6-step plan for managers to turn around angry employees

By Tim Gould

Let’s face it. Working isn’t always a day at the beach. People get frustrated and angry — and frustrated employees aren’t productive. So HR expert Mel Kleiman has come up a few ways for your managers to bring angry employees back into the fold.  

According to Kleiman, who runs the consulting firm Humetrics, angry or frustrated employees have three choices: They can speak up, let things simmer inside, or they can leave.

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How Wellness Programs Affect Affordability and Minimum Value Calculations

By Linda Rowings

We field a lot of questions from employers about wellness programs and how they comply with PPACA.  Here are two of the most common ones from UBA’s “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Wellness Programs’ Legal Requirements”:
Q:      How does a wellness program affect affordability calculations?

A:      The proposed regulations provide that when deciding if the employee’s share of the premium is affordable (less than 9.5% of the employee’s safe harbor income), the employer may not consider wellness incentives or surcharges except for a non-smoking incentive. In other words, the premium for non-smokers will be used to determine affordability (even for smokers). Any other type of wellness incentive must be disregarded.

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Email’s not good enough for FMLA notices either, court rules

By Christian Schappel

Courts don’t trust the U.S. Post Office or Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, or any other email service to deliver your Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) notices to employees. So what’s an employer to do?

Use certified mail or some other form of correspondence with “verifiable receipt” — or deliver the notice in person and get the employee to sign a document stating he or she received it.
Anything short of that, and your hopes of dismissing an FMLA notice claim short of it going to trial are next to nil thanks to recent court rulings.

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Tip Tuesday! 22 PPACA provisions small businesses need to know

By Alson Martin

Changes to health reform laws could present a bit of challenge for small businesses. Don't be caught unprepared before open enrollment begins in November.

1. Which employers are eligible for the tax credit for the purchase of health insurance available in 2010 and thereafter?

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7 in 10 firms hiring over past 12 months: Was yours one of them?

By Tim Gould

More than seven in 10 companies have added staff in the past year, and more organizations are offering employees a 401(k) plan, according to a recent study. So how’s it going at your place?  
Here are a few benchmarks for you to see how your company’s doing in comparison with the participants in the 15th annual Transamerica Retirement Survey.

Seventy-two percent of the employers surveyed said they hired new employees in the last 12 months — only 16% say they’ve had to cut staff.

Almost three-quarters (74%) said they’ve increased salaries in the past year. Just 12% said they instituted salary freezes.

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NLRB just rewrote the rules on employee classification

By Christian Scahppel

Independent contractors (IC) can’t join unions. As a result, it’s in the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) best interest to make it harder to classify employees as ICs — and that’s exactly what it just did.


In a case involving FedEx drivers, the NLRB has added another factor to the test a lot of employers — and courts — use to determine whether a worker is an IC or not.

And in doing so, it has waved its hand in the face of precedent set by a D.C. Circuit Court.
The added factor is more of an amendment to an existing one — the entrepreneurial opportunity standard.

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First case of Internet addiction: 2 ways it could impact HR

By Jared Bilski

Between the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act and the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) addition of “Internet Use Disorder” to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, HR pros were well aware Internet addiction could become reality in the near future. Now we have the first concrete example.

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Tip Tuesday! Determining If Dental and Vision Plans Are “Excepted Benefits”

By Linda Rowings

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Department of Labor (DOL) released final regulations that explain when dental and vision plans and employee assistance plans (EAPs) will be considered “excepted benefits.” Excepted benefits are health benefits that are limited enough in scope to be exempt from many of the requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), such as annual dollar limits, reporting on W-2s and various fees.

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Obamacare: Feds amend mid-year plan change rule

By Jared Bilski

There are very few exceptions to the rule that health plan participants can’t change their elections in the middle of the plan year. Up until recently, those exceptions didn’t account for Obamacare and the new insurance exchanges.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) just released Notice 2014-55, which essentially says that individuals can make mid-year changes and opt out of their employers’ health plan if:

• they have a reduction of hours that will drop them below a 30-hours-per-week average but are still eligible for coverage, and
• they want to drop employer coverage and purchase coverage on the exchange without having a period of either duplicate or no coverage.

However, in order for workers to “revoke” or drop out of their employers’ cafeteria plan, the plan must meet two conditions:

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Creative Recruiting: 7 Innovative Ways to Land Your Dream Hire

By Elizabeth DeMarco & Rachel Rossini

If you want to avoid sifting through a stack of poorly written resumes and find your dream hire, simple ad postings just aren’t going to cut it.


While posting ads online might be effective in hiring entry-level employees, the most skilled professionals aren’t likely scouring Monster.com or CareerBuilder for employment opportunities.

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Tip Tuesday! Obamacare: What HR needs to know about final excepted benefits rule

By Jared Bilski

There are a number of benefits — such as dental and vision coverage — that the Affordable Care Act addresses in the “excepted benefits” rules. So HR will definitely want to take a look at the feds’ final rule on this subject.
The Department of Labor (DOL), Health and Human services (HHS) and Treasury just published the final rule on excepted benefits under the healthcare reform law. Rather than sifting through the feds’ guidance, check out this summary of what’s covered in the final rule:

Amended to include EAPs

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Ray Rice scandal: Can you legally fire a domestic abuser?

By Christian Schappel

In the wake of the NFL’s Ray Rice scandal – and more recent domestic violence issues – a lot of employers are asking the same question: Can we fire an employee who’s committed domestic violence? 


This issue was recently tackled head on by The Washington Post, which solicited comments and advice from employment law attorneys.

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6 quick combos for a power breakfast

By Healthy Mind Healthy Body

When you rise in the morning, you've gone hours without eating. And whether you feel it or not, your whole body is saying, "Feed me!"

Do you listen?

Making time for a healthy breakfast can pay big rewards all day long. It gives your body energy to work and play. It fuels your brain to help you think and solve problems. And it may even benefit your waistline. Research shows that people who eat breakfast tend to do better at weight control.

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DOL audits: More health plans getting hit with $10K-plus fines

By Jared Bilski

When the feds start looking into employers’ benefit plans, most HR pros think they’re generally targeting retirement plan issues. But new research shows that’s not necessarily the case.
Not only is the Department of Labor (DOL) investigating health and welfare plans, the agency is also handing down some steep fines based on what it finds.

In fact, more than a quarter (32%) of the health and welfare plans audited by the DOL were hit with fines higher than $10,000 for Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and Form 5500 errors. And 5% of the plans the feds looked at were hit with fines of more than $50,000.

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Tip Tuesday! Obamacare regs: 3 top compliance killers

By Jared Bilski

The health reform law has been in place long enough for employers’ compliance efforts to lose some steam. But complacency is leaving many firms wide open to problems.


Some of the health plan strategies employers have been using will hurt their ability to comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) moving forward.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently listed some of the top ACA-compliance problems that can sneak up on employers.

The top three:

1. Grandfathered status loss

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Appeals court reverses landmark telecommuting ruling: Now what?

By Jared Bilski

Remember that historic ruling on telecommuting where a court essentially said employers may have to prove an employee’s physical presence at work is essential? Well, an appeals court just offered a much different slant on this issue.

Before we delve into the federal appeal court’s recent verdict, here’s a recap of the landmark ruling that started it all.

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Attracting great applicants when qualified people are scarce

By Tim Gould

More than three in four employers say they’re struggling to find qualified people to fill their open positions.


Outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas recently conducted a survey of 100 human resources executives in a variety of industries nationwide. The bottom line: 77% of respondents said they were having trouble filling open slots because the applicants they were seeing didn’t have the right backgrounds.

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8 goal-oriented steps to a more engaged workforce

By Andre Lavoie

According to estimates from Gallup, low engagement is costing the economy close to $550 billion annually. Is there an answer to overcoming this growing employee engagement crisis that can in turn increase productivity and satisfaction in the workforce?

Yes: a goal-based employee engagement strategy. This not only keeps entire organizations aligned and working toward the same thing, but also allows individual employees to see their personal contribution to the big picture.

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