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Compensation & Benefits

Beware disciplining employees for FMLA-related tardiness

10/26/2009

Employees eligible for intermittent FMLA leave are entitled to take that leave at the beginning of their scheduled shifts if they need to. While that may make them late for work, you can’t punish that tardiness, as long as the employee follows your call-in policies and the underlying reason for being late is related to intermittent FMLA leave.

What do workers want? Studies show staff/boss disconnect

10/23/2009

Sometimes it seems like supervisors and employees work in entirely different places. Several recent studies show that bosses and front-line employees have widely varying views about their organization’s priorities, morale, compensation and benefits. Here are seven key flashpoints:

Charlotte’s BofA on the hook for Merrill Lynch’s bull

10/23/2009

Merrill Lynch—now owned by Charlotte-based Bank of America—has reached a settlement with retired teachers in Ohio who sued when the brokerage firm allegedly misstated earnings expectations before the housing market tanked a year and a half ago. The Ohio State Teachers Retirement System’s windfall: $475 million.

You can punish employees for improperly sharing salary information—in some cases

10/23/2009

By federal law, employees have the right to discuss salaries and benefits with one another. Plus, in North Carolina, members of the public also have the right to specific information about public employees’ salaries. That does not mean, however, that public employers can’t reprimand employees who break rules against distributing that information in a way that creates conflict or animosity.

Document solid business rationale for all salary increases and cuts

10/21/2009

Employees who discover their colleagues are making more money for doing the same work often conclude that there can be only one reason—discrimination. Next stop: an attorney, who will try to confirm the pay bias by comparing the employee’s paychecks with his co-workers’. That’s why you have to be proactive, consistently keeping good records that show why you’ve made every compensation decision.

Working-conditions study presents compliance tune-up opportunity

10/20/2009

According to a recent working-conditions survey, many employers are not doing the routine maintenance they should to keep their labor and employment compliance in tip-top shape. There’s no guarantee that tuning up your workplace policies like you do your car will avoid lawsuits. But, some routine preventive maintenance will go a long way to ensuring better compliance and fewer problems.

Your compensation & benefits questions answered

10/20/2009

Here’s a roundup of timely questions posed by readers of HR Specialist’s Compensation & Benefits newsletter. You’ll find answers on such hot topics as health insurance opt-out bonuses, differing pay structures for similar work, unemployment benefits for furloughed workers and paying for travel time.

Time on your side: Learn FLSA ’rounding rule’

10/20/2009

The FLSA allows employers to round off an hourly employee’s arrival or departure time to the nearest five minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter of an hour. But your rounding practices can’t always favor the employer. Rounding must be neutral or it must favor the employee. That means if you round down, you must also round up. You have several ways to make rounding fair:

Consider specific circumstances when weighing whether to pay for before- or after-work time

10/20/2009

These days, class-action claims for unpaid work time are becoming common—and can get very expensive. That’s one reason to make absolutely sure you properly pay employees for the work they do. Take a careful look at your hourly employees’ workdays—when they start and when they’re done for the day.

The un-COLA: In some states, no inflation leaves a bitter taste in workers’ mouths

10/20/2009

Several states peg the minimum wage to the cost of living. For decades, inflation has meant cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) that delivered regular pay raises. But what’s happening now that the cost of living has declined 1.3% so far this year?