Yes. Employers can face expensive lawsuits when they fail to include time spent by employees performing work activities outside of their normal shifts as paid time. Courts have held that “work time” includes time spent by employees maintaining equipment, staying late after normal shifts, doing job-related paperwork at home, job-related phone calls, working during meal breaks, and other activities as well.
Some employees, for example, may come early and start working before their shift's official starting time. This time counts as work time and must be included in pay computations, provided only that the employer knew or should have known that the employee was beginning work early (and, of course, to the extent that the employee spent pre-shift time actually performing work activities). Pre-shift roll calls are work time; so are pre-shift meetings like safety meetings. Time spent setting up equipment before the official start time of a shift is work time.
Employees may similarly stay late and perform work after their designated shift time is over, but this time must be counted as work time, as well. Time spent by an employee cleaning equipment after the close of a shift is work time. Post-shift work time could also include time spent by an employee performing job-related activities on the way home, as for example a secretary who drops off the day's mail at the post office or delivers some paperwork to a customer or supplier. Some employees take work home. That time may well be work time. If an employee is contacted at home by telephone for work-related reasons, the time spent is work time (and, of course, if an employee is called back to work, the time counts as work time).