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Covid-19 Compliance: Consider Your Employees

HR is a complex and ever-changing field. Professionals constantly need to ensure their organizations are following local and national laws and regulations. Especially during a pandemic, businesses regularly find themselves having to adapt to change.

Opioid Crisis: Keeping the Workplace Drug-Free and ADA Compliant

The opioid epidemic is affecting workplaces across the country. Because opioids can be lawfully prescribed (but are increasingly abused), employers must tread carefully when taking adverse action against opioid users to avoid running afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). “Recovery-friendly” workplaces may provide an alternative solution to help combat the crisis, but that […]

Benefits

What Are Caregiving Benefits?

As the population ages, more and more employees are finding themselves part of what is often called the “sandwich generation.” This group, unlike the traditional generations, is not defined by what year you were born but rather by a stage of life—the stage in which you find yourself sandwiched between caregiving responsibilities for both dependents […]

vacation

California Companies Can Impose a Waiting Period on Paid Vacation Accrual

A California auto detail business required its employees to work for at least 1 year before earning vacation. An employee left after 6 months and received no vacation pay upon his departure. He sued the company, claiming it unlawfully required him to forfeit his accrued vacation pay.

Nursing Home Should Have Protected Employee from Patient’s Sexual Groping

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (whose rulings apply to Louisiana employers) recently provided some guidance on whether an employer has a duty to protect employees from sexual harassment by its customers. In this case, the employer was a nursing care facility, and the “customer” was a mentally impaired patient with whom the employee […]

Bonuses and Gift Cards—Probably Taxable

Tax Consequences of Bonuses Bonuses paid in consideration for services rendered are almost always taxable wages subject to income tax withholding, FICA, and FUTA. These include production, incentive, and nondeferred profit sharing bonuses. The Internal Revenue Service has also ruled that bonuses paid to employees for signing or ratifying an employment contract are considered wages […]

Electronic Records in California: Maintaining Them, Keeping Them Safe

Utilizing electronic records can be a way to reduce paperwork in your office, but do you know how to stay in legal compliance while utilizing electronic employee records? How do you ensure your files are safe in case of an emergency? In a CER webinar titled “Electronic Recordkeeping in California: How to Manage, Store, and […]

diversity

Framing Unconscious Bias Awareness at Your Organization

Unconscious bias can be a major factor in whether a workforce is diverse. More likely than not, hiring managers impart their own hidden biases upon their hiring practices. This can be very damaging to an organization, but behavioral scientists have studied this phenomenon in the hopes of understanding it and coming up with practical solutions.

FMLA Absences Up, Some Industries Hit Harder Than Others

While leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act can be troublesome for any employer, it is particularly disruptive for manufacturers, call centers and health care organizations whose operations depend on fixed schedules, according to a recent ComPsych Corporation white paper. FMLA absences are on the rise, says FMLA Source, a ComPsych company, and some […]