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Blogs, Rants, and Tweets: Can You Stop Them?

In yesterday’s Advisor, we featured attorney Joseph Beachboard’s tips for employers doing background checks using social websites. Today, we move on to his specific recommendations and introduce an audio conference on controlling blogs and other Internet challenges. Beachboard’s comments came at the recent SHRM Annual Convention and Exposition in New Orleans. He is a shareholder […]

Employment Law Tip: Maintaining an At-Will Relationship

If you’re like many California employers, your employee handbook contains a statement that employment is at-will, meaning that employees can be fired for any reason or no reason at all, providing the termination does not violate state or federal law. But have you checked your handbook to be sure it doesn’t contain provisions that undermine […]

Equal Pay: How Do We Fix Potential Discrimination Problems We Discovered During an Internal Audit?

During our own audit of our pay for salaried workers, we discovered some discrepancies that I think might be questionable if someone were to sue us for discrimination. Statistically, it appears that we may be underpaying women as compared to men in the same job groups, but regional pay differences and other factors such as […]

SIIA Chief Testifies on Pro-reform Threats to Self-funding

On Feb. 26, SIIA’s CEO and president Mike Ferguson testified before a House panel to make it clear that skirting the ACA is not the reason companies and institutions self-insure, contrary to what pro-reform elements in the federal government may believe. The decision whether to self-fund is based on risk tolerance, understanding of legal liability, […]

GAO Urges DB Sponsors to Add Information for Participants Considering Lump-Sum Offers

Packets being given to retirees and separated, vested employees considering taking an immediate lump-sum distribution from their former employer’s defined benefit retirement plan rather than continuing lifetime income benefits routinely lack some key information needed to make an informed decision, or were unclear, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office in a recent study. With […]

PCORI Fees–Your Turn to Fund health Care Research

Get ready for one more requirement of the Affordable Care Act—the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Fee. It’s a fee your plan pays to fund government research into the effectiveness of certain treatments. What Is the Amount of the Fee? The fee is: $1 times the average covered lives for policy years ending on or […]

The art of Thanksgiving

by Al Vreeland We’ve become a nation of firefighters. Not the heroic sort riding red trucks and saving lives, but the frenetic sort running from hot spot to hot spot, handling daily crises in order of priority. And we usually don’t take time to appreciate the people who help us. So as we belly up […]

Age Discrimination: TV Writers’ Lawsuit Claims Age Bias

A group of 28 screenwriters have filed a class action lawsuit against the major television networks, studios and talent agencies, claiming that a pattern of age discrimination exists in the television industry that has squeezed out writers who are over 40. The writers charge that the networks, studios and agents are so eager to capture […]

Securing One-in-a-Million Talent to Catapult Your Profits

If you’ve ever hired the wrong person for the job, you know that the poor fit stings—personally, professionally, and financially. Every rushed or subpar talent acquisition means a new and long road of pain.