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Compensation & Benefits

Are your ‘admin’ workers really salespeople?

02/01/2010

It’s time to take a fresh look at how you classify your sales and administrative employees—because attorneys across New York will be on the lookout for good class-action lawsuits in the wake of a recent decision by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Do we have to pay bonuses to employees who quit before the normal payout date?

01/27/2010

Q. Our company pays out bonuses in the year after the work is completed, sometimes late into the first quarter. If an employee resigns before the bonus payout date (say, in February), do we have to pay a bonus to that employee?

How should we handle mandatory overtime when determining FMLA leave hours?

01/27/2010

Q. Can an employer deduct or count overtime hours from an employee’s FMLA balance? Our employees work overtime only from October through December. During that time, they’re required to work 12-hour days, seven days a week. We have several employees on both continuous FMLA and intermittent leave, and we’d like to deduct the overtime hours they would have worked from their FMLA allotment. What do you think?

Eagles’ Vick still dogged—this time by pension woes

01/27/2010

Philadelphia Eagles backup quarterback Michael Vick may be back in the NFL, but the litigation continues. The Employee Benefits Security Administration discovered that pension funds in one of Vick’s companies were improperly diverted to Vick to pay his criminal restitution. Now Vick must pay $400,000.

What are the notice requirements when moving someone from exempt to nonexempt?

01/27/2010

Q. We’re planning to demote an employee for performance reasons. He’d move from a supervisory job (salaried/exempt) to an hourly job, so we would cut his pay by about $10,000 a year. What kind of notice must we give him regarding the pay cut and exemption status?

Get ready for the IRS employment-tax audit blitz starting in February

01/26/2010

Starting Feb. 1, the IRS will begin intensive audits looking into the employment tax compliance of 6,000 randomly selected employers. One key target: identify employers that are improperly misclassifying employees as independent contractors. If your company is selected for audit, follow good IRS examination management practices.

5 ways to extract great ideas from your employees

01/26/2010

Employees are often the best sources of ideas because they are closest to the daily details of the organization. But too often, employees are sitting on great cost-saving, business-generating ideas because they’ve never been specifically asked. Here are five strategies to help encourage their input.

Communication is top benefit at Arizona American Water

01/25/2010

At Arizona American Water, HR goes “overboard” with employee communication, says Senior HR Manager Linda Stillman, sending electronic newsletters around the office, paper newsletters to employees’ homes and setting up teleconferences to share information.

Court must weigh potential conflict of interest when employer decides not to pay benefits

01/25/2010

If an employer decides to deny a fringe benefit to an employee, and the employee challenges the decision, courts must at least consider the possibility that a conflict of interest exists. That’s because anytime an employer decides to provide a benefit, that benefit comes at a cost.

Soft benefits fill in for small employer

01/22/2010

With just 135 employees, staffing agency Winter, Wyman in Boston is limited when it comes to employee benefits, says Michelle Roccia, senior VP of corporate organizational development. So it offers the standard medical and dental insurance, and then managers come up with “soft benefits” to keep employees happy and make the organization attractive to applicants.