No. Time spent in work for public or charitable purposes at the employer’s request, or under the employer’s direction or control, or while the employee is required to be on the premises, is working time. However, time spent voluntarily in such activities outside of the employee’s normal working hours is not considered hours worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Employers may encourage their employees to volunteer their services for public or charitable purposes outside of normal working hours without incurring an obligation to treat that time as hours worked, so long as participation is optional and non-participation will not adversely affect working conditions or employment prospects.

In the scenario described above, when the employees volunteer for Habitat for Humanity outside their normal working hours, the employer neither controls nor requires the volunteer work nor receives any benefit from it. The employer is merely trying to encourage employees to donate their time to others and is not obligated to treat the volunteer hours as compensable time worked under the FLSA.

Consideration of volunteer service in the determination of a group bonus does not change this result, as long as employees are not denied any part of the bonus because they did not participate in the volunteer activity. Nor can they be led to believe that their work conditions or employment prospects would be affected by nonparticipation, such as would occur if the group could not qualify for the full bonus without performing volunteer work.

In the employer’s performance pay plan, volunteer work accounts for only 10 percent of the total points available. The employees in this situation would have no expectation of compensation for their volunteer work because, among other things, they would have no way to know whether the group ultimately will meet its rewards goal for the year or whether the group will achieve the maximum award even without any employee’s volunteer service.