Although it’s still warm and the swimming pools are still open throughout Ohio, you’ve probably already started thinking about what needs to be done to prepare for the cold months ahead.

This preparation for the inevitability of winter is a fact of life in this part of the country. Similarly, because you have some time to prepare for worker's compensation claims (it takes two years before a claim impacts your premium), you can prepare yourself to mitigate the cost and impact on your BWC premium.

Follow the tips below to protect yourself in the face of worker's compensation claims: 

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Take off the Recruiter Hat

Life-work balance for small business owners begins with self-control. Owners say they have too many roles to play but stubbornly hang on to them all. Sooner or later, owners like you have to give up something. I would start with recruiting.

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When I was little my mother always told me that “patience was a virtue”. That was always her response when my sister and I would bother her with the all too famous phrase of “Are we there yet?” during our annual family vacation trips. Little did I know that the phrase she would tell us would come in handy down the road in my career and more specifically, in the realm of unemployment claims management.

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President Obama’s administration has decided to delay enforcement of one of the key provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA): the Employer Mandate.

Mark Mazur, Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, posted on the White House’s Treasury blog on July 2. In this post, he announced that the administration has decided to postpone enforcement of the Employer Mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act by a full year.

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For several years, GMS has been paying Ohio local taxes via Ohio Business Gateway. This method has saved us from printing 1,500 checks annually and the paper forms to go along with them. In a single quarter, GMS will pay over 1.2 million dollars in local tax payments to 180 jurisdictions. But what’s more exciting is that we uploaded and processed our first live electronic returns & payments to the ODJFS (Ohio Department of Job and Family Services) for Q2, 2013.

What does this really mean?

• We sent the agency a deposit that exceeded 1 million dollars. 
• We avoided printing over 700 checks and the accompanying 1,800 sheets of additional paper. 
• We avoided the extravagant shipping charges for such a large package and secured the payments by uploading rather than the standard delivery method.
• We also no longer need to wait the typical 2-4 weeks for our returns to post, they are posted almost immediately. 
• And best of all, we were the first TPA contacted to work with ODJFS on this filing method. 

We’re very proud of the relationship we have with ODJFS and are happy to announce that we are now completely electronic with them. We get automated rate adjustments, automated tax notices and now electronic returns. If you have questions about your ODJFS account, please feel free to contact us at taxmail@groupmgmt.com.

HR functions can take a lot of time. For small business owners, that time could be better used in better ways—like growing your business and making more sales.

GMS is committed to saving you time and money on your HR functions, including Payroll, Benefits, Risk Management, and more. In support of this commitment, we’re happy to announce that we have just launched a brand new educational resources section on our website.

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If you've browsed through our site, you've probably seen our tagline: "Employee Management Made Simpler. Safer. Stronger."

As a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), we live up to this goal by removing your burden of keeping up with ever-changing HR regulations. We centralize HR functions for owners and employees with our HR Pyramid business software (simpler). We educate our customers on how new laws will impact their business. We provide high-quality customer support. And in the end, our clients spend less time worrying about whether they are implementing compliant HR practices (safer) and more time growing their bottom line (stronger).

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Last Saturday, I took my daughters down to Nike Park in Parma, Ohio to watch my co-workers play a softball game in the Cleveland Corporate Challenge. GMS played against Bucci’s Restaurant and won their first game, 13-12. (Yay team!) While I’m glad my co-workers won, I was even more impressed with something else I saw.

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Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed in 2010, many business people and consumers have felt that their insurance costs were going to be going up. I’m sure they have never regretted being so right.

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When you think "sexy," you don’t automatically think "HR."

I’m not talking about the kind of sexiness of the first time I held my wife’s hand. I’m talking about business sexy— what makes a company interesting and what makes an industry intriguing. What gets people excited.

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