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And the second rule of auditing: Be sure that management is willing to make corrections if infractions are found. If your own audit shows failure to comply, and especially if you haven’t taken steps since the audit to correct the situation, your audit can quickly turn from a helpful tool to a damaging exhibit in […]
In yesterday’s Advisor, we covered audit areas for compensation and preemployment issues. Today, we’ll look at employment and termination issues, and we’ll introduce a unique checklist-based audit system. Job descriptions. For all positions, you should have up-to-date job descriptions that accurately reflect the job duties. Make sure that the job descriptions identify all essential functions […]
Oswald, CEO of BLR, offered his thoughts on performance evaluations and bell curves in a recent edition of The Oswald Letter. Here’s my colleague’s point, Oswald continues. Our performance evaluation system includes ratings of outstanding, exceeds expectations, meets expectations, needs improvement, and unsatisfactory. As a company, we expect the distribution of the appraisals to be […]
By Kyle Emshwiller To get creative juices flowing, Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, , suggests quick and easy ways to rest your brain and maximize productivity. Among other relaxation techniques, he suggests making the most of your commute to work. In Lehrer’s book, highlighted in American Express Open Forum, he advises workers […]
By Kyle Emshwiller Airline personnel aren’t the only ones getting in trouble for being distracted on the job. A passenger recently caught a Metro-North engineer on camera reading the paper while operating the train, looking up occasionally to check the tracks. The passenger then posted the video to YouTube. The engineer was reportedly the only […]
Recently, we had an interesting discussion in our weekly executive meeting, says business and leadership blogger Dan Oswald. We were talking about how annual performance evaluations went this year. One colleague suggested that our evaluation system can actually hurt morale.
Most of the plans the IRS has checked for compliance with the grandfathering requirements of 401(k) money purchase pension plans had acted appropriately, says the agency’s Employee Plans Compliance Unit. However, some plans made reporting mistakes on their annual Forms 5500. The 401(k) Money Purchase Pension Plan project is a study the EPCU conducted to […]
By Elaine Quayle If you are planning on flying to your vacation site, you may not want to read about the behavior of some pilots and controllers during work hours. You’ve seen the video of air traffic controllers glued to their screens in total concentration. Unfortunately, they may be watching movies, playing video games, or […]
After two years of implementing health reform’s “insurance mandates,” American businesses are now thinking about unraveling the arrangements they put in place to respond to it, in the waning days before the U.S. Supreme Court decides on the constitutionality of the individual mandate. Health reform is going to pose compliance challenges for American businesses whether […]
Plan administrators must distribute funds even when there is a dispute between an estate and an ex-spouse who waived beneficiary rights, says the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It recently ruled in Kensinger v. URL Pharma, 674 F. 3d 131 (March 20, 2012) that a decedent’s estate could directly sue the recipient of ERISA-governed […]