Employee Relations «

Less Than the Ideal Candidate

It can be difficult to find and hire the ideal person. Many candidates have spent more effort in improving their interview skills than their job skills. Once you’ve discovered the employee has fewer skills or knowledge than you thought, you have decisions to make. [click to read more …]

Too Much Time Off

I have an employee who has used all their paid sick time for the year, plus all their vacation time. She now takes unpaid time off but provides doctor’s notes and has good excuses, such as a relative who died, continued health issues, etc. However, I really need her at work. What are my options? [click to read more …]

Latest Cal/OSHA Rules

I’m so confused about COVID precautions as my employees are returning to the office. What’s the latest? [click to read more …]

Hybrid Work Stats

I can’t decide what I want to do with my employees now that they can work in the office again. Any ideas? [click to read more …]

Not a Hostile Work Environment

We have found the phrase “hostile work environment” to be very overused and misunderstood. Regardless of what you might think actually happened, you must take the complaint seriously and learn more. [click to read more …]

When a Writeup is Needed

When you have problems with employees, you need to do something to correct their behavior or actions. A conversation is the first step and, if you’re lucky, it’s the only step needed. Problem fixed! However, that’s not always the case. [click to read more …]

Time to Start Saving

CalSavers is the retirement plan California has created that allows employers to offer a way for employees to save toward retirement. Actually, the state is trying to force people to save but this is one of those occasions where their plan is a good idea overall. [click to read more …]

Things to Think About

There are several items of interest right now. We decided to provide a short paragraph about each so you have some awareness of the latest things to think about!

Remote Workers — We are hearing about a couple of things that are newer requests. One is a request for companies to pay a portion of the employee’s rent since you’re now requiring them to work from home. The other is overtime pay for calls after hours… when the after-hours timing is due to time zone differences because employees aren’t necessarily local anymore. Deciding to change part or all of your office to fully remote means you need to consider the fact that you’ve shifted costs from your company to the employee. Since it’s not supposed to cost the employee anything to work for you, plan to reimburse employees for actual added costs in addition to reimbursements for the inconveniences an employee experiences by having part of their home become their office.

COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave — California’s Governor Newson has signed SB 95, which requires up to 80 hours of paid sick leave for employees off work due to COVID reasons. This only applies to companies of 25+ [click to read more …]

Retention Ending

“I’ve managed to keep most of my employees working over this past year and they’ve seemed fairly happy here. However, lately, I’ve seen signs that make me think they aren’t as happy as I thought and are looking for a new job.”

Your HR Survival Tip

Congratulations on retaining your employees when so many companies have had layoffs because of the pandemic. Employees have felt lucky to keep their jobs over the past year and haven’t wanted to do anything that might put their name on the layoff list. However, that doesn’t mean they feel their current position is the best job ever or even the best they can do.

The clock is ticking. Companies had to dramatically downsize and even close in the past year… but that’s ending and companies are looking to kickstart their businesses again. As more and more employees are vaccinated and feeling safer, they will be assessing their job and the job market. In fact, there is a study that shows nearly 50% of employees will be looking at their options.

One of the reasons we’re expecting this is because employees are becoming less fearful of taking a chance on a new company and [click to read more …]

American Rescue Plan Act of 2021

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was just signed into law last week. This article will only discuss two items from this new law, the FFCRA updates and the employee retention credit through CARES.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) initially began last year on 4/1/2020. This law required employers to notify employees of potential paid time off when they had COVID symptoms, when they couldn’t work due to lack of childcare, and a few other reasons. FFCRA expired on 12/31/2020 but was then extended to 3/31/2021. The extension removed the employer mandate requiring notification to employees and payment for COVID-related time off. However, the tax credit was still available to those companies who chose to continue offering the pay to employees.

ARPA has extended FFCRA to 9/30/2021. In addition, while not mandated, companies will continue receiving the tax credit if they pay employees for FFCRA time off. The most interesting aspect of this new law was the reset of hours for the time off. This means if an employee had previously received the allowed 80 hours of FFCRA sick pay, the clock starts over as of 4/1/2021, and the previously paid time doesn’t count against the employee’s [click to read more …]

Scratches

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