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Compensation & Benefits

What are the California rules governing leave when parents must respond to their kids’ discipline problems?

08/27/2018
Q. Must we provide time off to an employee who needs to appear at school because his or her child was suspended from school?

Accurate pay statements: your responsibility

08/27/2018
It is the employer’s responsibility to ensure employees receive accurate wage statements with each paycheck. That’s true even if the employee hasn’t provided an accurate accounting of time worked.

Time rounding must generally favor employees

08/27/2018
Under Department of Labor regulations covering the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers must pay workers for all time worked, subject to some rounding. Time may be kept, and pay computed, based on rounding “to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest one-tenth or quarter of an hour.”

Snapshot: How much is that promotion worth?

08/21/2018
Average wages have grown just 2.8% since last year. But employees who won promotions saw their pay increase 8.7%.

Salaries flat in ’19, budgets increasing less than 3%

08/21/2018
As the job market continues to tighten, you’d think employers’ wallets would loosen up. But that’s not happening, at least not for broad increases in salary budgets.

Employee gets to prove OT claim, employer’s willfulness

08/16/2018
“I didn’t know an employee worked overtime” won’t get you far if a manager flouts the overtime rules, a federal trial court has held. Worse: The court is letting a jury decide whether the employer acted willfully when it failed to pay overtime to the employee.

How to successfully navigate payroll overpayments

08/16/2018
Recouping overpayments from employees can be a good experience, but often isn’t. Here’s some guidance from Barbara Youngman and LaTisha O’Neal to attendees at the American Payroll Association’s 36 Annual Congress in May.

Employees losing ground as inflation outstrips wage growth

08/14/2018
The “real wage” metric the federal government uses to gauge the average American’s take-home pay fell 2 cents in the last year, to $10.76 per hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sell employees on benefits of HDHP/HSAs

08/14/2018
As you evaluate your health insurance options for the upcoming benefits year, you may be considering whether to offer high-deductible health plans, coupled with health savings accounts. HDHP/HSAs are a combination that can save big bucks for employers and employees alike.

IRS releases 2019 inflation adjustments for HDHP/HSAs

08/14/2018
The IRS has announced the 2019 inflation-adjusted figures for high-deductible health plans and health savings accounts.