Paid and unpaid breaks are one of the most misunderstood areas of employment law. To help employers navigate employee work breaks, Franczek Radelet attorney William Pokorny shares a few of his tips:

• If you use a timekeeping system that automatically deducts for 30-minute meal breaks, you must give employees a way around it--a reliable way to record that the break wasn't taken, or was cut short, and thus must be paid.
• The best system is to require employees to clock out for any break, paid or unpaid, and to clock back in when they return to their workstations.
• Not every employee has to record each unpaid meal break that he or she missed; if there's a pattern among workers of missed breaks--for reasons common to employees in your business--a court is likely to determine that you should have known they were working through and paid them accordingly.
• If some or all of your nonexempt employees are unionized, their collective bargaining agreement can specify that their unpaid meal break is shorter than 30 minutes, or even under 20 minutes.
• If you feel that some of your employees are abusing their paid-break privileges of 20 minutes or less, discipline them in some way other than depriving them of pay for those breaks.
• Must every employee take every unpaid break to which you entitle him or her? No, says Pokorny. Illinois law, for example, says "employers shall permit ... breaks"--not "must." Do allow people the option, for example, of working through a meal break in exchange for the privilege of leaving work 30 minutes early.
• Remember that plaintiffs' lawyers are looking for you to mess up on this issue: They can get liquidated, or double, damages for their clients and win their fees as well.

Related article: Yes, those are the breaks: But paid or unpaid?