...