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.

HR Policies–Who’s Got What? And How Do You Measure Up?

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 […]

CPI and Help Wanted Online—More Metrics for Comp Managers

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 […]

Hiring Eagles, Avoiding Turkeys Who Dress Like Eagles

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, […]

Employer Mandate Delayed: Obama Gives in to Employer Concerns over Reform

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 […]

California Employers Need to Adjust Plans to Accommodate Same-sex Spouses

Employers in California need to adjust their benefit plans, plan documents, and corporate and human resources policies to accommodate employees’ same-sex spouses. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on June 28 lifted its stay on an injunction against enforcing Proposition 8, which had amended the California state constitution to define marriage as occurring between […]

How the Hell Can You Communicate if You Refuse to Talk? (Lee Iacocca)

“How the hell can you communicate if you refuse to talk to people?” Consultant Andrew Botwin quoted auto industry icon Lee Iacocca and illustrated with a picture of Lee and Snoop Dog hanging out. Botwin, founder of SPC Consulting, offered the following tips for “communicating up” at BLR’s 2013 Strategic HR Summit held recently in […]

You Can Sell Engagement to Top Management

In yesterday’s Advisor, consultant Leigh Branham briefed us on engagement. Today, what it is and how to sell it, plus an introduction to the all-HR-in-one-place website, HR.BLR.com®. What Is Employee Engagement? “A heightened emotional and intellectual connection that an employee has for his/her job, organization, manager, or coworkers that, in turn, influences him/her to apply […]

PBGC Wants Thoughts about Missing Participants

The U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation may start providing new services to help plan sponsors spend less time identifying, locating and corresponding with missing plan participants. The agency is seeking public comment until Aug. 20 on several aspects of administering a missing participants program when terminating individual account plans, according to a June 21 Federal […]

Engagement Suddenly a Priority? 6 Universal Drivers

Engagement is an issue for most employers as the economy comes back. How to make it happen? Six factors are required for true employee engagement, says consultant Keith Branham. Highly engaged workplaces score high on all six. Branham, who is founder and principal of Keeping the People, Inc., offered his expertise at WorldatWork’s 2013 Total […]

Employee Rewards: The Importance of Perceived Fairness

Perceived fairness of employee rewards (or the lack thereof) is often at the root of why employees leave organizations. The idea of fairness also determines if an employee will make an extra effort to reach organizational goals or even the objectives of his or her own job. For these reasons, it’s vital for organizations to […]