Returning Value Blog

Since 2005, remote work has soared 173%, according to 2018 data from American Community Service. Whether you recently adopted this remote work model because of the pandemic or have been utilizing it for years, you should know your wage-and-hour responsibilities.

Alabama is one of several states that does require employers to use a federal program designed to stop them from hiring people in the U.S. illegally.  The Alabama legislature passed in both houses legislation prohibiting employers from knowingly employing unauthorized aliens. The law is known as the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act. The law requires all employers to enroll in and utilize E-Verify. 

As a business owner/manager, you have many processes and tasks involved in your day-to-day workload. Scheduling, timekeeping, payroll, etc...How about new hire onboarding?

While February typically has 28 days, in leap years—such as February 2020—it contains an extra day. Employers who pay their salaried employees every week or every two weeks will encounter a year in which there is one payday more than usual. These employers should plan ahead to identify and address these "payroll leap years" in advance. It has been our experience that it is best to keep clients informed of pending leap years so that they can keep their employees informed as well. 

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) covers both defined-benefit and defined-contribution retirement plans. If your organization offers its employees either, you may feel like you’re constantly walking on eggshells trying to oversee all the regulatory details involved. One critical way to stay in compliance and avoid costly penalties is to ensure your plan operates consistently with its plan documents.

Employers with 20 or more employees are generally required to offer continuing health care coverage to departing staff members. This is commonly referred to as “COBRA” after the legislation that made it law: the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985.

Employee incentive plans can be among the most meaningful benefits that an employer can offer. This is because participants receive awards tied directly to their professional accomplishments or their organization’s success.

Many employers believe they’ve taken adequate steps to prevent employment discrimination. And yet, it happens. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 76,418 charges of workplace discrimination in fiscal year 2018 and, as a result, obtained $505 million for victims employed in the private sector, as well as by local, state and federal government agencies.

Every employer needs to keep records on pay, hours, workplace injuries and the like. And, of course, the fun doesn’t end there — you’ve also got to maintain other documentation, such as job descriptions, annual objectives, and performance reviews.

In the simplest of worlds, an employee effectively performs a set of tasks on an agreed-upon schedule and you pay him or her a fair wage. End of story. But, in the real world, employers need to craft a compensation philosophy: a formal statement outlining their belief system and approach to all the different ways they compensate employees. Here are four compensation philosophy questions to ponder: