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  • When it comes to the observance of holidays in the workplace, it can be tough to balance productivity, compliance and fun. Just like the ghost of holiday past returned to haunt Ebenezer Scrooge, there are some workplace festivities that – in the form of HR headaches – could come back to haunt you. Here are some helpful tips that protect you from liabilities, while still allowing you and your employees to enjoy the holiday season: 

    Time Off Accommodations

    This area of human resources can bring out the inner-Scrooge in every business owner during the holidays. With more people off, less can get accomplished, meaning lost revenue opportunities for you. While federal law does not require you to pay staff before and after a holiday, you can boost employee morale by making the best attempts to accommodate religious observances, beliefs and practices as long as they do not cause undue hardship. If you need to remain open during the holidays, consider how many employees you need to operate and offer incentives to employees to work certain days. Offer catered lunches, pay time-and-half or create a rotating schedule to allow employees to select which days they would prefer to work. Additionally, it is a good idea to implement a holiday time-off policy detailing how employees should request time-off and how it will be awarded (seniority, first-come, first serve, etc.). 

    Decorations

    As a private employer, you can decide if and how you want to decorate your space for any holiday throughout the year. You can decorate using more secular displays such as snowflakes or other winter images.  You can also encourage individual employees to contribute to decorating the office or their working space to ensure everyone’s religious beliefs and traditions are represented. To prevent any major conflicts, publish rules about the type of displays which are acceptable and those that are not for safety reasons. Remind employees to be mindful of others’ and discourage scented displays or blinking lights which may be a distraction.  

    Bonuses 

    If you give your employees bonuses or other monetary gifts at the end of the year, you need to be careful as they can be considered compensation or gifts.  If the bonuses are considered compensation, they must be included in the regular rate of pay for overtime purposes. Money given as a gift on a special occasion does not have to be included as is it not based on worked hours, employee efficiency or other measurement of productivity.

    The holidays can present many frustrating challenges for business owners, but if you follow these tips, you don’t have to turn into a Scrooge to make it through this busy time of year.

  • Wow, that’s a lot of letters. What does this all mean?

    Over the last several years, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been contending that their reach expands beyond unionized workers. On March 18th, the NLRB General Counsel, Richard Griffin, released a 30-page report providing guidance to attorneys and HR professionals on what he believes is not a legal rule for an employee handbook under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).  

    In short, Mr. Griffin’s report proposes major changes under which the NLRB believes it can apply its rules.

    NLRB loosk to expand NLRA and what it might mean

    But you’re not a union shop, so who cares, right?

    If this report gains any traction, you should definitely care. By offering guidance to the legality of rules under the NLRA, it can expand its reach because all employers are governed under the NLRA.

    In this 30-page report , the General Counsel gives real-life examples of “good” and “bad” policies. Among those areas addressed are:

    • Confidentiality policies

    • Conduct toward management 

    • Conduct toward co-workers

    • Conduct toward third parties 

    • Use of company logos, copyrights, and trademarks

    • Restrictions on photography and recording

    • Miscellaneous unlawful policies

    What you should do next

    At the beginning of this piece, I wrote that this report was created for those in the legal profession and HR professionals to help them advise their clients/employers. If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you should get in touch with your attorney. Today.

    If you’re still not sure where to begin, give us a call at 330-659-0101. Our HR specialists are there to not only react to new rules as they come across, but to help you be better prepared before it becomes an issue for you.

  • Have you ever seen the old commercial where an actor comes on screen and says, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV?” Well, to paraphrase that tagline, I’m not an attorney, but I like to think that I have some commonsense ideas and understandings.

    As an employee, I have always felt reasonably safe and confident that unless I knowingly broke a law, I would be safe from legal repercussions should a former employee or customer go after a business. Makes sense, right? Not so much anymore.

    Image of a PEO expert training HR professionals.

    Protecting Your Employees

    Recently, an HR Director of the Culinary Institute of America was jointly sued for “alleged violations of the FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act).” The Second Circuit Court of appeals ruled against the HR Director. 

    According to the FMLA, “individual liability may be imposed on an individual only if that individual is found to be an ‘employer’ within the meaning of the Act.” How can that be?  Well, according to the former employee who was suing, the HR Director was so intimately involved in the decision to terminate that employee for violations of the reporting requirements, that she was held jointly liable with the employer. Whether that HR Director will be held individually liable will be determined by a court at a later date.

    An employment attorney in Philadelphia, Howard K. Kurman, was referenced in this article in how employers should react to this decision. He said that the employers proactively “need to train anyone who has decision-making authority regarding an employee’s request for FMLA leave.”

    Training to Help You and Your Employees

    At this time, only companies with 50 or more employees are subject to the rules of the FMLA.  If you’re one of those companies, you need to take steps to protect yourself and your employees. Are you prepared? Do you have someone specifically allocated to Human Resources in your company to handle these things or do you rely on your legal representation? 

    Either way, you need to take steps to protect your company. However, if you’re looking to not worry about this or have someone share the liability should something happen, you can reach out to a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) like GMS to help ensure that your employees are protected in the future. Contact us today to learn how we can help.

  • Whether you’re an employer who runs a pretty safe workplace or you’re one with more than its fair share of worker’s comp claims, the Department of Labor has some new rules for you to “nudge” you in the proper direction.

    Under a new rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), there is an effort to modernize its data collection and create a new database for investors and workers alike to learn about how safe a company is. Not a bad idea, but one that leans heavily on small business’ HR departments. 

    Image of a hard hat. Learn how OSHA’s new fasety datatbase rule can affect businesses.

    How OSHA’s New Rule Will Impact HR Departments

    Small businesses with more than 10 employees already are required to track injuries at work for OSHA purposes, but it has now gotten a little more transparent. According to Insurance Business America, the data gathered from this will be posted on OSHA’s website for the world to see.

    The purpose for this is to shine the public eye on businesses without a particularly clean record. “‘Since high injury rates are a sign of poor management, no employer wants to be seen publicly as operating a dangerous workplace,’ said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Dr. David Michaels. ‘Our new reporting requirements will ‘nudge’ employers to prevent worker injuries and illnesses to demonstrate to investors, job seekers, customers, and the public that they operate safe and well-managed facilities. Access to injury data will also help OSHA better target our compliance assistance and enforcement resources at establishments where workers are at greatest risk, and enable ‘big data’ researchers to apply their skills to making workplaces safer.’”

    In larger companies, these things are typically handled by the HR department in conjunction with the company’s safety manager or risk department. Small employers, of course, rely on the business owner to navigate the insurance world with the help of their brokers or third party administrators, giving them access to a lot of info about their company. At best, that’s all you need. At worst, there may be an additional cost to bring in outside consultants to do safety inspections and audits.

    Working with a Professional Employer Organization

    If this new rule is something that concerns you, you have options. One of which is to of course reach out to a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) like GMS about making your company’s HR simpler, safer, and stronger.  Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your business.

  • It’s common for HR professionals to field questions about compliance and discrimination concerns. One question that some small business owners ask is how LGBT and gender requirements can impact their company. There are many laws and protections in place to prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation that employers should know about.

    LGBT and Gender Discrimination Laws and Protections

    To start, The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is in charge enforcing federal laws that make discrimination illegal. This means that the EEOC “interprets and enforces Title VII’s prohibition of sex discrimination as forbidding any employment discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. The protections apply regardless of any contrary state or local laws.”

    The courts have held that Section 4112 of the Ohio Revised Code does not apply to sexual orientation. However, there have been state and federal government actions that do offer Ohio employees some protections from discrimination. 

    Gov. John Kasich used Ohio Executive Order 2011-05K to declare that persons employed by the state would not be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation in matters of hiring, layoff, termination, transfer, promotion, demotion, or rate of compensation. Former Gov. Ted Strickland also issued Executive Order 2007-10S that prevented the discrimination based on gender identity. In addition, former President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13672-2014, which prohibits federal contractors and subcontractors from discriminating against others based on both sexual orientation and gender identity.

    Additional protections against discrimination involve insurance coverage. According to HealthCare.gov, “An insurance company that offers health coverage to opposite-sex spouses must do the same for same-sex spouses.” Insurance companies can’t discriminate against same-sex couples who are legally married in a jurisdiction that can authorize the marriage. This is the case regardless of the state where the couple lives, where the insurance company is based, and where the plan is sold, renewed, or in effect.

    Potential Transgender Workplace Issues

    Aside from hiring, layoff, termination, transfer, promotion, demotion, or rate of compensation decisions, there are other potential issues that employers should consider for transgender employees. For instance, the state of Ohio allows a transgender person to change their name and employers must accept this change.

    Another issue involves company bathrooms. According to Obergefell and LGBT Employment Law, “If fellow employees do not want the transgendered person, either before her gender transformation or during it, to use their bathroom, the employer must still offer the transgendered employee a bathroom. There is no law to force employers to honor the new gender for bathroom assignment. The best practice is to have the transgendered person use the bathroom that is identified with her gender identity and tell employees who do not want to share with her to use an alternate bathroom.”

    Preventing LGBT and Gender Discrimination Claims

    Over the years, the EEOC has received “1,412 charges that included allegations of sex discrimination related to sexual orientation and/or gender identity/transgender status.” Examples of LGBT-related sex discrimination claims include failing to hire an applicant because she’s transgender or harassment of an employee because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

    Of those 1,412 charges, the EEOC resolved 1,135 of them, leading to employers paying out $3.3 million in monetary relief for the affected workers and to make changes to prevent future discrimination.

    As discrimination laws continue to evolve, it’s crucial that business owners make sure that they are following every regulation in place to prevent discrimination in the workplace. A Professional Employer organization can provide human resource management to make sure your business is following all the necessary laws and that any important internal documents, such as your employee handbook, are updated 

    for any changes in LGBT and gender discrimination laws and protections. Contact us today to talk to one of our experts about how we can help your business today.

  • The end of a calendar year usually causes business owners to do two things: Review the past year and learn from its successes and failures. They also start looking to the new year and set their expectations of what they want to accomplish. While a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) can’t help you with the former, it can help you tackle the latter.

    Image of a small business owner planning for 2018 HR challenges.

    HR Challenges for 2018

    Employee Benefit News recently published an online article about the 15 biggest HR challenges businesses will face in 2018. [link to https://www.benefitnews.com/slideshow/the-15-biggest-hr-challenges-in-2018]. The good news is that apart from cyber breaches and data security, a PEO can help your business with 14 of them.

    1. Republican administration and federal issues
    2. State and municipal issues
    3. Workforce planning
    4. Cyber breaches and data security
    5. Recruiting
    6. Technology
    7. Workplace violence and active shooter situations
    8. Employee leave
    9. Benefits and the Affordable Care Act
    10. Employee well-being and mental health
    11. Employee handbooks
    12. Drug testing and substance abuse
    13. Diversity and inclusion
    14. Pay equity and salary history bans
    15. Harassment

    Large companies with internal HR departments have the resources to hire people to help them navigate these minefields. How can a small business owner compete with that?

    The simplest way possible is to partner with a PEO.  A PEO works with small business owners to give them the same buying power and infrastructure as a large organization through a co-employment relationship. This relationship allows the PEO to act as a large company with the same buying power as any company with thousands of employees. It also gives small companies certified experts in payroll, taxes, benefits, risk management, and human resources, typically for less than it would cost to hire one of these people.

    Partner with a PEO to Tackle 2018’s HR Challenges

    Now, with the implementation of the federal government’s Certified PEO program, business owners can have even more confidence in the financial stability and liability assumption of a CPEO. If you have questions about how GMS can help you tackle the latest HR issues, contact us today.