Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Time to think about recruiting and retention again. And that means thinking total rewards. What’s happening with benefits and perks in 2013? What are your competitors up to? Help us find out! Please participate in our brief survey—sponsored by Aflac—and see how the perks you offer stack up against those of other successful companies. We’ll […]
With thousands of pages of new laws and rules, there must be thousands of new reasons for employees to sue for health benefits not delivered properly in the wake of near-complete enactment of health reform starting in 2014, one could be forgiven for thinking. Health reform certainly does appear to be somewhat of a litigation […]
The percentage of 401(k) plan participants borrowing from their retirement accounts has remained steady amid record levels of savings in the accounts, but one data point from Fidelity Investments’ latest quarterly analysis of the thousands of accounts it manages could be cause for concern. According to the retirement plan administrator for 13.5 million 401(k) participants, […]
In the heat of making an HR decision, are you sure you’ve considered all the key factors? Here’s a tool to help you do it. Anyone needing to conduct an investigation of workplace wrongdoing who read yesterday’s Advisor article on the subject should be grateful to Deborah J. Muller and Michael E. Ferrans. These two […]
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration has published a final rule clarifying the penalty that may be imposed on a plan administrator for failing to provide a written notice to participants and beneficiaries of their rights to diversify the portions of plan accounts that are invested in the employer’s publicly traded securities. […]
No law specifically says employers are prohibited from discriminating against job applicants who have been out of work for months or even years. The long-term unemployed don’t have protections spelled out in any antidiscrimination laws – or do they? When jobseekers are part of a protected class that has a disproportionate number of people unemployed, […]
We reported in April on a federal court decision from Kentucky involving IBM which held that under federal law, if you’re seriously considering changes to a retirement benefit plan, you must tell your employees. Now, in a pair of new cases, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal has reached the same conclusion, explaining that […]
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has stepped in to file a lawsuit accusing Catholic Charities of firing an African-American case manager after he complained about racially offensive treatment. Keith Bogard claimed that because of his race he was given undesirable assignments at a Catholic Charities group home in San Francisco. He also charged that staff […]
The San Jose Mercury News has agreed to pay $150,000 to settle a same-sex harassment lawsuit. The lawsuit grew out of a charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by Mark Newton, a mailroom employee who claimed he was subjected to ongoing sexual harassment by a male supervisor. The alleged harassment included inappropriate sexual […]
We are a small California business with 14 employees. We are not supposed to be subject to FMLA, but our lawyer says we are. This is because we have FMLA eligibility information included in our handbook. But the eligibility clause clearly states that “employees who work at a location where the Company employs fewer than […]