Compensation and Benefits
Compensation and benefits topics – whether it’s minimum wage, workers’ compensation laws, or employee pay – if properly handled, can help you retain workers and recruit new ones.
Use our advice to craft independent contractor agreements that keep independent contractors – and your bosses – happy.
Make it clear that it’s essential to complete time sheets on time. Discipline those who don’t follow the rules. If you have to fire time sheet slackers, rest assured they won’t be eligible to collect unemployment benefits on your account.
Many of the police officers, firefighters and paramedics in Minnesota municipalities are members of the military reserves and National Guard. When those workers are deployed for military service, towns and cities often have to pay overtime to remaining first responders. A bill before the state Legislature would provide state funds to municipalities to cover those additional costs.
Q. When our employees come in to work, they spend part of their time getting their equipment running. Do we need to compensate them for that time?
Working mothers are 52% more likely than other women to leave their jobs if they work more than 50 hours a week in a field dominated by men, according to researchers at Indiana University.
Employees of the Council of Better Business Bureaus spend nearly 30% of all their working hours at home. The 114-employee organization last year was able to move out of the office building it has occupied since the 1980s and into one about half its size.
When the owner of Windswept Environmental Group died in November 2008, he left behind more than a business. The Bay Shore company’s 401(k) retirement plan was orphaned, too, since the owner was the plan’s only fiduciary. Now the DOL has asked a court to appoint a fiduciary for the plan.
When most employees change jobs, they either cash out previous 401(k) accounts (bad move) or roll them over into an IRA (better). Very few opt for what may be the very best money move: rolling retirement funds into a similar 401(k) plan at their new organization.
Participants in Ameriprise’s 401(k) plan are suing the investment firm, claiming it operated the retirement program for its own benefit, not its employees and retirees.
With data showing how employee income and health-benefit plan participation are closely intertwined, a new study is sounding alarm bells for employers that must begin complying with the affordability mandates of the Affordable Care Act next year.
Bonuses are back, according to research conducted by the Hay Group. But with a pragmatic nod to today’s austere business environment, employers are taking a hard look at why they’re dishing out variable pay, what they want it to accomplish and how they decide who gets how much.
