Many compensation policies and similar documents refer to wages
for non-exempt employees in the context of a "week", a "pay
week", a "pay period", "the schedule", an "overtime week", or
some other ambiguous word or phrase. But the timeframe that
matters under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act is a term-of-
art: A "workweek". For instance, with few exceptions, FLSA
overtime pay is due for a non-exempt employee's hours worked
over 40 in a single workweek, which is not necessarily the same
thing as the calendar week or an employee's scheduled week or
pay period. An FLSA workweek is a fixed, regularly-recurring
period of 168 hours – that is, seven, consecutive, 24-hour
periods – that the employer expressly adopts in order to
maintain FLSA compliance. FLSA recordkeeping regulations require
covered employers to select and document at least one such
workweek. The workweek can be set to begin on any calendar day
and at any time of day, but thereafter the employer must apply
that workweek in complying with the FLSA.