Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage, employers throughout the United States will have to adjust their benefits plans, policies and documents to accommodate employees’ same-sex spouses for purposes of federal law and regulations. California employers will need to do the same for purposes of state law. On June 26, […]
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is refocusing its HIPAA privacy enforcement efforts on seeking monetary penalties in cases of “abject failure” to comply, the head of HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) indicated. “The majority of matters we handle are going to be resolved through education” as they have in the […]
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have put transit parity — that is, the equalization of mass transit and qualified parking benefits under tax Code Section 132 — back in play, after watching it fail earlier in the session. The legislation would extend a temporary parity provision that expired Dec. 31, 2011, for another two years. Sen. […]
The following is a list of the bestselling paperback business books as ranked by the New York Times on March 21. 1. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. The people who saw the real estate crash coming and made billions from their foresight. 2. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can […]
Is safety part of your portfolio yet? In more and more organizations, HR is taking over safety management. Fortunately, HR managers make great safety managers! In fact (don’t tell the safety people), they often do a better job than technical safety experts do. Why are HR managers so good at safety? Technical safety expertise is […]
Federal agencies just issued new final rules for contingency-based wellness program goals under health reform. If employers offer to give a reward (such as discounted health insurance premiums) to workers who accomplish some kind of biometric goal (a contingency standard), then employers must have a standing “reasonable alternative” to the contingency-based standard, government officials told […]
By J. Robert Brame Social critics routinely criticize Western culture as being racist, sexist, xenophobic, and more recently, ageist and “lookist,” the latter being the widely asserted preference within our society for the more attractive over the less attractive, especially regarding women. Some of these “problems,” including racism, xenophobia, and ageism, have been enshrined in […]
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced an April 30 deadline for claiming certain overpayments of the transitional reinsurance fee. The announcement covers overpayments due to miscalculating enrollment counts on which the fee is based. Such miscalculations occur for two reasons, CMS said: misapplication of a permitted method for determining the annual enrollment count; […]
A federal appellate court may reconsider its views on “reassignment” as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans With Disabilities Act, at the request of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC takes the position that the ADA requires employers to reassign employees, whose disability prevents them from performing their current job, to a vacant position […]
Here’s the third in our popular series of “Eye on the Election” posts which are focused on helping employers prepare for post-election changes, no matter who is elected. Eye on the Election For today’s topic—likely changes to health care reform after the election—we turned to BLR legal editor Jessica Webb-Ayer, J.D., editor of the Benefits […]