Formerly Executive Memorandum 76-19
Initially approved March 8, 1976
Revised: April 24, 2006
Revised: December 19, 2016
Policy Topic: Personnel
Administering Office: Controller's Office
It is the policy of Western Carolina University (the “University”) to comply with State of North Carolina policy and regulations regarding dual employment. The dual employment policy is a statewide uniform policy to be followed when one state agency secures the services of an employee of another state agency on a part-time, consulting, or contractual basis. It is recognized that conditions vary widely from agency to agency, however, this policy will attempt to cover as many different situations as possible and to strike a sound balance between the interests of the state, the agency, the employee and the public. For employees engaged on a full time basis, any additional work for other than a state department is termed secondary employment and is covered in the State Human Resources Manual (Section 3-page 8).
The policy applies to all state employees both subject to and exempt from the provisions of the State Human Resources Act and to all state agencies. It does not apply to employees in the public school system or to employees of institutions in the community college system. For purposes of this policy, employees in these systems are not state employees; they are employed by local boards of education and local boards of trustees. This policy applies only in situations involving one employee and two state agencies. For situations involving one employee assuming dual roles within the same agency, see the State Human Resources Manual, Section 4, page 76 (the definition of “occasional or sporadic employment in a different capacity" will be applied to employees subject to overtime and to employees exempt from overtime).
For purposes of this policy, the terms below have the following meanings:
“borrowing department” means the state department, agency, or institution seeking, on a temporary or part-time basis, the services of an employee of another state agency.
“executive manager” means each of the Chancellor, Provost, Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Vice Chancellor for Development and Alumni Engagement, Chief of Staff, Chief Information Officer, General Counsel or Athletic Director.
“honoraria” means, notwithstanding any definitions previously given or henceforth to be given to the word "honorarium", any payment by one agency to an employee of another agency for any type of services subject to these procedures.
“instructional contractual services” means the employment by one higher education institution of a teacher under contract to another institution. An example of this practice is the exchange of teachers between two proximate institutions, such as the North Carolina School of the Arts and Winston-Salem State University.
“parent (lending) department” means the state department, agency, or institution having control over the services of the employee, and from which the employee receives his/her regular paycheck.
“straight-time employee” means normally, an employee with a 40-hour per week work schedule, including employees on rotating shifts and those with split shifts. Permanent employees filling positions subject to the State Human Resources Act, with perhaps extremely rare exceptions, are straight-time employees for the purposes of this policy statement. Such persons, except when working odd or split shifts, are considered to be on their own time between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. and on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, and while on vacation leave.
“variable-time employee” means an employee, though considered to be the incumbent in a full-time budgeted position, may be required to maintain on-duty status (normally, at a fixed work station) for only a limited number of hours per week. An example of a variable-time employee is a teacher in an institution of higher education who for one semester might be scheduled to teach classes for fifteen hours a week, and for the next semester only ten hours but with the added duty of advising students. The hours during which the employee advises might be fixed, or the employee might have option of scheduling his/her own appointments. Variable-time employees are considered to be on their own time except at those hours when they are required to be in scheduled on-duty status.
A. Approval of Parent Department
The administrative head of the parent department must give approval in writing in each instance of an employee's performing services for pay for another state agency. Approval should be granted or withheld after a careful weighing of the circumstances, considering such factors as the character of the services to be performed, the effect on the morale of other state employees, the ethical considerations involved, the temporary loss of the services of the individual to the parent department, the possibly reduced efficiency of the individual as a result of fatigue or inattention to primary responsibilities, the urgency of the situation, possible alternative arrangements, and other pertinent factors. If the administrative head of the agency is to perform services for pay for another state agency, the Office of State Budget and Management (“OSBM”) must approve the arrangement.
Dual Employment Permission Form - this form should be completed in advance to document the approval of the dean/director and executive manager prior to a University employee performing services for pay for another state agency.
Dual Employment Certification Form –CP-30 - this form is originated by the borrowing department and submitted in triplicate to the parent department, accompanied by the payment for the employee’s services. When the University is the borrowing department, the requesting unit/office should complete all highlighted fields, obtain the signature of the appropriate accountable officer, and submit the form to the University controller’s office.
B. Statement of Employee's Immediate Supervisor
In any case of services performed for pay for a borrowing department during an employee's "own time", the employee's immediate supervisor must certify in writing that (1) the actual work and any related travel time will be performed outside of regularly scheduled working hours, and (2) the employee will not use "company time" to prepare for the services to the borrowing department.
C. Payment for Services
It is assumed that certain officials will make outside appearances and speeches, which are in fact a part of their normal duties, and such officials should not expect to be paid for these occasions.
If payment is to be made for services, the rate must be agreed upon in advance and may not be increased merely because additional funds become available. Neither are retroactive payments permissible to persons who have already performed services without compensation.
Commuting expenses are not reimbursable.
An employee under contract to an educational institution for an academic year (normally, nine months) is ordinarily considered to be a free agent during the summer, notwithstanding that such employee may be paid on a twelve-month basis.
D. Professional Service Contract
The state or one of its agencies may contract with a professional corporation for the delivery of professional services by one or more of its employees who are also state employees as long as they are in compliance with all other regulations of the dual employment policy. Historically, this situation has occurred most frequently in agencies/institutions employing physicians who, through their private practice, are also working for another agency/institution through contractual arrangement). Strict adherence to these policies must ensure that employers will know if the same person is working at more than one state job and will be able to see that time which is supposed to be spent at one job is in fact spent at that job and not at another job.
E. Procedures for Payment
All payments for services must be made by the borrowing department directly to the parent department of the employee borrowed, and not to the employee.
All payments for services of borrowed employees must be made by the borrowing department from dual employment line items. They may not be made from salaries and wages line items. If funds for part-time services are presently budgeted in salaries and wages line items, OSBM will give favorable consideration to requests to transfer these budgeted amounts to dual employment lines if needed. The same would apply to transfer of funds budgeted for temporary wages.
Employee's travel and/or subsistence expenses, if any, incurred in the performance of services for the borrowing department, will be paid directly to the employee by the borrowing department. Commuting expenses are excluded.
All payments to the parent department must include the following: (1) payment for the employee's services; (2) the employer's social security contributions computed on the payment for services; and (3) the employer's retirement contribution computed on the amount of payment, if applicable (applicable when the borrowing department is merely supporting a portion of the employee’s regular salary; not applicable for additional compensation beyond the employee’s regular salary).
Subject to negotiation between the two departments, payments may include an amount for the overhead expenses of the lending/parent department to cover administrative and other indirect costs; payments may also include amounts for direct costs incurred by the parent department, such as identifiable related expenses for clerical and duplicating services.
If the work (including preparation) is performed during the employee's regular work schedule (normally 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday), and the employee is not on leave, the employee may not under any circumstances receive additional pay.
If the work (including preparation) is performed outside the employee’s regular work schedule, the employee may receive additional pay. All state employees are subject to the provisions of the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act. There are certain exceptions to the overtime provisions of the law when it is applied to persons in professional, administrative, or executive positions. In a dual employment situation, the duties of both positions are combined to determine if the person is exempt. Pay for non-exempt employees, therefore, when serving another state agency, must be in accordance with the minimum wage and overtime pay provisions, which require overtime payments of time and one-half the employee’s regular rate of pay for the hours worked in excess of 40 hours in the week. However, if during any given workweek the employee does not perform any work for the parent department, no overtime payment will be required unless the employee works more than 40 hours for the borrowing department.
If a straight-time employee is on authorized leave from regular duties with the parent department, the employee may be paid for the extra work on the same basis as in the paragraph above.
In all cases of additional payment to an employee, the parent department must make the payment to the employee as an addition to the employee’s regular pay. This is necessary to maintain the integrity of the retirement, social security, and federal and state income tax records. If payments fall into the category of overtime, as the term is understood in federal and state wage and hour regulations, such overtime payments by the parent department to the employee must be made from “salaries-overtime” budgeted line items. If additional payments do not fall into the overtime category, they are made from “EHRA teacher on loan’, “EHRA employee on loan”, or “SHRA employee on loan”.
The parent department will budget and receive all payments from the borrowing department as agency receipts, in an account titled "salary reimbursements-dual employment”. It is not permissible to handle such payments as refunds of expenditures. If the conditions above (no additional pay) apply, any receipt from the borrowing department will be handled by the parent department as an over-realization of the receipts line item.
F. Maintaining Records
The extent of the practice of cross-hiring in state government must be periodically assessed. Borrowing departments must, therefore, maintain the following information for each instance:
G. Instructional Services
For this type of regular-session dual employment, (and not applicable to summer school), the following procedures for payment will apply where the teaching covers one or more courses for an entire academic period (quarter or semester):
H. Joint Appointments
It shall be mutually agreed between agencies as to which agency will be the parent department. Normally, in most instances it will be the agency that first employed the employee.
In cases of joint appointment (involving base pay), the borrowing department will reimburse the parent department for matching social security and retirement contributions. The employer portion of hospital medical insurance will be borne by the parent department and not prorated to the borrowing department.
This Policy shall be reviewed and revised as necessary in the event that the North Carolina Office of State Human Resources revises its policy on dual employment.