Category: Benefits and Compensation

This topic provides guidance on how to handle compensation issues in a way that attracts and retains the best talent and advances the strategic goals of your business. You get news and tips on what’s going on nationally and in the states, and updates on changes in regulations, possible governmental action, and emerging compensation trends.

6 Design Considerations for Executive Pay Plans

Designing your executive pay plan can be daunting—you need to consider a whole host of factors, such as the company’s goals and the competitive environment. Let’s take a look at some design considerations for effective executive pay plans.

Lombardi: ‘Coaching Is Teaching’—Oswald: ‘So’s Management’

What About the Manager as a Teacher? If you take Lombardi’s words and change “coaching” to “managing,” it would go something like this: “I think managing is teaching, see? So I don’t think there’s any difference whether you teach in the office or whether you teach in the classroom. They’re both exactly the same. It’s […]

Workers’ Comp Basics

Workers’ compensation laws have come about as a way to establish a means of compensation for injured employees while simultaneously reducing the amount of litigation against employers when employees are injured on the job. The workers’ compensation laws are administered on the state level, and the federal government has its own separate program. Workers’ compensation […]

6 Best Practices Regarding Pregnant and New Mom Employees

Virtually every employer is going to deal with pregnant employees from time to time. Employers want to act in good faith and stay in compliance not only with the ADA and FMLA, but also with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). PDA is an amendment to Title VII which specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of […]

Are You Required to Provide Health Insurance Under the ACA?

As most employers know, many of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) provisions have already started to go into effect. Others, like penalties for employers, have been delayed. But in general, do you know whether you’re required to provide health insurance to employees? The answer may surprise you.

Health Care Reform: COBRA notices changed; special enrollment opportunity created

Due to some ambiguity in model government language explaining the interplay of the Affordable Care Act with COBRA coverage, the Obama administration has both proposed an update to model COBRA notices and provided a new special enrollment opportunity for COBRA qualified beneficiaries (QBs) to enroll in marketplace coverage. Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor […]

‘Compression Triangle’ Tames Wage Compression

  Wage compression (lower-level or less-experienced employees’ pay meets or exceeds higher-level or more-experienced employees’ pay) is never easy, but deal sooner rather than later, says consultant Barry L. Brown, SPHR, CCP. The first thing to recognize about compression is that there are no secrets at work, says consultant Brown. People are going to find […]

Employee: ‘Survey Says I’m Underpaid’

“I’m grossly underpaid as these surveys show,” says your employee as he or she comes down the hall armed with a pile of downloaded survey data. Consultant Barry L. Brown, SPHR, CCP, has a plan for blunting these attacks. Of course, it may be that your compensation program is flawed, but it’s more likely that […]

How to Set Profit-Sharing Based on Goals, Not $

In yesterday’s Advisor we discussed straight and hurdle-rate profit-sharing; today, goal-driven profit-sharing plans. [Go here for 1. Straight and 2. Hurdle-Rate Profit Sharing] 3. Goal-Driven Profit-Sharing Plans In a goal-driven profit-sharing plan, profits are used to establish an incentive opportunity, but employees also must earn that opportunity, based on achieving other goals. These other goals […]