Retail Chain Resolves Multi-State Wage & Hour Exposure in 60 Days
The Challenge
A 14-store specialty retail chain across the Southeast discovered during self-audit that store managers had been improperly denying rest breaks and rounding employee time — systematically underpaying hourly workers. Estimated back-pay liability was $490,000 across 320 employees. The HR team had no multi-state wage and hour expertise.
The Catapult Approach
Catapult analyzed 18 months of time and payroll records across all 14 locations to calculate exact back pay by employee and state. The team developed a voluntary self-disclosure strategy to preempt DOL investigation, structured the back pay as a voluntary correction program, redesigned timekeeping policies for both states, and built a real-time compliance monitoring dashboard.
Results
- ✓$387,000 in back pay distributed across 14 locations within 60 days
- ✓Zero DOL enforcement action — voluntary correction program accepted
- ✓Time-rounding policy eliminated and replaced with actual-time tracking
- ✓All 14 store managers trained on break requirements, overtime rules, and Southeast differences
- ✓Real-time dashboard implemented flagging time anomalies within 48 hours of each pay period
- ✓Company avoided estimated $490,000 in liability plus potential litigation costs
“We found the problem ourselves, but had no idea how to fix it without making it worse. Catapult turned a potential DOL catastrophe into a voluntary self-correction that protected our brand and our people.”
VP of Operations — Specialty Retail Chain, NC & SC
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Southeast States Served: Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Advice for other states is handled on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of the attorneys.