Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Oops! One way or another these articles never got properly categorized.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)—the federal agency that insures pension benefits for millions of Americans—has published a final rule requiring sponsors of defined benefit pension plans to electronically file their annual premium declarations. Effective July 1, large plan sponsors (those with 500 or more participants) must file premiums electronically for plan years beginning on […]
The Employer Resource Institute, publisher of the California Employer Advisor, has just won its sixth editorial award. CEA’s two-part series on blogging, which ran in the June 2005 and July 2005 issues, earned second prize in the Best Instructional Reporting category of the Newsletter and Electronic Publishers Foundation Editorial Awards. The NEPF Awards recognize excellence […]
It’s no secret that retirement and pension plans have come under increased scrutiny in recent years, amidst allegations that benefits are often miscalculated and underpaid. Here’s a checklist to help you avoid some of the most common plan mistakes: Check your plan documents to determine the types of covered compensation. Be sure all relevant […]
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued a new fact sheet addressing reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for attorneys with disabilities. The new publication is available on the agency’s website. According to the EEOC, one goal of the fact sheet is to dispel the myth that disabled lawyers who […]
Employers that offer automatic enrollment for their 401(k) plans significantly increase employee participation, according to an annual study conducted by Hewitt Associates. The study, which examined the savings and investing habits of over 2.6 million employees, found that the overall participation rate of employees in companies offering automatic enrollment was 14 percent higher than the […]
According to a new California appeals court decision, holding a job open for a disabled employee who needs time to recuperate is a form of reasonable accommodation—where it appears likely the employee will be able to return to work at some time in the foreseeable future. But reasonable accommodation doesn’t require an employer to wait […]
According to an analysis by benefits consulting firm Watson Wyatt, the number of large employers that offer only defined contribution/401(k) plans—and not traditional pension plans—is way up. In 2005, 36 percent of Fortune 100 companies offered 401(k) plans only (not in combination with a traditional pension plan), up from 25 percent in 2004 and 17 […]
We think that drug use in our company might be growing, and management wants to institute a broad, random testing policy with a zero-tolerance standard. I believe that random testing might be a privacy violation in California. Is it advisable to have a random testing policy, and if not, what do you recommend for curbing […]
Do you think exit interviews are helpful? We just had a case in which an ex-employee, during the exit interview, accused a manager of discrimination. The manager blew it off, saying, “Oh, she’s just a disgruntled employee who’s letting off steam on her way out,” and nothing came of it. I don’t know whether it’s […]
As a result of an upcoming merger, we are going to have a lot of situations in which there is a disparity in salaries. We have a plan for addressing that over a period of three years, but in the meantime, I would like to institute a policy that prohibits employees from discussing their salaries […]