Pay Discrepancy

This is a salary rounding question.

A non exempt is hired at a salary rate. The HR system contains an hourly rate since they are non exempt. The employee is given their merit raise of 5%.

The merit raise paperwork they sign has only a percentage raise, say 5% and does not note any hourly or annual rate on it. This paperwork is signed by the employee and their management.

Due to rounding applied to the hourly rate, the employee ends up with a raise of 4.995% (making 36.19 an hour instead of 36.1935) causing a difference of $7 a year due to the effect of rounding on their hourly rate.

Can the employee raise be less than 5% if that is due to mathematical rounding of the hourly dollar rate even though the signed review states they will get a 5% raise?

FYI: there are no written HR policies in regards to how salary rates are to be rounded. They are using standard rounding practices.

Oh for heaven's sake. It's $7 per year. Not $7 per week or month, but $7 per year. By my calculations, with a 40 hour work week and 52 weeks a year, there are 2080 hours in a standard work year. $7/2080 results in a difference of $0.003365 per hour.

Is this the hill you want to die on? Because I'll tell you right now, if you come into HR or your boss with this complaint, whether it's fixed or not you'll have a huge black mark on your official office gossip record.

Oh hush up those of you who are saying HR needs to keep everything confidential. No law against discussing stupidity.

Now on a policy question there are two problems. One, they should never make an offer that states an annual salary for a non-exempt position. The offer should have been stated as an hourly rate. Two, they should always round up. But you should absolutely let this go. It will not help you out in the long run. And as for the $7, give up one Burger and Fries per year and you'll be okay. Unless it's at Five Guys, which in that case I understand your pain.