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Employers with more than 50 full-time employees must offer health insurance to their employees, as mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Failure to do so will result in the assessment of an excise tax penalty. This dichotomy is commonly known as the “play or pay” rule under the ACA. The penalty is assessed for […]
While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains many provisions, perhaps one of the most discussed is the “play or pay” provision. The ACA’s play-or-pay provision mandates that employers with 50 or more full-time-equivalent employees must offer group health benefits to full-time employees working, on average, 30 or more hours per week, or potentially pay a […]
The goals of a training session on critical thinking skills should include helping trainees: Understand what critical thinking is and how it can help on the job. Use the critical thinking process effectively to improve job performance. Understanding what critical thinking is leads directly to discussion of how it can strengthen a supervisor’s work performance. […]
By Louise Béchamp Many employers’ policies preclude them from providing reference letters. Other employers have no policies. And yet others have policies but do not consistently apply them. The Court of Appeal of Québec’s recent decision in Arsenault (Succession de) v. École Sacré-Cœur de Montréal (available in French only) should give Canadian employers pause for […]
Employers are always searching for ways to empower their employees to do their best work. They invest in training to help workers gain skills, and they develop policies designed to keep the workplace running smoothly, but other components—cultivating cultural intelligence and fostering an environment of inclusiveness—may be overlooked. Simma Lieberman, a diversity and inclusion/culture change […]
by Brad Federman Typically, an organization employs inclusion efforts because it notices there’s a morale issue within a certain group or within the organization as a whole, a legal challenge has been filed against the organization, or there has been an effort to organize a union. Unfortunately, many inclusion or diversity efforts fail because they […]
by Charles S. Plumb The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) prohibits sex-based discrimination in pay and benefits. Employers shouldn’t pay different wages to employees of the opposite sex for substantially equal work. “Substantially equal” work doesn’t mean identical work. It means substantially equal in terms of required skills, effort, and responsibilities. An employer can […]
On December 16, 2013, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued its fiscal year (FY) 2013 performance report, which indicates the agency is as busy as ever. According to the report, the EEOC received a total of 93,727 private-sector charges of discrimination in FY 2013, making it one of the top five fiscal years in […]
Although sponsors of group health plans have had their hands full sorting through the still-changing Affordable Care Act requirements, the recent uproar involving AOL CEO Tim Armstrong is a stark reminder of the need to stay vigilant on HIPAA privacy — even as companies wrestle publicly with health care costs. As has been widely reported, […]
The Census Bureau has reported that in fall 2012, more than 50 million U.S. adults, or one in four, had obtained a professional certification, license, or educational certificate apart from a postsecondary degree awarded by colleges and universities. Among the adults included in the report, 12 million had both a professional certification or license and […]