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“I hired a guy who showed up on his start date but didn’t return the next day and isn’t responding to my calls. I don’t yet have any of his paperwork completed to add him to payroll. What do I do?”
Your HR Survival Tip
While this isn’t an everyday occurrence, it does happen. This is a good reason to get all your new hire paperwork done as soon as the employee first reports to work.
As the employer, you may feel you don’t need to pay this person since you don’t have enough information to put them into your payroll system. Or perhaps you think you can just write them a check as an independent contractor. Both are wrong. This is treated basically the same as a longer-term employee who walks off the job. You have 72 hours to produce a final paycheck and wage statement (pay stub).
If no paperwork has yet been completed you probably don’t have the social security number, which is necessary to add the employee to payroll. However, you can still create a “manual check” through your payroll system… you just won’t save it because you can’t associate it with an employee in the [click to read more …]
“I’m trying to understand the amount of sick time each employee gets. Is there a simple method?”
Your HR Survival Tip
You’re in California so it will never be simple. However, it’s also not that difficult to determine if the right amount of sick leave is being provided.
First, determine which sick leave law fits your company. There is the basic state law of 24/48 (24 usable hours each plan year, 48 accrued hours). Then make sure you know which local sick leave laws apply to your employees… there are 29 localities with their own version and that number continues to grow. If an employee spends more than 2 hours in a locale with a different sick leave law, you need to use the most generous one.
Next, check your payroll system to determine how the sick leave is set up for you. Too many times, we find part-time employees accruing at a weekly rate. Nearly all payroll systems are capable of using an hourly accrual and that’s the easiest method because they only earn sick time based on actual hours worked. You can set up different plans for salaried, hourly full-time, hourly part-time, and based on locale.
You can [click to read more …]
“I worry about how to interview so I won’t ask illegal questions. How do I know what I can or can’t ask?”
Your HR Survival Tip
When writing a job ad or job description or interviewing, it’s critical you focus on the job duties and what it takes for someone to do those duties. Every sentence, every question should be about the job.
It’s easy to become discriminatory when you don’t focus on the job. When you start thinking about the person instead of the job, you’ve lost your focus. It’s okay to ask questions that relate to your culture because that’s still a business focus… just remember to ask those questions the right way.
One of the newer laws in California bans us from asking questions about previous wages. The point was to level out wages based on the job, not wage history. In addition, it prevents us from making decisions about a person’s ability based on how much they had been making.
Age discrimination is alive and well… ask anyone over 50 who has been looking for a job. There are many ways age discrimination shows up:
Instead of saying you need at least 5 years of experience, [click to read more …]
“I buy a new employment law poster every other year. However, several of my employees work remotely and have never even seen the poster. Am I okay as long as I have it in the office?”
Your HR Survival Tip
You have compliance issues in a couple of ways. The law about the employment law posters states they must be placed in a location employees frequent… and they need to be current or you might as well be hanging wallpaper.
For a very long time you were fine buying a new poster every other year. However, over the past 5 or more years, either the state or federal government has been making changes every year and even mid-year. This year is a perfect example. We have several poster sections that have been added or updated, including:
CA Transgender (5/2018) CA Whistleblowers (no date on form) CA Hate Violence aka Ralph (12/2017) CA Workplace Discrimination (12/2017)
Once you know you have current posters, you need to solve the problem of remote employees (those who don’t come into the office very often or at all). They must legally still have easy access to the poster information. Fortunately, every section on that [click to read more …]
“I hear people talk about vacation and PTO but aren’t they the same thing?”
Your HR Survival Tip
The confusion between vacation and PTO may be the fact that they both provide paid time off for employees. However, these plans have important differences.
We are all familiar with vacation where we earn paid time off, usually over time. The “official” PTO (Paid Time Off, with caps) bundles vacation, sick leave, and personal time into one program. Both were designed as tools to help with retention and to provide time for employees to relax and avoid burnout. Vacation and PTO plans are optional for companies. So far, the government doesn’t require personal paid time off.
Vacation
You have a lot of freedom in designing a vacation plan. Common choices includes the length of the eligibility period, different amounts based on the level of your position or longevity, accrued or dropped in, etc. Keep in mind that any unused vacation time earned by the employee must be paid out upon termination. You’ll need a cap to ensure you aren’t paying out months’ worth of unused time. However, legally, there is a minimum cap you need to allow. Vacation time, in California, [click to read more …]
“I have an employee who isn’t doing well but I’m reluctant to fire him because I’d have to pay unemployment. What should I do?”
Your HR Survival Tip
Worrying about whether an employee will collect unemployment is never a good reason to keep a bad employee. That bad employee will bring down morale and productivity in your company.
EDD (CA’s Employment Development Department) keeps track of all your employees and you are legally required to notify EDD each time you hire an employee. Payroll companies will usually do this for you but you want to make sure that’s happening. This is how they know who has been working with you (legally).
Your initial unemployment rate is pre-determined by your industry’s standard for unemployment claims. Whether it goes up or down is based on the quantity and size of claims you have. However, it seems like it’s really hard to lower your rate. The monies paid through your taxes are put into a state pool and they track your company’s share of the pool.
When an employee files a claim, EDD looks back at the employee’s earnings over the last 4 or 5 full quarters to determine the amount of weekly [click to read more …]
“I am expecting money from my receivables and an investor. However, right now I’m strapped for cash for payroll. What are my options?”
Your HR Survival Tip
Whenever money is tight, you need to understand your legal obligations and work to satisfy those before going further. Payroll is one of those obligations.
There are a few ways you can reduce your current payroll cost, which is often one of your largest operating costs. However, you cannot legally withhold or delay paychecks. An employee must have their paycheck within 7 or 10 calendar days after the period worked. The difference of 7 versus 10 is based on which payroll cycle you have (i.e., semi-monthly, weekly, etc.). No matter what your employees might say or agree to; you must pay on time.
You also can’t move the pay date. Even if the new date is within the required time frame, another rule is that you need to keep to the promised schedule. If you’ve said the pay date is the 5th and the 20th, then you must stick with that.
Consider just being honest with employees that the company is going through financial issues and you need to make some immediate changes. [click to read more …]
“I have a college student who would like to intern with my company. She needs to acquire service learning hours but the school doesn’t have an internship program set up for this. Is it possible to still have her as an unpaid intern?”
Your HR Survival Tip
We have always stated unpaid interns must be associated with an internship program through their school so the student gets credit in exchange for participating in the program. Otherwise, the “intern” needed to be an hourly employee. However, earlier this year the US Department of Labor (DOL) decided to abandon the old test used to determine if someone qualified as an unpaid intern.
The new test isn’t that different except it doesn’t require an accredited school internship program and, instead, focuses on who the primary beneficiary of the internship may be. Bottom line, an unpaid intern should truly benefit from time spent as an intern with you… more than your company does. Here are the points in the new test:
The internship training should be similar to training received in an education environment. The experience is focused on benefitting the intern. No regular employees are displaced because you have an intern and the [click to read more …]
“I am always worried when firing an employee that I’m at risk. What can I do to reduce my risks?”
Your HR Survival Tip
The best way to reduce your risk when terminating an employee is to make sure the employee isn’t surprised. They should know you’re not happy with their performance… and you should be able to prove it.
An angry employee is always dangerous and often looks at ways to get back at you. None of those ways bode well for the company. They could talk with an attorney, who is bound to find other things you did wrong unrelated to the termination. They could blast you on any number of social sites that mess with your company reputation… and it’s legally very hard to get them to stop. They could call their coworkers and try to cause problems there. They could file a claim with the DFEH (Department of Fair Employment Housing) that you would spend time and money on even if it’s a bogus claim. California has made any of these very easy for employees.
While there are no guarantees you can completely prevent the above from happening if an employee is really determined, you can [click to read more …]
“The news has been flooded with harassment complaints for several weeks. How can I make sure my company isn’t also doing something wrong?”
Your HR Survival Tip
The sexual harassment complaints you read about often include a celebrity or a really big lawsuit. We don’t see the little day-to-day harassment in the news… but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
The best prevention methods are training and taking the issue seriously. In California, companies with 50 or more employees are required to provide 2 hours of harassment training every 2 years for all supervisory personnel. It’s important to note that the word “supervisory” is very loose in this law. Any employee who has any power over another employee is considered supervisory and needs this training. That means a lead, the scheduler, and other “titles” that don’t always jump out as supervisory but do have some control over others.
Even if your company isn’t required to provide this training to your supervisory staff, we strongly recommend it because you’re still subject to the harassment laws. While you’re at it, provide a shorter version for the rest of your employees. Everyone needs to know what qualifies as harassment in order to prevent [click to read more …]
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