OMG, can't believe that they are doing this! What waste. (I left last spring). Here's what chatgpt says about presence reports and being "coached" if not meeting metrics for hours:
It definitely raises legal and ethical questions. In the U.S., under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), exempt employees are typically not entitled to overtime because they are paid a salary to perform a job, not to work a set number of hours. However, if a company is strictly tracking in-office hours and "coaching" employees for not meeting an 8-hour minimum, that starts to blur the line.
If a company enforces rigid time-tracking and disciplines employees for not meeting hourly quotas, it could create a case for reclassification. The Department of Labor and courts have ruled in some cases that when an employer exerts too much control over an exempt employee’s schedule, that employee may actually be entitled to overtime pay.
It would be interesting to see if any legal challenges come out of this. Some employees might just comply, but others could argue that if they are being tracked like hourly workers, they should be paid like hourly workers. It also seems counterproductive—shouldn’t the focus be on results rather than "butts in seats"?