Regular Time

What is Regular Time?

Regular time is defined as the regular hours or standard time for which an employer’s business is opened for routine work and the employees are compensated for this time for their labor input in normal practice.  

However, this practice is possible as per the time zone where an employee works physically in a business organization following local time, otherwise, the 24-hour clock may be changed at different places of the world. Say, in the United States, if someone is working remotely from South Asia or South East Asia, the world time is not the same in all places pushing employees to work online as per the local time zone of the employer.

What is more concerning regular time is the workers are given wages as per their rate of wage already decided with the employer contract therein, in the form of the hourly wage, regular work hours, overtime hours, holiday hours, or the time in hours counted towards medical leave which is paid. The pay packages and other benefits also correlate with the hour's input and the type of employment an employee has joined and worked in.

Regular Hours for Fulltime Employees

When a worker works as per standard workweek, they are considered a full-time employee. As per the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in the United States, a 40-hour workweek is a standard workweek. Anybody working more than that is entitled to overtime pay that is 1.5 times the regular wage per hour, provided that employee is not an exempt employee.

An exempt employee is not allowed to work overtime hours and hence is not paid for that. Whereas a non-exempt employee is allowed to overtime work and receive the payment thereof.

Regular time is considered a five-day workweek having 8 hours a day, making 40 hours per week, starting Monday through Friday and the following days Saturday and Sunday as two off days. Moreover, some State and federal offices follow four days a week as their business hours ten in numbers a day, making forty hours per week (10 hours a day multiplied to 4 days a week = 40 hours per week) and followed by three off days. Regular-time / full-time employees are eligible for benefits, say medical insurance, vacation time, and medical leaves / sick pay.

Regular Time Hours for Part-timers

Regular time hours for part-time employees are less than 35 hours per week, they are considered at many places for 20 hours a week. They are allowed to work either morning, afternoons, or 2.5 days a week.

Regular Time and Flextime for Businesses in COVID-19 Pandemic  

The regular time for businesses is different for different concerns dependent upon the below-mentioned criteria:

• Nature of business
• Place their offices are
• Installations they have
• Business hours are open
• Sensitivity of the business they are operational in (like the military)   
• Security concerns they face
• Daylight saving time
• Any other deemed vital

It is all about the workers being correctly paid for what they input the work for is the major concern of the legal and government bodies like FLSA in the United States. So long as the workers are compensated righteously, the authorities have no issues with how many hours an employee puts in but gets remunerated for.

Whereas Flextime for business also is prevalent worldwide again dependent upon the factors more or less the same as described above for regular time. Factories and power plants have regular time defined in 8-hourly or 6 hourly shifts for business-run reasons. Others, like in software houses people work from remote sites globally being online individually as well as joining in virtual groups, especially amid the COVID-19 Pandemic, may have flexible hours as 6 hourly or 8-hourly continuous shifts or people might be at ease to schedule their time at the office as per their feasibility analysis until the business is not affected and the performance is acceptable.

Conclusively, it is dependent that what business you are in, you may schedule accordingly but reward your employees judiciously.