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The Risk in Googling HR Issues

December 20, 2018 by CorpStrat News Leave a Comment

If you do any work in HR, chances are you have used Google to research a variety of HR issues at some point. Googling for the occasional form or broad level question isn’t a bad thing, but if you are someone who’s uncomfortable with uncertainty, it’s best to avoid the practice altogether.

Information on the internet can be unreliable and organizations should avoid googling advice about issues that could have serious legal consequences. Know who you are dealing with before you trust their information.

Risks of using the internet for HR guidance can include:

Source Credibility– who is providing this information? Are they professionals in the HR field.
Accuracy– is the information provided correctly for your state? Are the documents the most recent and up-to-date ones available?
Soapboxes – Was this put online as part of a website trying to push a political or other agenda?
Phishing– Websites posing to be from more reputable organizations, that are trying to collect your personal information.
Hoaxes – is this site trying to deliberately mislead you with erroneous information?

This practice is simply NOT productive. There is far too much contradicting or risky information available. These issues can be costly and potentially litigious, exposing you to serious penalties, fines, and consequences. It’s imperative that you turn to a professional.

When you use a professional HR resource, like CorpStratHR, you will be communicating with trained HR professionals who can give you personalized advice and consultation. They can assist with a variety of HR topics, including Compliance, Employee Relations, building an employee handbook, harassment training, and much more.

CorpStrat can help businesses with Human Resources consulting with different levels of services. CorpStratHR On Demand provides unlimited access to a dedicated HR Consultant for questions about policy, procedure, and compliance.

CorpStratHR pro and plus provides the benefits of our HR on Demand services, plus unlimited employment law consulting, employee dispute resolution, an online training library, legal mediation & HR investigation assistance, and on-site HR support.

Have questions about the best HR resource for you? Contact CorpStrat today.

8 Strategies for Keeping Your Key Employees Engaged in 2019

December 17, 2018 by CorpStrat News Leave a Comment

According to Gallup, 51% of employees are looking for a new job, and 68% of employees believe they are overqualified for the job they have. Even engaged employees are job hunting at an alarming rate—37%. Employees surveyed said they want to do what they do best, while maintaining a good work-life balance.

Providing perks is nice, and can encourage retention, although, providing an assortment of standout perks alone won’t keep employees long-term – unless, however, those perks meet essential employee needs.

Therefore, we’ve compiled the best tips on how to retain employees and meet their needs. Above all, remember why they became your employees, to begin with—they have wants and needs, and employment with your business enables them to meet those wants and needs.

Meeting both the employee and employer needs creates a solid basis for long-term collaboration and shared success. Here’s how to do this:

Open the floor to discussion with your employees about what knowledge, skills, and resources they think would help them do their job better or make additional contributions to the organization. By involving employees in the discussions and decisions made about what trainings they receive, you help them gain a sense of ownership over their work.

Provide coaching and training opportunities that bring value to your organization and the professional development of your employees. Certifications may make your workers more employable elsewhere, but it prepares them for a better future working for you. You can increase the likelihood that your employees will use the training they receive for your benefit by giving them opportunities to put what they’ve learned to use and rewarding them when the new skills and extra effort pays off.

Involve employees in organization initiatives that make use of their training or teach them new ones. Not only will this help prevent their jobs from becoming too monotonous, but they will also gain valuable experience and form a connection to the organization that goes beyond job duties.

Make work meaningful and highlight the good that your organization and employees do. This is especially important if the job duties of an employee feel mundane or uninspiring. If you’re compensating someone to do a job, that job is essential to the mission of your organization. And that mission has value. Make sure employees know that their tasks, however repetitive or unexciting, matters.

Show your appreciation and gratitude. Recognize workers for a job well done when they accomplish goals. This goes without saying but people want to feel appreciated, that they’re important, and that they’re involved in valuable work. You can help fulfill these wants and needs.

Encourage social interactions among workers. While money might be the primary reason people get jobs, it’s not the only People tend to seek social connections and enjoy interacting with others on a daily basis. They like doing things with other people, and the workplace can be a great place to make friends, build community, and collaborate on a meaningful enterprise.

Offer bonuses when your company meets its financial goals and when employees meet their individual and team goals. It’s important to motivate your people to be more engaged and productive. By rewarding hard-working employees with a tangible return on their investment, you are investing in your most important assets, your people.

If feasible, offer raises to account for cost-of-living increases, job performance, and individual accomplishments. Like bonuses, raises encourage efficient and productive work by rewarding it. If you’re unable to offer substantial raises or bonuses, the non-monetary rewards mentioned or bonuses above become all the more useful and important.

There’s no guarantee that every hire will be the right fit and stay with your company as long as you’d like, but you can help improve retention and meet employee needs—to cut down on its costs—by remaining useful to your employees.

Your employees want to succeed in their professions as much as you do in your business. By aligning their individual success and skill set with your organizational success, you give them a huge incentive to stay, improve their skills, and put their strengths to good use in your organization.

The Achilles Heel for Every Employer: Time & Attendance Tracking

November 20, 2018 by CorpStrat News Leave a Comment

Is your time and attendance policy outdated? Is your employee time tracking inaccurate?

If you answered yes to these questions, then it might be time to take a closer look at your time and attendance policy and consider solutions that can have a positive impact on your business. With accurate time tracking, you could eliminate data errors, reduce overpayments, and limit time spent on related administrative and managerial tasks.

Employee Attendance by the Numbers

Ensuring your employees are working scheduled hours should be a key business objective. Still, it can be easy to overlook the hidden costs of attendance. A recent article on the costs of time theft revealed that:

About 75 percent of U.S. businesses are affected by time theft.
43 percent of employees admit to some form of time theft.
25 percent of employees report more hours than they actually worked, more than 75 percent of the time.
45 percent of employees record time inaccurately.

Managing Various Forms of Time Theft

A common trend in time theft is “buddy punching”, which occurs when hourly, non-exempt employees, who record their time on a time clock, punch a co-worker in and out when that worker isn’t present. If a business relies on a punch time clock or paper time sheets, it can be relatively simple for one employee to record time or punch in on behalf of another employee.

There are other situations where employees may be under the impression that they are merely doing each other a favor. Your time and attendance policy should clearly state that buddy punching is strictly prohibited in the workplace.

Simple tardiness is another costly example. For instance, a non-exempt employee who is consistently 10 minutes late and works 20 days per month in a year can earn 40 hours of pay for time not worked annually. Ultimately, you are paying that employee for a week of time that was not spent creating value for your business.

Addressing attendance problems quickly so they don’t turn into long-term issues is the best course of action. Increasingly, businesses are turning to state-of-the-art identification technology to combat the time-theft trend.

How to Prevent Time Theft

Creating a formal buddy punching policy can make all the difference. Your policy can even go as far as to set specific standards for passwords that make them harder to share or input by another coworker. Moreover, educate your staff to bring awareness to the dangers of sharing passwords. Inform them that sharing their timekeeping login could also mean sharing their personal data.

Bringing it All Together

It’s almost 2019 and employers need to deploy the most advanced and compliant tools to make sure they manage their most important assets, their people! Tools like online human resource technology now fully integrate with payroll to ensure accuracy, and they eliminate instances of paying for time not worked.

We encourage you to reach out to us and we’ll provide you with a fully integrated tool like HRIS and a Payroll platform to help streamline the entire process and more.

Posting jobs
Vetting applicants
Pre-screening and offerings, onboarding
Payroll
Monitoring credentials and licensing
Tracking logins and passwords
Integrate benefits and 401k enrollment
Track PTO and vacation eligibility make schedules, etc.

DNA Genetic Testing and Insurance: Can They Co-Exist?

November 1, 2018 by CorpStrat News Leave a Comment

Genomics is transforming medicine, and slowly but inevitably will be reshaping insurance. It was only a matter of time…

The secrets once buried deep, hidden in the paired strands of DNA every person carries. The mysteries of the genome (an individual’s complete set of DNA) remained veiled when the Human Genome Project began, which was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the sequence of nucleotides that made up the human DNA. Then in 2003, the international research project completed its mission, sequencing the genome.

This rapidly advancing science in forcing the insurance industry to navigate a multitude of actuarial, ethical, privacy and even reputational concerns.

The fundamental business models for life, disability, critical illness, and long-term care insurers could be at stake, given the growing existential threat of information as more people buy insurance, without disclosing their predisposition to certain diseases.

Genomics just may become the greatest disruptor to the insurance industry, the equivalent to global warming, or cybersecurity risks in the property/casualty space.

The sequencing of the human genome, DNA genetic testing (such as 23andMe), and genome editing are changing the way of how we are detecting diseases early on, treatment and even prevention through precision medicine. However, genetic testing companies are in line to influence everything from how insurance is underwritten and priced to how products are designed.

The Rise of DNA Testing

Take, 23andMe for example, which offers risk reports for multiple diseases, providing the public with intimate genetic information. Those who test positive to a serious predisposed illness could buy more coverage than they need and at an unpriced rate. And, those who test negative, could delay purchasing insurance coverage, or allow their policies to expire.

According to Nabholz, Swiss Re’s head of research and development, life and health “more than 12 million people have taken direct-to-consumer DNA tests, with almost 8 million of those tests occurring since 2016.”

“People who get a genetic test back that is unfavorable, of course, they’re going to seek to protect themselves and their family,” Nabholz goes on to say. “That’s a natural reaction.”

But, insurers will have to move cautiously. The science is relatively immature. The regulatory landscape remains uncertain with at least one state proposing a ban on using genetic information to underwrite life policies.

And then there is the matter of privacy, data ownership, and media coverage concern that would follow the rejection of applicants due to gene mutations or variants. The questions that are unanswered are as frequent as the questions yet asked.

One thing is certain: genetic testing will open doors to longevity, healthcare, prevention, and screening, and will ultimately lead to us leading healthier and longer lives.

How Trump Tax Code Affects Your IRA’s

October 19, 2018 by CorpStrat News Leave a Comment

After 30 years, Trump’s tax code plans aim to reduce taxes for the middle-class and corporations. However, this, in turn, has serious ramifications for 401(k) owners retirement plans.

The new Trump Tax Code offers a number of opportunities to save significantly for a limited period of time. Qualified retirement plans (IRA’s, 401K’s, 403B, 457 plans, TSP’s, SEP’s, etc.) lead to problems that most people who are nearing retirement, or are retired often don’t expect.

Problems With Your Retirement Accounts:

Every distribution is taxed at your highest rate.
Distributions may put you in a higher tax bracket.
Distributions often lead to an additional tax on your Social Security Income.
Distributions can lead to more tax on capital gains.
It’s the only account that requires distributions, even if you don’t want or need the money.
It’s the highest tax account to leave to your heirs.
During retirement years, you can easily argue these are the least tax-efficient you own.

How Could the New Tax Code Help?

With the new tax brackets, for single files filing the tax deductions are higher in 2018 than in 2017. For married filers filing jointed the deduction is much higher in 2018 than 2017.

All in all, more of your 401(k) money will be taxed similarly to your savings directed into Roth IRAs: You would put in after-taxes, then withdraw money tax-free during retirement.

There’s already a Roth 401(k) that works this way, and it has been slowly gaining momentum.

One of the best ways to reduce the tax liability of your retirement accounts over time is to pay some tax today (at the new lower rates) and shift money into a Roth IRA. This could save you taxes significantly during your retirement years.

You ask, why you move money from your IRA to a Roth IRA?

The Benefits of a Roth IRA Conversion:

1.) Tax-free distributions (assuming you follow the five-year rules).

2.) If you are over 59 1/2, immediate access to funding, tax-free with no penalties.

3.) No required minimum distributions. Freedom of choice.

4.) Tax-free inheritance to beneficiaries if set up correctly.

5.) It’s grandfathered in against any future tax law changes.

Before you rush out and start transferring your retirement accounts to Roth IRA’s, you really want to meet with a financial planner and your CPA to look at the differences to make sure it makes sense for you financially and to make sure it makes sense for you tax-wise.

Open Enrollment: A Paperless Future for Healthcare

October 10, 2018 by CorpStrat News Leave a Comment

HR Departments across the country are incorporating technology into their roles to do their jobs more efficiently, including Benefit Administration. Why spend hours collecting paper forms, tracking plan selections and payroll deductions when an HRIS platform can do the work for you.

New and improved tools are making it easier to onboard and enroll employees. Digital processes can speed up inefficiencies, and the right tools can keep information secure from end-to-end.

Paper is still the most common in the healthcare world today, but the risks of mainly using paper include turning away customers who are increasingly paying their bills through electronic online means. Managing employee benefits on a pile of paper seems dated and increasingly inefficient. Not to mention, storing all the data, which is proven to be less secure when it’s not stored on a protected server that incorporates two-factor authentications for access.

Digital benefit enrollment changes all this. It allows for your employees to access robust enrollment data, revisioning, approvals, and seamless usability.

Digitizing Enrollment

CorpStratHR’s Benefit Enrollment capabilities make it convenient for your employees to manage their Open Enrollment elections through one central Web-based system.

Some key features include:

Employees can enroll in or change all aspects of their benefits and other HR-related information themselves.
Allows employees to compare, analyze and check plan costs prior to benefits enrollment.
Allows employees to view plans from different benefit providers, showing only the plans they are eligible for.
Lets employees attach dependents and beneficiaries to benefit plans.
Lets employees submit benefit and HR-related data electronically to you for approval and review.
Provides employees with a benefit summary statement after they enroll in or change their benefits.
Gives employees access to pertinent company and benefits information via the Information Links and Documents sections.
Is easily configurable to include the features and content most relevant to your company.
Is quick and simple for employees to navigate through.

Not only will HR automation streamline your processes and help you gain efficiencies, but it also improves the overall experience for your employees. Contact CorpStrat to learn more.