Posted by Mike Lopez on Mon, May 23, 2011 @ 10:14 PM
Workers who are officially employed by a professional employer organization, which is responsible for overseeing all HR-related functions.
Still not sure about Employee Leasing? Read the following article that describes how the process works.
Click here to read the story.
Posted by Mike Lopez on Wed, May 04, 2011 @ 12:52 AM
Billions of dollars in unclaimed life insurance benefits are at the center of a legal wrestling match as cash-strapped state governments step up their efforts to make sure insurance companies properly account for the funds.
Although the money belongs to the beneficiaries, states have laws stipulating that the government becomes the owner of abandoned property after a period of time. Several states, budget-challenged California among them, are aggressively enforcing their unclaimed property laws to force insurers to hand over the money.
Continue reading here ->
Posted by Mike Lopez on Wed, Apr 06, 2011 @ 12:57 AM
This is no April Fool's joke. The Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB) Actuarial Committee just completed its review of its interpretation of California industry experience. They conclude that California's workers' compensation advisory pure premium rates need to increase by nearly 40% -- 39.8% by one member's calculation.
This changes the game for Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones who has been successfully holding down health insurance rates. The Bureau's conclusions can be called into question by looking at reports done by Compline last year which proved that while the Bureau represented that the industry lost some $1.5 Billion, the reality was that it made a profit of some $600 Million. Last year's Compline report can be found here.<http://ws1.wcexec.com/t/87701/18608/32915/0/>
WCIRB's actuarial committee itself doesn't make a recommendation on the actual number to be filed, just the methodology used to calculate the recommendation. WCIRB's governing committee is tasked with approving the final number and ordering a mid-year filing. Its members will consider the issue on Wednesday. Generally it closely agrees with the committee recommendation.
Just weeks ago key WCIRB officials were saying a mid-year filing was unlikely, but that was before the industry's experience through the end of 2010 had been analyzed. That analysis shows continued deterioration, primarily on the medical cost front.
Overall loss development accounts for about 4 points of the likely increase. Also on the rise is the allocated loss adjustment expense, which is the amount the industry spends adjusting claims and defending cases. The latest UCLA wage forecast adds another 3 points to the calculation, according to the Bureau.
The final number could still change if carriers file amended data. And the analysis currently covers only 99% of the market. WCIRB actuary Dave Bellusci notes that they have concerns about the premium and claims data for one carrier and are working to ameliorate those concerns. Until that time, however, WCIRB is excluding its data from the analysis.
While WCIRB's governing committee is expected to approve a mid-year filing on Wednesday, the actual filing likely won't happen until late April. WCIRB president Bob Mike noted that any filing has to include for the first time information on the rates that carriers have actually been filing.
Posted by Mike Lopez on Sat, Jan 22, 2011 @ 12:10 AM
While the first few weeks of 2011 already noted a number of encouraging signs for the coming year – lower unemployment, higher small business borrowing, gains in manufacturing activity and small business employment – there are a number of critical changes expected to unfold this year -we’d like to explore two additional topics: healthcare reform and social media.
- Healthcare reform. Healthcare reform has been one of the most hotly debated issues in the country in recent years, even as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law last March. Although it is expected to be implemented gradually over the next several years, some key provisions will be enacted this year, including a provision that provides tax credits to small businesses to help cover up to 35 percent of employee healthcare premiums – a measure that is expected to free up budgets and boost business filings.
- Social media. Last year also marked a revolution for social media, as businesses began to embrace the phenomenon in droves. This trend is expected to continue through 2011, but as social networks are used most significantly for personal reasons, small businesses should consider adopting social media policies for their employees.
If you need help with any of your HR needs
contact us today!
Posted by Mike Lopez on Mon, Jan 03, 2011 @ 10:59 AM
The California legislature has passed several bills which were signed into law and take effect January 1, 2011. The following two laws have a direct impact on employers, while others pertain to unemployment and other administrative matters.
Organ Donation Leave
California lawmakers have added a new leave entitlement for qualified private sector employees who volunteer to donate an organ or bone marrow. As an incentive to encourage people to save lives, the legislature provides that employees who participate will receive generous leave rights, including paid time off. Eligible employees can take leaves of absence with pay for up to 30 days for organ donation or up to 5 days for bone marrow donation.
Employers may require use of vacation, sick and/or PTO under specific limitations. Under the new law, employees returning from organ or bone marrow donation leave must be returned to the same position they held when the leave began or to an equivalent position.
This leave will not run concurrently with FMLA or CFRA. The employer must continue paying for health benefits during the leave, and it does not constitute a break in service for purposes of seniority, vacation accrual, salary or other benefits of employment. Employers may not interfere with the leave or retaliate against an employee who takes leave.
Meal Period Exemption
AB 569 provides a limited exemption from California’s meal period requirement to construction employees, security officers in the security services industry, commercial truck drivers and employees of electrical and gas corporations and local publicly owned electric utilities if the employees are covered by a valid collective bargaining agreement which expressly provides meal periods for those employees.
If you are a California employer, we suggest you consult with a California human resources firm that is familiar with these news laws, and how they may impact your business.
Posted by Mike Lopez on Mon, Dec 13, 2010 @ 12:01 PM
We know that employees have regular sick days that are needed to get well. But, as an alarming number of workers play hooky, corporations are clamping down—and calling in the detectives.
Playing hooky without getting caught—as immortalized in the cat-and-mouse skirmish between Ferris Bueller and Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller's Day Off—used to be an adolescent rite of passage. Now it has given rise to a thriving industry, with stern legal precedent to back it up. In 2008, Raybestos Products, a car parts manufacturer in Crawfordsville, Ind., hired an off-duty police officer to track an employee suspected of abusing her paid medical leave. When the employee, Diana Vail, was fired after the cop produced substantial evidence that she was exploiting her benefits, she sued Raybestos. In what became the landmark case for corporate snooping, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed her lawsuit. A panel of judges declared that while surveillance "may not be preferred employer behavior," it wasn't unlawful. According to Susan W. Kline, a partner at the Baker & Daniels law firm in Indianapolis, the case "encouraged [companies] to consider hiring their own private detectives." It also set a precedent, she says, that "reasonable suspicion" is sufficient justification for employer spying.
Continue reading this great article here.
Posted by Mike Lopez on Mon, Nov 29, 2010 @ 12:18 AM
Lola Gonzalez laid herself off to save her employees' jobs. We congratulate her willingness to sacrifice her pay for her staff. We also recognize that she also could have saved money by using an HR Outsourcing company to save money throughout the year.
If you are an employer, you should consider all of your options with an HR Outsourcing company. We offer valuable services to employees and employers.
If you would like to read the story from USA Today please click here.
If you would like to learn more about our services please visit ESGrepublic.com
Posted by Mike Lopez on Sat, Jul 31, 2010 @ 11:48 AM
Most business owners don't realize what an HR Outsourcing company can provide. Here are 5 reasons your company should switch from a payroll service to an HRO.
Liability
With an HR Outsourcing company you have a co-employer relationship and with a co-employer relationship you get shared liability with those employees. Payroll taxes and unemployment claims are taken care of by the HR Outsourcing company. Therefore, the HRO is 100 percent liable for that part of it and the business owner doesn’t have to worry about those kind of liabilities. So there’s a shared liability that the employee now have a vested interest with the HRO.
Efficiency
The efficiency with a payroll service is you only have one company that just processes payroll. That’s all they do. With an HRO, you have an entire company of experts that handle payroll, benefits, worker’s comp, safety and human resources. This means you have one company that provides all of these services to you. So therefore, having one person or company handling all of these things, which is maybe a low cost, but it’s not necessarily as efficient as having a team of experts. You can have an entire company for roughly the same price or maybe even cheaper than your one or two employees internally or any outside payroll service. This provides a great deal of efficiency for business owners.
Expertise
The value of the expertise comes in with an HRO that has a number of employees with a great deal of experience in Human Resources, Payroll, Benefits, Workers' Compensation and Safety. Whereas some business owners, only have a couple of employees internally that have to learn as they go. They know a little about HR, safety, and worker’s comp. With an HRO, you have people that just do HR and that’s all they’ve learned and they’ve done it for a number of years. They have a great wealth of knowledge in HR. You also get a company that has worker’s comp experts that knows worker’s comp laws, regulations and restrictions. Also, you will have the same experts with payroll and benefits. You have people that have spent a great deal of time and years learning these things, so you don’t have to.
Convenience
The convenience is having one company you call for all payroll questions. You also have one company to call for any employee administration related questions. So any questions related to payroll, benefits, HR, worker’s comp, and safety have one phone number to call. Whereas before, if they had a number of different outsourced services they’d have to call five or six different numbers to get their questions answered.
But with an HRO you’re able to call one number and have one point of contact. Which then can be able to go to all the different departments within that HRO and be able to get your answer taken care of. So it’s very convenient to be able to have just one source to handle any type of employee questions.
Options
When you deal with an HRO, they have large amounts of employees under their belt and therefore they go out and get your company voluntary benefits. So employees now have access to discount theme park tickets, discount movie tickets, Aflac, and more services that a smaller company does not have the time to get these extra benefits. Services like these really do improve the workplace environment. Let's not forget that having options of multiple insurance plans, 401k plans and multiple dental plans provides companies an advantage to hiring a more skilled workforce. There’s such a great array of options when you work with an HRO. These different options for businesses are invaluable to look over.
Most business owners don't realize that an HRO or even administrative companies provide all of the services under one roof. If you have any kind of problems with payroll, human resources, benefits, workers' compensation or safety in your business, you should check into and HRO. Having issues in any of those items can be very expensive to deal with and costly. It could ruin your business.Why wait until you have that problem? Find an HRO or an administrative company and see if it makes sense for your business.
Posted by Mike Lopez on Wed, Jul 07, 2010 @ 06:30 PM
Having a Social Media Policy in your Employee Handbook is very important in our new online world.
One reason you want a Social Media Policy is to protect your company information. If you have confidential information within your company you want to ensure that your employee’s are not posting confidential information online. Posting proprietary information on how to make a product or certain company information is confidential information. Because Social Media outlets are viewed by many people, an employer wants to make sure their information is protected. So having a social media policy which outlines the dos and don’ts will help regulate how employees appropriately use social media in the workplace.
The number two reason why an employer should have a social media policy is to set guidelines. A question an employer should ask themselves is; what is acceptable? Such as, on a blog. What is acceptable on a social networking personal site? You want to ensure if someone does have his or her own personal blog or personal networking site, you want to outline what is acceptable. Also, outline if employees do identify themselves as employees of your company, you want to make sure it’s in a positive light, without any negative commentary. Make sure you outline a set of rules and guidelines of what’s acceptable within the policy.
The third reason why you should have a social media policy is to protect yourself from claims. Claims is a broad statement used here. Claims can be about unemployment claims, wrongful termination claims, and possibly some wage and hour claims as well. In regards to unemployment claims, if you have a social media policy and it’s evident an employee has violated this policy, more than likely this employee will be denied and therefore will not receive unemployment benefits.
Having a social media policy can also protect you from wrongful termination claims. If an employer outlines the rules and guidelines for the use of social media in the workplace, a claim for wrongful termination is less likely.
To be proactive, we recommend contacting an HR Outsourcing company(ESG republic) and working with them to see what kind of social media policy your company needs. There are certain industries or jobs where you may not be on the computer or have access to cell phones all day. So a social networking policy may not be as needed. But if social networking is a part of the way you do business, then an employer needs to start looking at certain resources and look at what works best in your organization.
In this day and age, if your organization is utilizing social media as a marketing tool, a Social Media policy is needed so you can monitor what employees are posting or doing on social media networking sites.
Posted by Mike Lopez on Tue, Jun 29, 2010 @ 04:02 PM
Why do employers need a letter of resignation from an employee who is quitting?
A letter of resignation is needed for many reasons. One reason is unemployment claims. If an employee quits and does not provide a letter of resignation, then the employee has the ability to change their reason for quitting when they file an unemployment claim and mostly like win. The inconsistent reason for quitting can result in the employee winning the claim and be awarded benefits.
There are certain circumstances when an employee can quit with “good cause” and still be eligible for unemployment. An employee will likely be awarded unemployment benefits if:
- Working conditions were detrimental to their health and safety. The work was making them physically ill.
- The employee had to follow a spouse out of town for a job.
- The employee needed to take care of a dependent child.
Above are just a few reasons for a quit with “good cause” attributable to employment but these items need to be documented as the final reason for leaving the job. Whether these statements are true or not, the employer needs the documentation from the employee for effective control of unwarranted claims.
How can an employer protect themselves against false unemployment claims?
There are two ways that an employer can protect their company.
- Documentation. An employer must document the history of performance of an employee. The documentation should be kept in their employee file and reviewed periodically to ensure all matters have been addressed. The resignation should also be included in the employee file.
- Hire an HR Outsourcing company. ESG republic, which is an HR Outsourcing company, helps our client’s everyday with employee matters. We provide the assistance with the documentation of each employee. We handle the termination process by visiting on site, on the phone, or having the employee visit our corporate office. When the unemployment claim comes in we attend the hearing with the documentation to support our client against the claim. This gives our clients the security in knowing they have a team of experts helping to control costs and employee matters.
Whether you use an HR Outsourcing company or do it yourself, make sure you have your employee give you a reason for their resignation. This could save you from an unwanted unemployment claim.