Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
An 83-year-old cashier who was replaced in her full-time job—by a machine—is not being a quiet member of the Silent Generation as she battles her employer for unemployment benefits and tries to find an appropriate new job after working for 67 years.
I’ve been accused of too often writing about sports in this blog. I guess that’s because sports have been such a big part of my life as a participant, coach, and spectator—but also because I subscribe to the idea that sports imitate life. In sports, as in life, there is success and there is failure. […]
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that an insurance certificate was an official plan document that overrode the plan’s summary plan description. It shows that plans are vulnerable when they attempt to set out plan terms in the SPD only without corresponding language in the official plan document. For stronger plan design, the […]
The 2015 ERISA Advisory Council plans to build on a 2013 effort by devising new draft model notices and disclosures for lump-sum pension distribution offerings to participants and retirees. Instances of pension risk transfer — often referred to as “derisking,” from the plan sponsor’s point of view — are on the rise among single-employer defined […]
Employers know that there are legal restrictions in terms of the number of hours a nonexempt employee can work before incurring overtime pay. There are also restrictions on the hours a minor can work. And for safety reasons, there are restrictions on the number of consecutive hours medical residents and truck drivers can work.
Fidelity Investments told retirement plan sponsors and investment professionals in a late April notice that it had asked IRS to change or withdraw recently updated guidance on maintaining documentation for participant hardship withdrawal and plan loan requests. In a message on its website, Fidelity, one of the largest U.S. private-sector retirement plan recordkeepers and investment […]
The other day I heard about a company that provides fake references for job applicants, renters, and others. And from what I understand, the length it goes to in order to “lie” on behalf of its clients is unbelievable—even if the references it provides are believable.
At the end of the day, most employees’ pay and benefits extend far beyond the base salary. Many employers are beginning to present total compensation statements (also known as total reward statements) as a means of showing employees how the organization is investing in them.
Financial wellness incentives of up to 30 percent of coverage costs would be allowed under the Americans with Disabilities Act, based on rules proposed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This long-awaited guidance generally defers to HIPAA’s nondiscrimination rules, as amended by health care reform, in determining whether a wellness program is permitted by […]
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced an April 30 deadline for claiming certain overpayments of the transitional reinsurance fee. The announcement covers overpayments due to miscalculating enrollment counts on which the fee is based. Such miscalculations occur for two reasons, CMS said: misapplication of a permitted method for determining the annual enrollment count; […]