Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Gillihan is counsel in the Atlanta office of Alston & Bird LLP. His tips came at a recent webinar sponsored by BLR® and HR Hero®. Reasons for having insurance from employee’s perspective: Risk mitigation Negotiated discounts Reasons to Get Insurance Through the Employer: The income tax/Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) exemption for employer premiums and […]
Employer shared responsibility or “play or pay” provisions (aka 4980H) of the ACA are effective January 1, 2014; however, no penalties will be assessed until 2015. Nevertheless, says Gillihan, your planning must be ongoing now if you plan to use a 12-month measurement period—that period has already started. Gillihan is counsel in the Atlanta office […]
Featured Post Infographic Explores 2013 Employer Holiday Pay Practices BLR has released the results of the new 2013 Holiday Practices Survey, which examines employer practices for providing paid holidays and paying nonexempt employees during the 2013 holiday season and provides information on planned paid holidays for 2014. Compensation Planning Merit Increases—Performance or Place in Range? […]
How Big Is the Number? Most HR managers underestimate the full costs of employee health (or lack thereof), says Ahlrichs. He refers to a study involving auto manufacturers and 171,250 employees. The study recorded basic medical costs for the measured period—the metric most wellness plans look at—at $509 million. But add pharmacy and the number […]
First, says Ahlrichs, a consultant and business developer with Gregory & Appel in Indianapolis, Indiana, here’s just one example of why wellness is failing: Getting more serious, Ahlrichs describes a wellness program that’s really working well. Case Study—A New Approach to Wellness Here was Ahlrichs’ client’s situation: County government 3,500 employees Mix of white and […]
The Obama administration on Nov. 14 proposed an administrative fix to allow individuals and small businesses losing coverage to keep their plans for another year. The fix was necessary in part because many people who lost coverage: (1) could not enroll for coverage on reform-mandated state-based health insurance exchanges due to problems with the government’s […]
While most retirement plan sponsors and their vendors think being deemed a plan fiduciary is an “all-or-nothing” proposition, it is in fact becoming a growing continuum of service-provider job titles and responsibilities, one industry expert suggests. For example, a survey of 100 randomly selected, non-client plan sponsors conducted by retirement planning and wealth management firm […]
What Is Outsourcing? Outsourcing is the contracting of an internal business process to a third party organization, says Letke, who is founder and CEO of Integrity HR, Inc., in Louisville, Kentucky. She offered her tips at BLR’s Strategic HR Leadership Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. What’s the Difference Between Outsourcing and Offshoring? The two terms are […]
Employers — particularly those that sponsor self-funded plans — have important health care reform mandates to comply with in January 2014, many of which are unaffected by the Obama administration’s stay in enforcement of the pay-or-play rules. There is still time for employers to get their health care reform fixes right. The job is more […]
Final mental health parity rules issued Nov. 8 make several changes to the prior, interim version. The exemption for “clinically appropriate standards of care” was eliminated because regulators decided it was confusing and subject to abuse, and the rules’ application to “intermediate” coverage levels was clarified in response to uncertainty about how the interim rules’ […]