It's no wonder that some provisions of the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act flew under the media radar that focused on the politics of health care reform.
After all, the law is more than 2,000 pages long. But HR pros need to know about new requirements concerning reporting of employer-provided health benefits, breastfeeding at work and background checks for health care workers. Health insurance benefits and W-2s Beginning in the 2011 tax year,...
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Watch out: That unpaid intern could cost you The 6 strict rules for properly hired unpaid interns are very hard to qualify under; you are better off to pay minimum wage in most cases.
With fewer real, paying jobs available to young people, the number of unpaid internships is on the rise.
Now the U.S. Department of Labor and many state labor departments (including California) are stepping up enforcement against employers who illegally use internships for free labor. The DOL says many employers fail to pay even though the internship doesn't meet the six federal criteria that must be satisfied for an
internship to be legitimately unpaid (see below). Receiving school credit doesn't necessarily free companies from paying interns. If an intern secures education, class credit and experience from working at your company, the "flow of benefits" is equal, so your company usually isn't required to pay the intern. But if you profit
too much from the arrangement, federal law says this would suggest an employment relationship, meaning your intern must be paid. Advice: To avoid paying student interns, know...
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As unemployment continues to hover near 10%, the temptation to stretch the truth on a résumé is becoming harder for desperate job-seekers to resist.
That's why experts say job applicants are doing more "creative writing" on their résumés these days. And...
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The costs of employee absenteeism-reflected in lost production, overtime and temporary replacements for the absent worker-can add up quickly.
What's the best way to combat the problem? With a clear policy, careful documentation, consistent application of the policy and progressive...
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How to improve employee retention Make sure you pay attention now to employees' needs and wants, before the economy picks up and you lose them.
As the economy revives, companies with dissatisfied employees will experience a swift exodus of their top talent. Here's how to keep your staff engaged and happy. In a down economy, employees have fewer opportunities to take a job at another company, but entrepreneurs would be remiss to take their fingers off the pulse of company morale simply because employees have fewer options. "Companies that don't think about [employee retention], that basically rest on their laurels
and think 'the economy will take care of us, where are they going to go?' Those are the companies that, as soon as the labor market picks back up, their turnover rates are going to go from 5 percent to 50 percent and it will happen overnight," says Mark Murphy, author of...
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Three steps to reducing labor costs and have your employees thank you for it.
As the global economy continues to stabilize, many companies are ceasing to use staff reductions as a cost-saving mechanism. This allows companies to rely on a more stable workforce to better execute on corporate strategy and initiatives, and ultimately gain the competitive advantages that are available in the transitioning
marketplace. However, this does not mean that HR executives and other business leaders are off the hook in their responsibilities to continue to reduce total labor costs. Faced with the dilemma of reducing labor costs without negatively impacting employee engagement or productivity, business leaders must find creative
ways to identify the next wave of labor costs reductions. Rest easy. It sounds harder than it actually is...
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Meet public enemy No. 1 in today's workplace.
If you're reading this article sitting down-the position we all hold more than any other, for an average of 8.9 hours a day-stop and take stock of how your body feels. Is there an ache in your lower back? A light numbness in your rear and lower thigh? Are you feeling a little down? These symptoms are all normal, and they're
not good. They may well be caused by doing precisely what you're doing-sitting. New research in the diverse fields of epidemiology, molecular biology, biomechanics, and physiology is converging toward a startling conclusion:...
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Getting Tough [on Employee Wellness] Some companies have turned to the stick to get employees into their wellness programs, but is it legal or better than the carrot?
Frustrated by employees who fail to participate in wellness efforts or change their unhealthy lifestyles despite a continual rise in healthcare costs and insurance premiums, a significant number of companies are planning to make their wellness efforts mandatory. The results could be transformative -- but they could also spark resentment and legal action.
When AmeriGas mulled rolling out a wellness plan that required employees to obtain a medical checkup or lose their health insurance, Bill Katz anticipated some pushback. That's why the vice president of human resources for the nationwide propane distributor couched the mandate in language most of the
6,000-some workers readily identified with. Katz characterized health insurance as...
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"We're squeezed too." There was a time when human resources departments handled every staffing need at a company, from hiring and firing to administering benefits and determining salaries.
But HR's role has begun to change significantly as departments have shrunk at companies across the board. According to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management, the profession's largest association, the head count at the average HR department fell from 13 in 2007 to nine in 2008. "HR departments
are under pressure like never before," says Steve Miranda, the society's global HR and integration officer. As much of what was once HR's domain increasingly gets...
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Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.
"When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war," General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter. The slide has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan. "PowerPoint makes us stupid," ...
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