Current Job Postings

New OSHA Rules Spotlight Workplace Injuries, Illnesses

Currently employers must report work-related injuries or illnesses and maintain a log of these occurrences for review by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The log must be available upon request during an OSHA inspection. However, newly finalized regulations mandate that certain employers submit reports electronically, on an annual basis. Some of the data will be posted on OSHA’s website, because, the agency says, “behavioral economics tells us that making injury information publicly available will ‘nudge’ employers to focus on safety.”

The new reporting requirement takes effect in 2017. It’s applicable to all employers with at least 250 employees and to employers with at least 20 workers in 66 industry categories deemed to be hazardous. Roughly 80,000 employers fall within that category.

OSHA’s roster of hazardous industries includes many that one would expect, such as manufacturing, agriculture, forestry and fishing, as well as some that would appear less hazardous to employee health, for example, home furnishing stores, specialty food stores and museums.

Retaliation Protections

In addition to the expanded reporting requirements, a provision of the new regulations that takes effect August 10, 2016, features “anti-retaliation protections.” These rules:

Require you to inform employees of their right to report work-related injuries and illnesses “free from retaliation,”

Clarify the existing implicit requirement that your procedure for reporting work-related injuries and illnesses be reasonable and not “deter or discourage” employees from reporting, and

Incorporate the current law’s prohibition on retaliating against employees for reporting work-related injuries or illnesses.

The regulations allow for punishment of employers deemed to have retaliated against employees for reporting injuries, even if the injured employees failed to file a complaint within 30 days, as previously required. Some business organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have indicated they might challenge that provision in court, however, arguing that it goes beyond what’s authorized by law.

Employers will need to tread carefully with generous workplace safety incentives to ensure that they could not be viewed as illegally discouraging employees from reporting on-the-job injuries.

Drug Testing Concern

Similarly, if you require employees to undergo drug testing following an accident, be sure the policy is clearly spelled out and consistently administered, to limit the chances that it would be deemed as an illegal deterrent to employees reporting injuries.

Recordkeeping of serious injuries and illnesses is done by filing forms 300, 300A and 301. The deadline for covered employers to electronically file their forms 300A (a summary document) for 2016 is July 1, 2017. Employers in the 250-plus employee category will be required by July 1 of 2018 to file all 2017 forms — 300A, 300 and 301. The smaller employers in high-risk industries will still only file the 300A at that time. In 2019, the deadline for filing 2018 reports advances to March 2.

Given the prospect of public disclosure of injury and illness reports, employers may decide to review OSHA’s criteria for what must be reported. The reporting regulations fall under 29 Code of Federal Regulations 1904.

Defining “Work-Related”

According to the regulations, “You must consider an injury or illness to be work-related if an event or exposure in the work environment either caused or contributed to the resulting condition or significantly aggravated a pre-existing injury or illness. … Work-relatedness is presumed for injuries and illnesses resulting from events or exposures occurring in the work environment, unless covered by an exception in [the regulations].”

But how serious must a medical problem be in order to be reportable? In general, a recordable injury or illness under OSHA is one that requires medical treatment beyond first aid or that results in days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, or loss of consciousness. Regardless of those stipulations, if a physician or other licensed health care professional deems the work-related condition as a significant injury or illness, it must be recorded.

They also feature a list of injury and illness categories that are not reportable. Here are some highlights, featured in Sec. 1904 of the OSHA regulations:

What’s Not Reportable?

The injury or illness involves signs or symptoms that surface at work but result solely from a non-work-related event or exposure that occurs outside the work environment.

The injury or illness results solely from voluntary participation in a wellness program or in a medical, fitness or recreational activity such as blood donation, physical examination, flu shot, exercise class, racquetball or baseball.

The injury or illness is solely the result of an employee eating, drinking or preparing food or drink for personal consumption (whether purchased on the employer’s premises or brought in).

The injury or illness is solely the result of an employee doing personal tasks (unrelated to his or her employment) at the establishment outside of the employee’s assigned working hours.

The injury or illness is solely the result of personal grooming, self medication for a non-work-related condition or is intentionally self-inflicted.

The injury or illness is caused by a motor vehicle accident and occurs on a company parking lot or company access road while the employee is commuting to or from work.

The illness is the common cold or flu (Note: contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, brucellosis, hepatitis A or plague are considered work-related if the employee is infected at work).

The illness is a mental illness. Mental illness will not be considered work-related unless the employee voluntarily provides the employer with an opinion from a physician or other licensed health care professional with appropriate training and experience (psychiatrist, psychologist, psychiatric nurse practitioner, or other qualified professional) stating that the employee has a mental illness that is work-related.

If there have never been any injuries in your workplace, congratulations. However, don’t let that lull you into a false sense of security. OSHA’s new regulations up the ante and give you a good reason to review your current policies and procedures with respect to workplace-related illnesses and injuries.

(Source: Bisection)

Payroll and Overhead

payroll and overhead

When it comes to running a business, there are a lot of numbers involved. So many numbers you might not even know how to count them all. You have to use numbers for products and prices and overheads and payroll and this and that. Do you know what numbers go where? When running a successful business, you have to either know, or be able to figure out how much of your revenue and profit can go where. If you get a high profit, you need to know how much of it to spend and how much of it to put into savings. This will help you determine how much you need to put toward restocking products and how much should be allocated to paying your employees? There is rarely ever a steady answer, rather a steady range to stay in. Each week will bring in different profits and revenue, so you have to be able to adapt.

While we can’t go over the entire business plan with you, we can help you in the area of payroll, and the areas that branch off from there. The amount you should plan on spending a week for payroll depends largely on the kind of business you run. In a retail business, you may tend to spend only between 15%-30% of your revenue on payroll because you have products to replace as well. In a more service based company, where your employees deliver a service directly you might expect to pay more toward 30-50% of your revenue since your employees are more prominent to the company. Some service based companies actually spend over 50% of their revenue on their employees, depending on what industry they are in.

Why is this important to keep a track of? Can’t you just see how much money you are spending a week and go from there? It is important to know how much of your revenue is going where because it shows trends in your revenue, and whether it is steady or not. If you pay your employees roughly the same amount each week, keeping their hours consistent, yet they are taking up 20% of your revenue one week and 30% the next, then you can tell you had a bad week. If this kind of decrease is consistent, it shows you that you need to start making some changes to how you are running your business. Maybe cut back on your employee’s hours, or find a more proactive way of stocking your inventory.

If you don’t know how to keep track of these numbers, outsourcing to a company like Vision H.R. can help you handle your payroll and keep you informed about all the numbers and statistics you need, when you need them. The people behind Vision H.R. make it their duty to understand the numbers that help keep your business above the water and going steady. From there, you have the freedom from all those payroll numbers to move your company forward.

Reasons to Outsource

Port Orange Payroll Services

Have you ever wondered what it would be like in a world without payroll? Well, for starters, I wouldn’t be here writing this article, you most likely wouldn’t be reading it, and the rest of the world? It would quite literally fall apart. Payroll puts money in the hands of employees so they can put that money back into the local market. An economy with no payroll is an economy where no one buys anything and has no motivation to do anything. No one can afford to go to Wal-Mart and Pizza Hut is going to take literally forever to deliver that pizza to your house, which you only have because no one at the mortgage company is working to see you stopped making mortgage payments. Alright, so the no mortgage payments part is pretty cool, but the rest is what leads to post apocalyptic worlds like Mad Maxx.

What can also be destructive to a company, is a bad payroll department. The world is growing, technology is advancing, businesses are getting bigger and a company’s payroll has to grow with it. What once took a file cabinet can be done on a single computer, what took days to fix can be fixed with a few taps on a keyboard, and getting help with your payroll is as easy as a phone call or email away. If you are not taking advantage of modern day payroll, it is time to get started. With new technologies emerging and the world marching forward, you will only get further and further behind. How do you get your payroll caught up with the rest of the world? Perhaps the simplest way, is to let someone else do it.

What if you are keeping your payroll and company up to date? Can you keep it up to date as you move your company forward? Your company can grow, and eventually your payroll will have to grow with it. You will have to hire new people, or improve your means of performing payroll. Grow large enough and you might even have to do both. Even Starbucks started as a single store, and now has over 230,000 employees. Are you going to be able to keep up with your payroll, or do you even want to bother?

Rather you are letting your payroll grow old, or don’t want to have the burden of it as you grow, the solution is the same. Outsourcing payroll has always been a tangible option, and has only grown more popular with each passing year. Let us take a scenario of growth to show how outsourcing can help. If you have a small business in Port Orange… payroll might be easy, but as it grows and expands to Daytona Beach, to New Smyrna Beach, payroll might become a little bit more complicated. You will have multiple locations with multiple payrolls to cover. Outsourcing your payroll will put all of those location’s records in one location and grant you access to great customer support at any of our Volusia County locations.

Even if you don’t expand your location, if you grow your small Port Orange business into a larger, more capable company, Vision H.R. can help you here as well. You can set your full ambition to growing your revenue and get new customers without worrying about internal aspects of your company. While you are handling your company, your payroll is being handled, and is readily available to you at any time. Vision H.R. can also handle other areas besides just payroll such as human resource management, manager training, employee benefits, and even business insurance.

If you are ready to modernize your payroll, or to hand it over so you can concentrate your efforts on business growth, visit Vision H.R. today and get a free quote to see how your business can benefit from our services. For any questions you might have about outsourcing, you can reach us at (877) 641-0012.

Port Orange Payroll Services

Vision H.R. | The Human Resource Experts

New Overtime Rules Issued: What it Means for You

money-1604921_640

A change in the rules governing overtime has been coming for two years, with a sneak preview of proposed modifications last year. But on May 18, the Department of Labor (DOL) came out with its new final rules, which take effect on December 1, 2016. The rules will significantly raise the salary level used to determine whether employees are eligible for overtime and will affect more than 4 million salaried employees, according to the DOL.

The Obama administration’s goal was to reset the income threshold to the point it would have reached, with period inflation adjustments, had it not been frozen more than a decade ago.

Under the new rule, the wage threshold test is more than doubling from today’s $23,660 ($455 per week) to $47,476 ($913 per week). The limit will be adjusted every three years beginning January 1, 2020. Employees earning less than $47,476, regardless of their job responsibilities, are deemed non-exempt, and therefore entitled to overtime pay.

Exempt or Non-exempt?

Unless specifically exempted, employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act must receive pay for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek at a rate of not less than one and one-half of their regular rates of pay. Not only will employers have to pay the overtime, they’ll also be liable for payroll taxes on it.

Two tests determine whether employees should be treated as “exempt,” and thus not entitled to overtime pay:

A pay threshold test, and
A duties test, under which employees who “primarily perform executive, administrative, or professional duties,” are deemed exempt. Regulations spell out those criteria in greater detail.

Highly Compensated Threshold

In a related change, the pay threshold for “highly compensated” also went up — from $100,000 to $134,004. Employees earning above that higher amount, regardless of whether their jobs would be classified as non-exempt under the “duties” test, can still be treated as exempt, and thus not entitled to overtime pay.

So, beginning in December, whether employees whose pay falls between $47,476 and $134,004 are to be eligible for overtime pay as non-exempt workers will be determined by the same duties test that has been in place for years.

Note: Employees’ pay for purposes of determining their exempt/non-exempt status includes nondiscretionary bonuses, incentive pay and commissions, as long as those payments occur at least on a quarterly basis and don’t exceed 10% of the employee’s compensation.

Salaried employees who, thanks to the soon-to-be higher income threshold will be entitled to overtime pay, don’t need to be switched to being paid an hourly wage or to punch a time clock. However, for salaried non-exempt employees below the threshold, it’s important to track time worked to ensure that the hours:

a) Don’t exceed 40 hours a week, or
b) That employees are awarded the overtime pay they have earned.

Overtime pay will need to be determined based on calculating what the employee’s salary translates to on an hourly basis for a 40-hour workweek.

Impact Assessment

Here are some immediate steps to consider in response to the new rules. Start by answering these questions:

-How many of your employees will be newly classified as non-exempt?
-How many of them routinely work more than 40 hours a week?
-What would it cost you if they continue to work more than 40 hours per workweek and are eligible for overtime?
-What systems do you need to put in place to monitor employees’ hours carefully after the new rules go into effect? The DOL says employers “may use any method they choose for tracking and recording hours” as long as it’s complete and accurate.

Once you get a basic handle on this information, you’ll face more questions. Suppose, for example, that you don’t implement any changes and your payroll costs go up by more than you can manage. You would then need to address questions like these:

-What if we hire some part-time people to keep newly non-exempt employees from having to exceed 40 hours a week?
-Will it be more economical to give raises to employees who are currently earning somewhat less than $47,476, to get them to the exempt level and avoid having to track their hours and pay them overtime?
-Can we reduce or eliminate overtime hours?
-Can we lower the salaries or wages of employees who will become entitled to overtime pay so that, when they earn overtime pay, they will wind up earning the same amount as they did before?
-Can we make adjustments to our employee benefits program to offset the rise in payroll cost?

There are no easy answers. Each possible response raises its own issues. For example, if you’re currently paying for all or a portion of employee benefits such as group life and long-term care insurance, you could shift those over to “voluntary” (employee-paid) status. But doing so would certainly be a takeaway, and many employees would resent it — although perhaps not as much as an actual wage reduction.

Opposition to the Final Rules

Many organizations reacted negatively to the new overtime rules. Here are excerpts from statements issued by 4 groups:

National Restaurant Association:“Restaurants operate on thin margins with low profits per employee and little room to absorb added costs. More than doubling the current minimum salary threshold for exempt employees, while automatically increasing salary levels, will harm restaurants and the employer community at large”.

“More than 80% of restaurant owners and 97% of restaurant managers start their careers in nonmanagerial positions and move up with performance-based incentives. These regulations may mean that salaried employees, who have worked hard to get where they are, could be subject to becoming hourly employees again.”

American Council on Education: “…Requiring such a dramatic and costly change to be implemented so quickly will leave many colleges with no choice but to respond to this regulation with a combination of tuition increases, service reductions and possibly layoffs.”

National Retail Federation: “In the retail sector alone, hundreds of thousands of career professionals will lose their status as salaried employees and find themselves reclassified as hourly workers, depriving them of the workplace flexibility and other benefits they so highly value.”

National Association of Manufacturers:“Manufacturing is a pathway to the middle class for millions of men and women who make things in America. However, this regulation creates barriers to opportunity, severely limiting flexibility and dramatically increasing red tape, especially for small manufacturers who cannot afford the burdens of a 99% salary increase for management employees who are exempt from overtime pay. Even worse, the administration has also required there to be future automatic increases, which creates uncertainty in planning in future years.”

In addition to business and not-for-profit organizations, some Republican members of Congress also oppose the new rules and say they will try to block them.

No Free Lunch

Another way you could blunt the impact of cutting pay or benefits is to increase non-exempt employees’ vacation benefits. However, there’s no “free lunch.” Doing this could increase the total hours that non-vacationing employees would need to work to cover for their vacationing colleagues, thereby driving up overtime pay.

Any such adjustments would need to be considered in light of the overall competitiveness of your labor market and your total compensation package. Although other employers in your area will probably be facing the same pressures, losing valued employees might cost you more than having to pay some overtime.

Suppose you raise the pay of employees who are near the threshold and routinely work more than 40 hours a week, to keep them in the exempt category. That solves the overtime problem but could have negative ripple effects. For example, one issue is “pay compression,” or the narrowing of the spread in pay between high and average performers, veteran employees and new hires, or employees and their supervisors. Some resentment is inevitable.

That, in turn, could put pressure on you to give raises to employees already above the exempt threshold. That might be necessary as a way to restore the original spread and make things “fair” in the eyes of the higher paid workers. This assumes they will become aware of pay changes occurring among their colleagues. While that’s not often the case, it’s a safe bet that many will figure it out.

“Can We Talk?”

It’s also a safe bet that your employees will have heard about the impending rule change, and they’ll be looking to you for answers about how it will affect them. For most employers it’s probably wise to begin engaging employees on the topic, even if you haven’t mapped out the details of how you will respond. An honest “we’re figuring this out” answer can be better than silence.

For more information on the final rules, consult with your payroll or tax adviser.

(Source: BizActions)

Beards in the Work Place

necktie-1209416_640

Perhaps the oldest fashion accessory to date, even older than cloth and jewelry, is the beard. Throughout the ages, the beard has had different connotations to different cultures. Sometimes, they were a favorable fashion trend, other times they were sign as a sign of uncleanliness, or even laziness. In today’s world though, the beard went through a movement that has put it at the forefront of pop culture. When the current generation sees someone with a well tamed beard that reaches down past their neck, thoughts of manliness, sophistication, and respect radiates back to them. With beards taken such a prominent stance in the modern world, the question has to be asked, where do they stand in the workplace?

The main variable to consider for this question, is industry. Depending on what service your business supplies, and the role of the bearded person in question, are the two main factors in deciding the proper dress code. For example, a long beard in a fast moving kitchen might pose certain health threats (especially if an health inspector sees one not tucked into a beard net), where as a long, well kept beard in an office environment might make someone look more in control. Of course, there are no laws stating that you have to allow beards either. If you want to make it a point to not allow beards in the workplace, or to only allow very short beards, you have that right as a business owner.

So let’s look at different industries and how a bearded man can effect each one, starting with the culinary arts.

Food Industry: When it comes to preparing food, safety and proper protocol is crucial. No one wants to find a hair in their food. It doesn’t matter if it is from their head, chin, or anywhere, a hair in a meal means you might lose that customer permanently. So it is important to make sure that hair is under control in the kitchen and beyond. It is not impossible for a server to hair a single strand fall onto a T-bone steak and ruin the entire meal. For this reason it is understandable to put a strict dress code in place for your business. This can mean limiting beard length or requiring the use of beard nets when around food. Luckily when servers deliver food, they hold the food away from their body, so there is a far less chance that the food can become contaminated.

Factory Based Industry: Working in a factory is an entirely different field of work from the kitchen. It can involve different jobs including working with machinery, moving around heavy products, or inspecting the quality of products before they head out to the warehouse. For working with machinery, it is usually safe to have a beard, as long as it is kept under control and not too wild. In some instances, working with parts that spin or grip, a beard might not be a good idea.

Retail: When working with customers, appearance is key to success. Your employees have to look presentable, professional, and capable. People don’t want a caveman telling them where the cookie dough is. They want someone who looks welcoming, clean, and professional to guide them in their grocery or electronic seeking adventure. This is when it becomes more of a best judgement situation than a dress code one. Some people can manage a beard, using combs and oils to keep it straight and professional. It is when their beard goes up left and right that you need to set the line. If you are open to beards in your retail business, keep an eye on them and make decisions as you go, or restrict them in the dress code found in the employee handbook.

Office Based Jobs: Office based jobs come in two different varieties, ones that deal with customers and clients, and those that don’t. Office based jobs that deal with customers, such as banks, some insurance companies, real estate, and so on, deal with customers and clients on a daily basis. Much like the retail job, they have to be presentable, often times more so due to the services they are providing. It’s one thing to help someone purchase a $5 pack of hamburger meat, it’s a whole different field when you are trying to get them to purchase a $150 a month automobile insurance plan with $500 deductible. Office based jobs that don’t deal with customers most often center around information input, organization, or the behind the scenes portions of the customer based office jobs. In these instances, the professional attire can be traded in for a more casual appearance, but still be maintained and well kept. Just because you won’t be interacting with customers doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be professional.

Avoiding Confusion: How do you make sure the rules on beards is understood by all of your employees? The best way is to have a comprehensive employee handbook that goes into detail about what is appropriate for the workplace and what is not. While listing etiquette on beard growth, it is also fitting to talk about other trending fashion topics that are emerging in the workplace, such as tattoos, piercings, and colored hair. Some companies take a strong stance against all of these in the workplace while other companies are becoming more open to them. Luckily, an employee handbook, and some of the policies found within, can be changed overtime. You don’t always want to give into current trends, but sometimes it is good to change a little to strengthen employee/management connections.

Human Resource Management Daytona Beach

Vision H.R. | The Human Resource Experts

New Overtime Laws

salary overtime laws ormond beach

Who here loves overtime? Most people would be raising their hands right about now, unless they work off a salary based paycheck that is. When you work a job that pages you an hourly wage, your maximum workweek is 40 hours. Anything past 40 hours that you work becomes overtime, which pays time and a half. This means for every hour you work over 40, you get paid your normal wage, plus half your normal wage added on top of it. In contrast, a salary worker is paid the same amount of money each week, no matter how many hours they work. One week they can work 30 hours and get paid $500, and the next week work 50 hours and still make $500.

There is a way for an salary worker to get overtime however. If they make less than $23,000 a year on their salary, than they are owed overtime pay for their work. To break it down, a salary employee has to get paid more than $455 a week, or get paid for overtime. This may seem significant, yet many of the jobs that employ salaried workers cross this threshold. This creates one very significant problem for many people who get paid on salary however. Depending on the workload, salaried workers might actually be making less than minimum wage for their work. For some business positions, the job never ends. During a busy season, some people might work so many hours, that when spread out, come to less than the state approved minimum wage.

The problem there is pretty clear, we need to reconfigure the our overtime laws so that salary workers get paid what they are really worth. Starting in December, that is exactly what President Obama plans to do. A change to salary and overtime laws has already been created, and will take effect December 1st, 2016. Under the new salary laws, any salary worker making less than $47,476 a year will now qualify for overtime. Breaking this number down means an employee must make $913 a week, or get paid for any overtime they work. This new system will have a few possible beneficial outcomes for people who are paid salary, benefits such as:

Pay Raise: Instead of paying overtime, an employee paid on salary might get a pay raise over the new threshold.
Paid Overtime: Or, the opposite may happen, and instead of a pay raise, will get overtime pay for their long hours at the office.
Less Work: A salary worker will make the same base level regardless of how much work they do, so to avoid giving one worker too much overtime, his work load might be broken up among other employees, giving them more free time without a cut in pay.

If you are worried about how this new law will affect you, you still have time to make changes in your company to prepare for it. For a better understanding and integration, hire a company like Vision H.R. that has years of experience handling their clients payroll not just by making sure it runs smoothly, but by also making sure it stays up to date by following new laws and regulations when they are created. If you are thinking of outsourcing your payroll to help keep it up to date, the first step is absolutely free. All you have to do is visit www.Vision-hr.com to get a free quote for your business. Get started now, and by the time December 1st comes around, you’re company will already be up to date on the new change.

Watch for New Paid Sick Leave Rules for Some Workers

Last September, President Obama issued an executive order requiring federal contractors to allow employees at least seven days of paid sick leave. Proposed regulations issued in late February 2016 (Subject to public comment until March 28th) added flesh to the bones of the executive order. Final regulations are to be published and will take effect by September 30.

The number of people working under contract for the federal government is huge — so big, in fact, that the Congressional Budget Office last year couldn’t even estimate a number when asked to do so by a member of the House Budget Committee.

In its 2014 fiscal year, the federal government spent $619 billion for contracted products and services, which suggests that a vast army of workers will be covered by the paid sick leave requirement. For perspective, that’s about 30% above the annual revenue of Walmart, the largest private employer, with some 2.2 million workers.

Informal Standard

The President’s goal in issuing the order was not just to ensure paid sick leave benefits for those specific workers, but to set an informal standard for all other employers. While a significant proportion of employers already provide some paid sick leave, few are likely to have a policy as liberal as the one that will apply to federal contractors.

Here is some of the key language defining the basis on which a contractor’s employee can receive paid sick leave. Specifically, paid sick leave earned may be used by an employee for an absence resulting from:

Physical or mental illness, injury or medical condition,
Obtaining diagnosis, care or preventive care from a health care provider,
Caring for a child, a parent, a spouse, a domestic partner, or any other individual related by blood or affinity whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship who has any of the conditions or needs for diagnosis, care, or preventive care described in paragraphs 1 or 2 or is otherwise in need of care, or
Domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking.

The proposed regulation elaborates on what is meant by the “equivalent of a family relationship,” while noting it cannot list every possibility. Here are some examples:

“It could include, for example, an individual who was a foster child in the same home in which the employee was a foster child for several years and with whom the employee has maintained a sibling-like relationship, a friend of the family in whose home the employee lived while she was in high school and whom the employee therefore considers to be like a mother or aunt to her.”

Another family-like relationship example is an elderly neighbor with whom the employee “has regularly shared meals and to whom the employee has provided unpaid caregiving assistance for the past five years and whom the employee therefore considers to be like a grandfather to her.”

What Verification Can You Ask for?

Employers would be allowed to ask in general terms about the nature of an employee’s relationship to the person he or she wishes to assist. “The request need not provide extensive details regarding the employee’s relationship with an individual for whom the employee is caring or will care; it need only inform the contractor that the employee has a family or family-like relationship with the individual,” according to the proposal.

Although employers can probe a little bit when the leave request pertains to a nonfamily member, “the contractor may not demand intimate details upon receiving a positive response to such an inquiry,” the proposal says.

When sick leave requests involve medical care, employers would not be permitted to demand evidence of that need for care until the employee had taken at least three days of leave. At that point, the employer could ask for certification from a health care provider. However, the employee would not be required to supply the documentation before 30 days had elapsed.

Recordkeeping Requirements

Once the rules go into effect, federal contractors will need to maintain detailed records of actions related to paid sick leave requests and the granting of those requests.

Penalties for employers who are found to violate the regulations’ requirements will be similar to those imposed under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Specifically, employers will be required to compensate employees for costs they incur as a result of being denied paid leave, such as wages and benefits forfeited by taking leave without pay.

How Will this Affect Your Company?

As noted, the regulations technically will not dictate policy for companies that don’t do business with the federal government. But knowing what’s coming down the pike for them can help you prepare for possible questions about your own sick leave policies, and help you to ensure that your benefits are sufficient to keep you competitive in your labor market.

(Source: bisection.com)

How Are Seasonal Workers Treated Under the “Play or Pay” Provision?

Question: Our company has a regular full-time workforce of approximately 40 employees. This year, we’re planning to hire about 80 more full-time retail employees in November and December for the holiday shopping season. How do we determine whether doing so will subject us to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) employer shared responsibility rules?

Answer: To determine whether your company is subject to the ACA’s employer shared responsibility rules — commonly referred to as the “play or pay” provision — you must count all of your employees. But, as we’ll explain, there are special rules for seasonal workers.

Determining ALE Status

Under the play-or-pay provision, an “applicable large employer” (ALE) may be subject to penalties for failure to offer adequate health coverage to enough of its full-time employees (and their dependents).

An ALE is generally an employer that employed 50 or more full-time employees (including full-time equivalents) during the previous year. Although seasonal workers must be included when determining whether your workforce exceeds this threshold, you won’t be considered an ALE if:

You passed that threshold for 120 days or fewer during a calendar year, and
The employees in excess of 50 who were employed during that period were seasonal workers.

Employers are permitted to apply a reasonable, good faith interpretation of the term “seasonal worker.” But the term generally applies to someone who performs labor and services on a seasonal basis, including retail workers employed exclusively during holiday seasons.

Noting the Particulars

It appears you can apply the seasonal worker exception because your workforce exceeds 50 full-time employees for no more than 120 days, and the number of full-time employees would be less than 50 during those months if seasonal workers were disregarded. Note that you must determine your ALE status annually by counting the number of employees during the previous year and measuring the number of days that seasonal workers were actually employed during that preceding year. Once the previous year ends, your ALE status (or lack thereof) is fixed for the current year.

Also be aware that there’s a distinction between the terms “seasonal worker,” relevant when determining ALE status, and “seasonal employee,” relevant — for employers that are ALEs — when determining an employee’s status as a full-time employee under the look-back measurement method (one of the two permissible methods for determining full-time employee status). If you’re not an ALE for a particular year, you don’t need to identify full-time employees using the separate definition of seasonal employee.

Teetering on the Edge

It’s good that you’re preparing early to determine the impact of seasonal workers on whether you’ll be subject to the play-or-pay provision. Companies that teeter on the edge of being an ALE are particularly at risk of facing ACA penalties.

COBRA Still Flourishes as a Choice for Continuation Health Insurance

Some people seem to believe that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has replaced the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). That’s wrong, although the ACA has changed COBRA and the health insurance landscape in recent years.

Obtaining health insurance through an exchange is an alternative to COBRA, but that old workhorse legislation remains viable for employees leaving a company who still want to retain their coverage,

COBRA, along with the Internal Revenue Code and other pieces of legislation, may require employers with a group health insurance plan to offer continued health insurance coverage to a departing employee. The law, administered by the Department of Labor (DOL), applies to private employers with 20 or more employees and state and local government entities. It doesn’t apply to the federal government. As well, many states have enacted comparable laws.

Coverage under COBRA generally is extended to an employee’s spouse, ex-spouse and dependent children when group coverage is lost for certain reasons. To be eligible, employees must have been enrolled in an employer’s health plan that’s still active.

Qualifying Events

Although employers are required to notify employees of their COBRA rights and to offer continued coverage, the cost may be shifted to the departing employee. COBRA premiums can be expensive. COBRA coverage is triggered by one of these qualifying events:

Employment ends for any reason other than gross misconduct.

Working hours are reduced.

The employee becomes entitled to Medicare.

The employee becomes divorced or legally separated.

The employee dies.

A child loses dependent status under the plan’s rules.

Note: Under the ACA, plans that offer coverage to children on their parents’ plan must make the coverage available until the adult child reaches age 26. Also, ACA offers subsidies to some to help lower their monthly premiums.

COBRA requires coverage to last for 18 or 36 months. The length of time depends on the qualifying event and the plan may provide longer periods of coverage. The rules generally are:

18 months when the qualifying event is termination of employment or a reduction of working hours,

36 months for a spouse and dependents when the event is termination or reduction of hours and the employee became entitled to Medicare less than 18 months before the event, and

36 months for the other qualifying events.

In certain circumstances, following a single event, if any one of the beneficiaries is disabled and meets certain requirements, all qualified beneficiaries are entitled to an 11-month extension for a total 29 months. The plan can charge qualified beneficiaries an increased premium of as much as 150% of the cost of coverage during the extension.

Employer Responsibilities

If your business has a group plan, it must notify covered employees and their families of their COBRA rights within 90 days of becoming a plan participant. In addition, group health plans must furnish covered employees and their spouses with a general notice describing their COBRA rights — also within the first 90 days of coverage.

As an employer, you must inform the plan within 30 days of termination or reduction of hours, death, entitlement to Medicare, or bankruptcy of your business. Covered employees must notify the plan in the event of divorce, legal separation or a child’s loss of dependent status.

When the plan receives notice, it will give the beneficiaries a notice within 14 days describing the rights to continued coverage and how to make the election for coverage.

Employee Responsibilities

Employees have at least 60 days to choose the continued coverage. Generally, the qualified beneficiary must pay for the extended coverage, although your business may choose to do so. The amount charged can’t exceed the regular cost to the plan plus a 2% fee for administrative costs.

This is just a brief overview of COBRA as it pertains to both employers and employees. For more information about the rights and responsibilities under this important and still relevant law, consult with your employee benefits adviser.

Losing COBRA Coverage

COBRA continuation coverage may be terminated before the end of the maximum period under the following circumstances:

Premiums aren’t paid in full on a timely basis,
The employer ceases to maintain any group health plan,
A qualified beneficiary begins coverage under another group health plan after electing continuation coverage,
A qualified beneficiary becomes entitled to Medicare benefits after electing continuation coverage, or

A qualified beneficiary engages in conduct that would justify in termination of coverage of a similarly situated participant or beneficiary not receiving continuation coverage (for example an employee commits fraud).

If continuation coverage is terminated early, the plan must provide the beneficiary with an early termination notice.

(Source: bisection.com)

Are You a Joint Employer? The DOL Weighs In

joint employer

If your company is classified as a joint employer with one or more other companies, you may be liable for overtime pay even if you carefully avoid workweeks that exceed 40 hours of work. Why? Because the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) states that you and your fellow joint employers share responsibility for compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

The WHD fleshed out the details in a recent opinion letter (Administrator’s Interpretation, No. 2016-1). According to this letter, a contract such as an agreement between you and a staffing company doesn’t necessarily determine who the employer actually is. You can contractually delegate a lot of responsibility to a staffing company, including supervision, and still be considered joint employers. That determination, says the WHD, is based on “the economic realities of the working relationship.”

That expansive definition contrasts with common law concepts of employment and joint employment, which look at the amount of control an employer exercises over an employee.

Broad Definitions

According to the FLSA, an employer includes “any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer in relation to an employee.” And the word “employ” is defined simply as “to allow or permit to work.”

There are two categories of joint employment: horizontal and vertical. The WHD states that a horizontal joint employment relationship exists “when an employee is employed by two or more technically separate but related or overlapping employers.”

An illustration offered by the WHD is a registered nurse who works at one nursing home for 25 hours a week, and another one for 25 hours a week. If the two nursing homes are deemed to be joint employers, she would be entitled to 10 hours of overtime pay since the two 25-hour stints total 50 hours, or 10 hours over the standard 40-hour workweek.

Gauging Economic Reality

Continuing with the example of the nursing homes, the following questions can get at the economic reality of the situation to determine whether the two facilities are joint employers.

Does one employer own all or part of the other employer, or do they have any common owners?
Do the two have any overlapping officers, directors, executives or managers?
Do they share control over operations; for example, hiring, firing, payroll, advertising or overhead costs?
Does one employer supervise the work of the other?
Do they treat employees as a pool of employees available to both of them?
Do they share any clients or customers?

The WHD opinion letter adds that it’s not necessary for all or even most of the above factors to be present to indicate joint employment.

Vertical Joint Employers

In a vertical joint employment relationship, there are two layers of employers: 1) The ultimate employer, and 2) An intermediate layer employer, such as a staffing agency. According to the WHD, “There is typically an established or admitted employment relationship between the employee and the intermediary employer. That employee’s work, however, is typically also for the benefit of the other employer.”

Here are some examples of cases in which courts concluded there was a vertical joint employer relationship:

Garment workers directly employed by an employer who contracted with the garment manufacturer to perform a specific function,
Nurses placed at a hospital by a staffing agency, and
Warehouse workers whose labor is arranged and overseen by layers of intermediaries between the workers and the owner or operator of the facility.

The situation is clear-cut when the supplier of the labor is actually an employee or economically dependent on the higher level employer. For example, “If a drywall subcontractor is not actually an independent contractor but is an employee of the higher-tier contractor,” says the WHD, “then all of the drywall contractor’s workers are also employees of the higher-tier subcontractor.”

Here are some key factors that the agency would weigh in determining whether a vertical joint employer relationship existed:

To what degree is the work performed by the employee directed, controlled or supervised by the potential higher-level employer, beyond a “reasonable level of contract oversight?”
What is the permanency and duration of the relationship? If the employee’s arrangement with the higher-level employer is “indefinite, permanent, or long-term,” that would suggest joint employment status.
If the employee’s work is an integral part of the higher-level potential joint employer’s business, that suggests a degree of economic dependence indicative of a joint employer relationship.
Where is the work performed? If it’s on the premises owned by the higher-level potential joint employer, that provides more evidence of a joint employer relationship.
The more common administrative functions provided by a possible joint employer (payroll, for example), the greater the probability that employees are dependent on the existence of a joint employer relationship. The same is true when facilities, safety equipment, housing or transportation are provided.

It must be noted that federal courts have greater authority than the Department of Labor in interpreting laws such as the FLSA. Indeed, the WHD’s opinion letter supports its positions by referencing federal court rulings — and even points out examples where courts have rendered conflicting opinions.

Still, going up against a federal agency by asking a court to overrule the agency is not generally advisable. Therefore, if you think you might be deemed a joint employer, be sure to pay close attention to the number of hours the potential employees are working to steer clear of unexpected overtime pay obligations, or any other requirements of the FLSA.

is classified as a joint employer with one or more other companies, you may be liable for overtime pay even if you carefully avoid workweeks that exceed 40 hours of work. Why? Because the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) states that you and your fellow joint employers share responsibility for compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

That expansive definition contrasts with common law concepts of employment and joint employment, which look at the amount of control an employer exercises over an employee.

Broad Definitions

Gauging Economic Reality

Continuing with the example of the nursing homes, the following questions can get at the economic reality of the situation to determine whether the two facilities are joint employers.

Does one employer own all or part of the other employer, or do they have any common owners?
Do the two have any overlapping officers, directors, executives or managers?
Do they share control over operations; for example, hiring, firing, payroll, advertising or overhead costs?
Does one employer supervise the work of the other?
Do they treat employees as a pool of employees available to both of them?
Do they share any clients or customers?

The WHD opinion letter adds that it’s not necessary for all or even most of the above factors to be present to indicate joint employment.

Vertical Joint Employers

Here are some examples of cases in which courts concluded there was a vertical joint employer relationship:

Garment workers directly employed by an employer who contracted with the garment manufacturer to perform a specific function,
Nurses placed at a hospital by a staffing agency, and
Warehouse workers whose labor is arranged and overseen by layers of intermediaries between the workers and the owner or operator of the facility.

Here are some key factors that the agency would weigh in determining whether a vertical joint employer relationship existed:

To what degree is the work performed by the employee directed, controlled or supervised by the potential higher-level employer, beyond a “reasonable level of contract oversight?”
What is the permanency and duration of the relationship? If the employee’s arrangement with the higher-level employer is “indefinite, permanent, or long-term,” that would suggest joint employment status.
If the employee’s work is an integral part of the higher-level potential joint employer’s business, that suggests a degree of economic dependence indicative of a joint employer relationship.
Where is the work performed? If it’s on the premises owned by the higher-level potential joint employer, that provides more evidence of a joint employer relationship.
The more common administrative functions provided by a possible joint employer (payroll, for example), the greater the probability that employees are dependent on the existence of a joint employer relationship. The same is true when facilities, safety equipment, housing or transportation are provided.

(Source: bisection.com)