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.
Dear Readers, With the constantly changing scope of social media, engagement, and analytics, it’s hard to stay on top of the latest trends in HR. How are your colleagues—and competitors—handling things out in the field? Please take a few minutes to complete this brief survey and help us (and you) find out what’s happening in […]
The three stats are released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a branch of the U.S. Department of Labor (www.bls.gov). The bonus metric is released by The Conference Board, a private, nonprofit research organization. Average Hourly Earnings Payroll data. Each month, the BLS collects payroll data from records reported on a voluntary basis to […]
The U.S. Supreme Court issued two highly anticipated rulings related to same-sex marriage on June 26 that essentially placed matters of marriage back with the states. This has a direct impact on retirement plans. First, the Court held that Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional based on the equal protection […]
10 Bad Habits for Your Compensation Strategy Ten bad compensation habits to avoid: The "peanut butter" approach. Avoid always spreading money evenly across employees. "Keeping your top employees and rewarding and nurturing them and engaging them is the opposite of the peanut butter approach. With low merit budgets, this becomes harder, but we can differentiate […]
An official announcement on transition relief for employers from information reporting requirements under health care reform, as well as on the delay of key provisions of the employer play-or-pay mandate, was issued July 9 in Notice 2013-45 from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and IRS. In unofficial announcements last week on the White House and U.S. […]
As we all know, the FLSA requires us to pay overtime pay when it is due, and the base pay rate must include all payments for that time period in question—including incentive pay and bonuses paid during that time. But is that always the case? Actually, the answer is no. It’s true that most incentive […]
Please participate in our brief survey, and see how what you are doing stacks up against what other successful companies are doing. We’ll get answers to these questions and more: What policies do you have? Which ones will you update? Who develops your HR policies? How involved is HR? What sources do you use? How […]
Cost-of-Living Index Each month, the BLS collects data on prices of a “market basket” of food, clothing, shelter, fuel, prescriptions, transportation fares, medical fees, and other goods and services that people buy for day-to-day living. The BLS measures changes in these costs and reports them in the form of the CPI. The CPI, as defined […]
Kleiman, from Humetrics, Inc., offered his tips on hiring the best at BLR’s Strategic HR Summit, held recently in Scottsdale, Arizona. Turkeys and Eagles When a great hire turns out to be a bad hire, a turkey, what do we do? We try to train the turkey. That works about 13 percent of the time, […]
In a startling move, the Obama administration delayed the employer mandate (for companies with 50 or more workers) to offer health insurance to workers or pay a penalty, until January 2015 (a one-year delay) while it reassesses employer reporting burdens and gives employers more time to arrange compliance with the health care reform statute and […]