This isn't a legal way to save on OT costs

A lot of managers are under pressure to cut spending. But it’s up to you to make sure they aren’t making this costly mistake.
Some misguided managers have tried to help cut costs by telling their staffers not to record all the hours they work — after all, payroll is one of the biggest expenses a company has.
But that’s a big no-no, as one company found out in a recent Fair Labor Standards Act lawsuit.
Company wins, but barely
A worker who tracked and recorded his own hours sued his employer, claiming that he was told not to record overtime hours on his time sheet — no matter how many hours he’d actually worked.
Sounds like a cut and dried case the worker should win, right? Not exactly.
The court ruled for the employer, because it said the time sheet inaccuracies weren’t  the company’s fault — the worker had deliberately recorded his hours incorrectly.
How did the court come to that conclusion? When the employee had worked overtime, he’d been paid for it. So he had no reason to believe that he shouldn’t put in for the overtime he’d worked.
Even though the worker said he was told not to record his overtime hours, nothing prevented him from claiming the hours and being paid for all the time he’d worked, the court said.
This case could’ve easily gone the other way. But it serves as an excellent example to your managers that no matter how tight your company’s budget is, they mustn’t try to keep costs down by telling workers not to record all hours worked.
Cite: Kuebel v. Black & Decker, Inc.