Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and FMLA allow workers to sue individuals for denying them benefits, and that includes HR directors and managers and the company CEO. Read more.
Flexible benefit plans (also called cafeteria plans) offer employees multiple choices of benefits that are paid for by salary contributions on a pretax basis. These plans give employees a choice of which benefits they would prefer to take, and they also give employees the choice to forgo the benefit and take a cash option instead.
A third-party administrator faces California health privacy and unfair business practices charges for allegedly handing over a plan participant’s case management information to an employer, which then terminated her to avoid paying for her impending liver transplant. The TPA’s arguments for ERISA preemption failed because the plan participant’s state-law action could have been brought in […]
A federal appellate court affirmed the legality of Verizon Communications Inc.’s 2012 decision to offload more than $7 billion in pension obligations, in a ruling that lent further support for popular pension derisking measures. In Lee. v. Verizon, 2015 WL 4880972 (5th Cir., Aug. 17, 2015), two classes of plaintiffs — retirees whose benefits management […]
The Affordable Care Act served dessert first, offering subsidized health coverage across the country before some of its less popular provisions were scheduled to take effect. But the government soon will start asking the country to eat its vegetables as cost-control measures phase in — and a lot of powerful lobbies are going to fight […]
As an employer of choice, you take time and effort to help your employees face the challenges that inevitably come along. Even (or maybe especially) for those who have diligently saved for retirement and kept themselves healthy to minimize their healthcare costs, there is one more danger lurking in the shadows: The cost of long-term […]
In a 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges released on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court held that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, expanding the right to gay marriage to the remaining 13 states that had not previously allowed it. Read more.
We have a departing employee who has withdrawn more from his FSA than he has contributed. Can we deduct the balance owed from his final paycheck? Deductions of this type are not permissible under the Section 125 rules for FSAs.
By Chris Hill, the founder and CEO of Spotlite Reaping the rewards of a rich assortment of medical and voluntary insurance products—such as lower costs and higher levels of employee satisfaction and retention—requires an engaging enrollment process that provides employees with all they need to make purchase decisions they feel good about. Read more.
In this article, we’re going to discuss employee wellness, but not in the way you might expect. Employees today often suffer financial ill health, so financial wellness is the topic. And financial wellness can cover a lot of ground in your benefits program and, more importantly, in your workforce. Read more.