“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 …]