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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