Raise Them Up

“I know the new minimum wage goes into effect on January 1st but does it change anything else?”

Your HR Survival Tip

California’s minimum wage sees another increase on January 1st in 2019 and 2020 and 2021, etc. However, that’s just the state minimum wage. Many of you may be subject to local laws that are higher or on a different schedule than the state law. San Diego, for example, will increase to $12.00 for anyone working within San Diego city limits.

The new minimum wage in California will be $11.00 (if you have no more than 25 employees) or $12.00 (if you have 26+ employees). Companies with no more than 25 employees will continue to be $1.00 behind larger companies until 2025 when all sizes will be paying $15.00/hour.

One thing the state law affects (and the local laws don’t) is the minimum salary you’re allowed to pay and have someone eligible as salaried exempt. Only the state law applies and it is a calculation based on the state minimum wage of [2 X state minimum wage X 2080]. No matter how few or how many hours your salaried exempt person works, they must be making at least $45,760  [click to read more …]

Does Your Company Benefit?

HR Jungle

When making decisions, the courts often look at whether or not the company received any benefit from the action or activity. But what does that mean to you? Here are a few examples to consider:

Holiday Party or Other Activities Although you may not pay employees for attending an event sponsored by the company, the courts have decided the company benefits by having these get-togethers. It boosts connectivity, team building, and morale. Where it may fall apart for the company is when alcohol is served. A court decision said alcohol just made the company responsible for each employee’s behavior at the party, on the road, and at home… until the employee is sober again. This particular issue falls under the legal term of “social host.”

Business Use of Personal Cell Phones If you are requiring (which is different from allowing) employees to use their personal cell phones for business, your company benefits. The benefits include a savings from having to buy company cell phones and adding them to your telephone plan. Even when that personal cell phone is on an unlimited plan so making those business calls don’t cost the employee anything, a court decision said the company should  [click to read more …]

Save Yourself

HR Jungle

“Employees have been asking for a retirement plan but I’m not sure I can afford it. What are my options?”

Your HR Survival Tip

Adding a 401(k) retirement plan to your benefits can be done for as little as $2,000 per year in administrative fees. A 401(k) is a really good benefit to add to your benefit package. However, there is another option coming over the next few years.

California has found another way to protect employees… but this time the employees are being protected from themselves and their poor savings habits. Studies have shown people are saving less for retirement than ever before and California wants to help improve and encourage saving.

The Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program (SCRSP) was enacted in 2016 and will be implemented over the next few years as the CalSavers Retirement Savings Program. At a certain point, if your company doesn’t have a 401(k) plan in place, your employees will be automatically enrolled in CalSavers. Employees will have an automatic 5% payroll deduction put into CalSavers and they must opt out if they don’t want to participate. This is a big change because it requires opting out rather than opting in.

Registration and implementation  [click to read more …]

Stopping Accruals

HR Jungle

“Do I continue to accrue vacation time for employees on leaves of absence?”

Your HR Survival Tip

The simple answer is no. Hopefully you have all your accruals set up through your payroll system. That makes it much easier to manage those leaves in a couple of ways.

First, when an employee goes on any leave of absence, change their status in payroll from “active” to “LOA” or whatever you have set up for leaves. If you don’t have that option, talk with your payroll provider and ask them to add it.

Second, make sure the payroll system stops accruing sick, vacation, and/or PTO whenever an employee’s status is LOA. Once they return to work, you change them back to active so they can get paid and start accruing again.

Third, talk with your payroll provider about a hire date versus benefit date (or anniversary date). The hire date is easy and self-explanatory. The other date might be called different things in different payroll systems. What you want is a secondary date that aligns with the employee’s anniversary date but recognizes when someone is active versus on a leave.

When you have these dates and the status working properly in  [click to read more …]

Sick and Exempt

HR Jungle

“I have a manager who is out sick a lot and I’m trying to figure out if unpaid time is an option with exempt employees.”

Your HR Survival Tip

All California companies must have a Paid Sick Leave plan in place but the sick leave may also be provided through your PTO (Paid Time Off) plan that combines sick and vacation time. Exempt employees are those paid a salary for doing their job, irregardless of the number of hours worked. Use and payment of sick time with exempt employees is often confusing so you’re not alone.

You can be conservative and pay the exempt employee a full week’s pay even when they are absent. However, years ago, California’s Labor Commissioner provided guidance on exempt absences to help us navigate this tricky situation.

If the exempt employee calls in sick for the whole day:

and they have sick time available — you record the sick time used against their balance and they will receive full sick pay for that day. and they have some sick time but not enough for the full day — you record the sick time used (up to their balance) but still pay for the whole day.  [click to read more …]

Halloween Tricks

“I’m allowing employees to wear costumes at work on Halloween. Should I be worried?”

Your HR Survival Tip

Given the news lately about a Halloween costume that backfired and resulted in a termination, you are smart to be a bit worried. People enjoy wearing unusual costumes and don’t always think about how they look in the workplace.

Ideally, you have employees who understand how sensitive others can be. Many companies have been adding T-shirts with sayings or pictures to their list of what not to wear to work. That’s because someone could take offense and companies are trying to avoid claims.

If you didn’t previously send out a notice to employees to be cautious about what they wear, take a walk around and look at what your employees decided to wear. If you believe it could be offensive, ask them to remove the costume or at least remove what they can. In more serious cases, you may have to send them home to change. And, no, you don’t have to pay for the time they are off work to change.

Other employees may realize the mistake they made with their costume choice on their own. These are the people who  [click to read more …]

Signed Into Law

HR Jungle

We know you’ve been anxiously awaiting news of which bills have been signed into law this year. Wait no longer, the following list provides the highlights:

Your HR Survival Tip SB1343 expands sexual harassment training requirements. By 1/1/20, all companies with 5 or more employees will have to provide all employees with training. Supervisory employees must attend a 2-hour training and non-supervisory employees must attend a 1-hour training. We are expecting the Department of Fair Employment and Housing to provide videos and written materials for this training. SB1252 clarifies a current law that provides current and former employees with the right to inspect or copy pay records. The difference is you must provide the copy rather than requiring the employee to make a copy. You can still charge a per page copying fee. SB1412 updates the “ban the box” law regarding criminal history inquiries when interviewing and on applications. The change defines more clearly, and limits, what exceptions are allowed. Don’t jump up and down in excitement… this clarification only relates to positions that legally require a background check. SB1123 adds to the Paid Family Leave by, in 2021, allowing the pay benefits to also be used for time off  [click to read more …]

New Employee, No Paperwork

“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 …]

Planning Ahead

HR Jungle

Companies often seem surprised when a new law goes into effect that affects them. However, governments aren’t that efficient. It takes months to review and pass a bill into law and the effective date is often several months later. It’s just a question of whether or not you were paying attention all those months to see which bills were thrown out and which were moved forward.

Timing is different when a judge has made a decision in court. A court decision will immediately change behavior and become the basis for more lawsuits. While a judge’s decision isn’t new “law,” it carries a lot of weight in future lawsuits and decisions. Generally, attorneys will immediately consider a court decision as the way things should be going forward in how we implement or maintain compliance with a law.

An example of a court decision was the California Supreme Court’s ruling on independent contractors early this year. Soon after the Court published it’s decision, new lawsuits were filed based on that ruling. As evidenced by the number of companies changing independent contractors into employees, the effect was immediate.

New laws passed have a specific effective date so we can prepare for them. A  [click to read more …]

Are You Progressive?

HR Jungle

“I once worked at a company who followed a pattern of disciplinary actions. Now that I have my own business, I’m trying to decide if I really want to do it the same way. Are there options?”

Your HR Survival Tip

There are disciplinary options legally available and they typically fall into two categories: progressive or discretionary.

Progressive Discipline

You have a progressive policy when it specifies what happens for each occurrence. For example:

First offense = Verbal warning Second offense = Written warning #1 Third offense = Written warning #2 Fourth offense = Written warning #3 Fifth offense = Final warning Sixth offense = Termination

The problem with this type of policy is that you may be legally required to follow each step, regardless of the offense. On the other hand, it does give employees sufficient warning that the behavior may lead to termination and can’t be considered discriminatory since the same six actions are used on everyone.

Discretionary Discipline

When you have a discretionary policy, you handle discipline in the way it suggests at the Company’s discretion. We prefer this method because there are some things an employee might do that call for immediate termination and we  [click to read more …]