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Courtesy of Pat DiDomenico at Business Management Daily
Last month’s news that AT&T is facing a $1 billion (with a B!) class-action lawsuit over wage-and-hour mistakes put a jolt into U.S. employers of all sizes. That came on the heels of word that the U.S. Department of Labor dramatically beefed up its enforcement division. If this doesn’t scare you, it should.
A BusinessWeek report says Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) lawsuits have “exploded nationwide,” and that “because wage-and-hour laws have been so widely violated, undetonated land mines remain buried in countless companies.”
Which pay-related mistakes are you making?
- Employees wrongly classified as exempt from overtime?
- Hourly employees paid incorrectly (or not at all) for their travel time?
- Failing to retain payroll records for the right amount of time (3 years, right?)?
- You closed the shop when the blizzard hit – do you have to pay the staff?
- Violating – or being unaware of – the “rounding law”?
All it takes is one employee filing one complaint to get the class-action snowball rolling downhill. Wal-Mart paid $640 million; IBM coughed up $65 million; Siebel forked over $27 million. Amazon is facing a huge lawsuit for allegedly violating the rounding law.
Something to think about….
Posted January 27th, 2010 by Jessica Spinks - Posted in 2009 Money-Saving Strategies, Human Resources | |
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Courtesy of CPEhr.com
As business owners look to the new year, layoffs might be on their mind, but there are some things to consider before rushing into this option.
Consider if laying off staff is the best choice.
1. Freeze new hires, pay or bonuses
2. Reduce salaries, fringe benefits, or 401 (k) matching
3. Reduce work hours or adopt alternative work schedules
4. Make selective, performance-based terminations
5. Provide incentives for early retirement
If layoffs are inevitable, be proactive by forming a committee to address the multitude of areas which are likely to be affected. Be sure to review your company’s Employee Handbook and review your termination policies. Be sure to ask, and answer, the following questions:
1. Have you reviewed your company’s Progressive Discipline policies?
2. If so, was the system followed?
3. Are there written employment contracts?
4. Are there union contracts? Do they limit your right to terminate?
Additional areas to consider include:
1. Establish an objective, financially beneficial reason to layoff staff. This will be important if your motives are questioned in the future.
2. Review your workforce and determine which employees will be selected for layoffs.
3. Train managers and supervisors on proper layoff procedures.
4. Draft enforceable severance and release agreements.
5. Prepare COBRA notices.
Posted January 6th, 2010 by Jessica Spinks - Posted in Human Resources | |
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Hiring is what you do when you let the world know that you’re accepting applications from people looking for a job.
Recruiting is the act of finding the very best person for a job and persuading them to stop doing what they’re doing and come join you.
Hiring is easy and fast and is basically a retail operation.
Recruiting is artful and slow and is essentially a direct marketing effort.
Recruiting raises the bar because it demands you have a job worth quitting for. The recruiter doesn’t solve an urgent problem for the person being recruited, in fact, they create one. That person already has a job (hence no problem). The problem being created is that until they change over to your job, they’ll be unhappy. That’s a huge hurdle for a job to overcome, which leads to this key question:
Is your job opening so good you could recruit great people for it?
If not, perhaps you need to work on that.
Posted January 4th, 2010 by Jessica Spinks - Posted in Human Resources | |
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