Payroll & Compensation «

Cost of Doing Business

A few of my employees have to drive to client sites as part of their job. One employee consistently receives parking violations because he doesn’t want to walk an extra block but then forgets to put money in the meter. Can I make him pay for those parking tickets? [click to read more …]

Working with Sick Leave

I continue to be confused about all the things I can’t control when someone is sick. Are there better ways to deal with sick leave? [click to read more …]

Yes, It’s Possible

I’m never sure what I can and can’t do regarding my employees. I feel like they have more options than I do as a business owner. [click to read more …]

Meal Break Costs are Rising

If my hourly employees miss their meal break, why do I have to pay them an hour instead of the half-hour they would have taken? [click to read more …]

Working Interviews

I have a candidate work for a couple of days as a trial period. If I like them, I hire them. If I don’t, I pay them cash for the time worked. This has worked well for me so far. Is this okay? [click to read more …]

Timing is Everything

Contrary to Federal law, California law is very specific when it comes to minutes and even seconds an employee works. They don’t vary, which helps, but you do need to understand the language. [click to read more …]

Hit After Hit

Is it a surprise to anyone that our payroll taxes will be increasing to cover the huge unemployment hit from COVID? Or that California has a new bill going through the legislature that could be very costly to employers? [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 …]

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 …]

Retaining Those Documents

“I have a few boxes of old employee files in my warehouse. Is it okay to just throw them out?”

Your HR Survival Tip

The documents in employee files have a required shelf life. The length of retention is often related to the laws concerning how much time an employee or entity has to make a claim and or file a lawsuit where those documents may be needed. Even when you are no longer legally required to keep the documents, attorneys suggest you keep them for the life of the company… just to be safe. This is much easier now that we can digitize those docs. However, be sure to store the digital files on a protected drive so only authorized employees can access them.

No matter what the document may be, do not destroy anything while the employee still works for you. If your managers keep separate notes or records, ask for copies if an employee’s manager is changing or leaving. Below is a very basic list of minimum retention requirements:

Recruitment, hiring, and job placement records — 3 years or longer for any claim or litigation about your hiring practices. Payroll records, including timecards, time-off accruals, schedules, [click to read more …]

Scratches

Species