Do You Have to Be Paid for Training and Required Meetings in Minnesota?

Yes, where your employer requires the training or the meeting. Minnesota treats training time as hours worked, and the Department of Labor and Industry lists on-the-job training and required meetings among the time an employer must pay for.

Federal law also provides a narrow four-part exclusion for some lectures, meetings and training. All four conditions have to be satisfied. Employer-required attendance fails the voluntary condition, and attendance during regular working hours separately fails the first condition.

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The Minnesota Rule Names Training Directly

Minn. R. 5200.0120, subpart 1 provides that hours worked include training time, call time, cleaning time, waiting time, and any other time when the employee must be on the employer’s premises or involved in the performance of duties.

The Department of Labor and Industry states the same thing in its guidance for employees, telling workers they must receive at least the minimum wage for all hours the employer requires them to work, including preparation time, on-the-job training, opening and closing times, and required meetings.

That is the starting position in Minnesota. Training and meetings are paid unless something takes them out of the category.

The Federal Four-Part Test

The federal regulation supplies the exception, and it is written as four conditions that all have to be met.

Condition	What it requires	Regulation
Outside regular hours	Attendance falls outside the employee’s regular working hours	29 CFR 785.27(a)
Voluntary in fact	Attendance is genuinely voluntary, not required and not pressured	29 CFR 785.27(b), 785.28
Not job-related	The course, lecture or meeting is not directly related to the employee’s job	29 CFR 785.27(c), 785.29
No productive work	The employee performs no productive work during attendance	29 CFR 785.27(d)

Source: 29 CFR 785.27 to 785.32. Verified September 6, 2026.

Failure of any one condition means the federal exclusion is unavailable. Training held during your shift fails the first condition. Training your employer requires fails the voluntary condition. Training designed to make you more effective at the job you already hold fails the third. Minnesota independently requires payment for employer-required training and required meetings under Minn. R. 5200.0120 and DLI guidance, so the federal exclusion does not turn required Minnesota training into unpaid time.

“Voluntary” Has a Specific Meaning

The regulation does not leave the word open.

Under 29 CFR 785.28, attendance is not voluntary if it is required by the employer, and it is not voluntary in fact if the employee is given to understand or led to believe that present working conditions or the continuance of employment would be adversely affected by nonattendance.

That second sentence covers training described as optional in an email and understood as mandatory in the workplace. Sign-up sheets, attendance tracking, comments about who has not completed a module, and consequences for missing sessions all speak to whether attendance was voluntary in fact rather than in name.

Training Directly Related to Your Job

The third condition asks what the training is for.

Under 29 CFR 785.29, training is directly related to the employee’s job if it is designed to help the employee handle that job more effectively, as distinguished from training for a different job or for a new or additional skill. The regulation’s own example is a stenographer given a course in stenography, which is directly related, compared with the same employee taking a course in bookkeeping, which may not be.

There is a further distinction for advancement. Where a training course is instituted for the bona fide purpose of preparing an employee for promotion by upgrading them to a higher skill, and is not intended to make them more efficient in the present job, it is not treated as directly related even if it incidentally improves the current work.

Independent Schooling and Employer Programs

Two situations sit outside the compensable category even when the subject matter is job-related.

Under 29 CFR 785.30, an employee who attends an independent school, college or trade school after hours on their own initiative is not working for the employer, even where the courses relate to the job. Under 29 CFR 785.31, an employer may establish a program of instruction for the benefit of employees that corresponds to courses offered by independent institutions of learning, and voluntary attendance outside working hours is not hours worked even where the courses are directly related to the job or paid for by the employer.

Both turn on the attendance being genuinely voluntary. Neither converts required training into unpaid time.

Apprenticeship Training

Apprenticeships have their own enforcement position at 29 CFR 785.32.

Time spent in an organized program of related supplemental instruction by an employee working under a bona fide apprenticeship program may be excluded from working time where the apprentice is employed under a written apprenticeship agreement or program substantially meeting the federal standards, and where the time does not involve productive work or performance of the apprentice’s regular duties.

The regulation adds a point worth keeping. If the apprenticeship criteria are satisfied, related supplemental instruction can be excluded from hours worked unless the written agreement specifically provides that the instruction is working time. The written agreement matters, but it does not replace the other criteria.

The Situations That Recur

Certain arrangements come up repeatedly, and each has an answer in the material above.

Unpaid orientation before the first shift. Employer-required, job-related and involving the employer’s own material. It is difficult to fit inside the four conditions.

Online modules completed at home. Work performed away from the premises is still work under 29 CFR 785.12, and where the employer requires the module and knows it is being completed, the time is hours worked.

Certification your employer requires you to maintain. Where the employer requires it for the job you already hold, the training relates to that job. Where you pursue a credential on your own initiative at an outside institution, sections 785.30 and 785.31 point the other way.

Meetings before or after the shift. Required meetings are listed by DLI among compensable time. A meeting scheduled outside your hours does not become unpaid because of the scheduling.

“Working interviews” and trial shifts. If a person is actually performing productive work as an employee for the employer’s benefit, calling the period a working interview or trial shift does not make the time unpaid. Whether an employment relationship already exists can require a separate analysis where the person is still only an applicant.

If Your Training Was Not Paid

The record you want shows two things: that attendance was required, and how long it took.

Keep the message announcing the training, any sign-up or completion tracking, the agenda or curriculum, and anything indicating what happens to employees who do not attend. Learning management systems record completion timestamps, which establish duration better than memory does. Where the training was job-related, the material itself shows that on its face.

Unpaid training also affects more than the training hours. Those hours count toward the overtime threshold and toward the regular rate calculation, so a week that looked like 38 hours may have been 43. The broader question is whether the activity counts as hours worked in Minnesota, and training is one application of that rule.

Our pages on unpaid wages in Minneapolis and unpaid wage claims in St. Paul explain what a claim involves once you have those documents together.

Frequently Asked Questions

My employer says orientation is unpaid because I was not officially hired yet.

The label on the relationship does not decide it, and there are two questions rather than one. Minn. R. 5200.0120 counts time the employee must spend on the premises or performing duties in connection with employment, so the rule assumes an employment relationship has begun. Where it had, employer-required orientation that the employer controlled and used to prepare you for the job is compensable. Whether the relationship had begun by the time of the session is the threshold question and is analyzed separately, on the same footing as the working-interview point above.

The training was described as optional but everyone attended.

Under 29 CFR 785.28 attendance is not voluntary in fact if the employee is led to believe that working conditions or continued employment would be adversely affected by nonattendance. Universal attendance, tracking, and follow-up with people who missed it are the kinds of facts that speak to this.

Do I get paid for training I complete at home?

Where the employer requires it and knows or has reason to know it is being done, yes. Work performed away from the premises is covered by 29 CFR 785.12, and the duty to prevent unwanted work sits with management under 29 CFR 785.13.

My employer paid a flat stipend for a full training day. Is that enough?

It depends on the arithmetic rather than the gesture. The hours count as hours worked, so the stipend has to produce at least the applicable minimum wage for those hours, it forms part of your total pay for the regular rate calculation, and the hours count toward the overtime threshold for the week.

Can my employer make me repay training costs if I leave?

Repayment agreements raise separate questions under Minnesota’s deduction rules, including Minn. Stat. § 181.79 and Minn. R. 5200.0090, which restrict what an employer may take from wages. Whether a particular agreement is enforceable is a question to raise with an attorney rather than to assume in either direction.

This article provides general information about pay for training and meetings and is not legal advice. Whether particular attendance is compensable depends on facts specific to your job and your employer. Confirm current requirements with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, the U.S. Department of Labor or an attorney.