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Uncategorized

Employees Pick Perks and Benefits Over Pay Raises

by Inoventive Solutions
September 30, 2020

Great perks and incentives packages can help attract top-notch talent, maintain employee morale and improve overall engagement and satisfaction with a company.

The coronavirus pandemic has made perks and benefits even more important, particularly in light of so many workers feeling burned out, stressed from working at home or feeling isolated due to closures and shelter-at-home orders.

Recently, retailer Staples surveyed 1,549 employees across the U.S. about their preferences for work perks, asking them to rate how various benefits affected their motivation and if they preferred perks over higher salaries ―and which benefits were most important to them when looking for work.

One of the major perks that employees have coveted in past surveys is the ability to work from home. Well, the coronavirus pandemic has suddenly thrust many workers into that position. But what other benefits and perks do workers look for in an employer?

Perks defined

Employee benefits and perks are a non-wage supplement to salaries and include, among other things:

  • Lifestyle/entertainment perks, such as Netflix/Spotify subscriptions, free coffee and snacks at work, or employee discounts. 
  • Continuing education perks, such as tuition reimbursement, student loan repayment, or financial support for receiving professional certifications.
  • Health and fitness benefits, such as gym membership reimbursements, on-site fitness facilities or nutrition classes.
  • Workplace flexibility perks, such as flexible hours, commuter benefits or the ability to work remotely on a regular basis.
  • Family-focused/childcare perks, such as daycare reimbursement or paid family leave.

What is the overall best way to improve employee morale?

  • Higher base salary (37% of respondents)
  • More workplace perks (22%)
  • Performance-based raises (21%)
  • Recognition from supervisors (9%)
  • Team-building initiatives (4%)
  • Requesting employee feedback (4%)
  • Spontaneous holidays (2%)

Must-have perks and benefits:

  • Flexible hours (40% of respondents)
  • Paid health insurance premiums (34%)
  • Paid family leave (29%)
  • Regular remote work (26%)
  • Financial assistance with professional certifications (26%)

Perks and benefits employees deem nice to have, but not essential:

  • Employee discounts (43% of respondents)
  • Free coffee and snacks (42%)
  • Streaming-TV subscriptions (42%)
  • Gym membership reimbursement (35%)
  • Onsite fitness classes (30%)
  • Company car, laptop or phone (30%)

The takeaway

If you are considering expanding your perks and benefits, to attract or retain staff or motivate workers, don’t forget the following before deciding:

  • Four out of five employees feel that workplace flexibility options are the most important employee perk category.
  • Perks that employees say are “must have” include flexible hours, paid insurance premiums, and paid family leave.
  • Because the Staples survey found that half of employees prefer higher salaries while the other half wants more perks, consider polling your workers before making a change.
  • 62% of employees would accept a lower salary in exchange for better workplace perks.
"lawsuits"/
Uncategorized

Protecting Your Firm from Employee Benefit Lawsuits

by Inoventive Solutions
July 21, 2020

Employment practices and employee benefit-related lawsuits are on the rise – and employers have to be eternally vigilant when it comes to meeting their compliance obligations as plan sponsors.

Take the case of Visteon, a global automotive industry supplier, which outsourced its payroll and enrollment/disenrollment functions to outside plan administrators. 

But because of internal mistakes at the firms that Visteon outsourced these noncore HR functions to, some of its former employees who should have received COBRA eligibility notices after leaving the firm never received them. At first it was just a handful, but ultimately 741 co-workers signed on to a class-action lawsuit

Visteon argued in court that it was not its own mistakes that had caused the error, and that it had made a good-faith effort to hire outside experts to take over this function for them. Payroll and enrollment, after all, are not core competencies for an auto parts supplier, the company said, and it had been relying on the expertise of these other payroll companies to properly execute these functions and provide these notices.

The court didn’t buy Visteon’s argument. Rather, it held the company responsible in 2013 for poor internal tracking systems, negligence in overseeing its third party administrators, and failure to accept responsibility for its COBRA notification efforts.

That exposed them to the statutory penalty of $110 per worker per day for failure to provide notification.

In the end, for doing what tens of thousands of employers are doing nationwide – relying on third party administrators to handle payroll functions that are regulated under COBRA – Visteon was slapped with $1.8 million in penalties.

Employers are frequent lawsuit targets

As much as companies rely on their employees to generate profits, simply having them around and administering their benefit plans potentially exposes employers to significant possible liability.

According to a survey from insurer CNA, employment-related disputes are the fastest-growing category of civil lawsuits in America.

Employers face risk from the potential of lawsuits employees may bring for alleged failure to fulfill their fiduciary duties as sponsors of retirement plans under ERISA, for example, or for accidental or unauthorized leaks of personally identifiable information, which carries significant penalties under HIPAA.

Sponsors of defined contribution pension plans, such as 401(k)s, are particularly frequent targets of lawsuits for various fiduciary failures, errors or omissions.

Protecting your firm from legal action

So how can employers protect themselves against the potential costs of employee benefit-related litigation? You should:

  • Carefully monitor your plan third party administrators. Insist that they document their own compliance practices to you. Don’t take their word for it.
  • Reconcile your own lists of recently departed employees with your payroll company’s COBRA notifications.
  • Understand that your commercial general liability insurance policy usually will not cover you against liability arising from improper administration of employee benefit plans, ERISA, COBRA, USERRA, wage and hour laws, Title VII related lawsuits, and the like.
  • Consider employment practices liability insurance. This coverage will often protect against lawsuits like this and cover legal expenses, and even judgments.
  • Conduct regular reviews with advisers of investments in pension and 401(k) plans. Investments should be reviewed at least annually – and quarterly is not unusual.
  • Ensure that fees paid to 401(k) and other plan administrators are not excessive. You don’t have to go with the cheapest provider (that can be trouble, too). But if you do choose a higher-fee vendor, document why you made that decision so that you can show your reasoning in court and defend your decision-making as sound and prudent.
  • Invest in data security and HR compliance expertise.
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Uncategorized

How to Open Shop and Bring Staff Back to Work

by Inoventive Solutions
June 11, 2020

If your business is preparing to open due to a relaxation of shelter-at-home orders, you should proceed with caution and make sure you have safeguards in place to protect your workers, as well as customers if they are entering your premises.

How can you take that first step back to a semblance of normalcy?

Here are some recommendations from the Los Angeles Department of Public Health and other sources that can apply to any municipality anywhere in the country. The advice mainly applies to establishments that will have customers, but most of the recommendations are relevant across a wide swath of sectors.

Measures to protect employees

  • If someone can continue working from home, let them do so.
  • Tell employees not to come to work if sick.
  • If any employee tests positive for, or has symptoms consistent with COVID-19, you should:

– Ask that they isolate themselves at home, and

– Ask all employees who have come in contact with that colleague to immediately self-quarantine at home.

  • Check employees for symptoms or a fever before they enter the workspace. This must include a check-in concerning cough, shortness of breath or fever and any other symptoms the employee may be experiencing.
    These checks can be done remotely or in person upon the employee’s arrival. A temperature check should be done at the worksite, if feasible.
  • Offer at no cost to your employees cloth face coverings if they are going to have contact with the public during their shift. If they are disposable, masks should be thrown away at the end of every shift. If they are reusable, they should be washed after every shift in hot water.
  • Instruct employees not to touch the exterior of their mask when removing and handling it.
  • Disinfect break rooms, restrooms and other common areas frequently.
  • Place hand sanitizer in strategic locations.
  • Allow employees to take frequent breaks to wash their hands.

Signage

Place signs at each public entrance of your facility to inform all employees and customers that they should:

  • Avoid entering the facility if they have a cough or fever.
  • Maintain a minimum 6-foot distance from one another.
  • Wear a mask for their own protection, as well as for the safety of others.

Controlling crowds, lines

Limit the number of customers in the store at any one time, to allow customers and employees to easily maintain at least 6-foot distance from one another at all practicable times.

Post an employee at the door to ensure the maximum number of customers in the facility is not exceeded. If people are queueing up, mark the ground outside the store to ensure proper social distancing.

If you have a restaurant, encourage people not to crowd and wait outside. Set up a system to alert people by cellphone when they are next.

Spacing between employees

  • Require employees to work at least 6 feet apart. You may need to reorganize your office or workstations to ensure proper spacing.
  • In jobs where workers are on their feet, you can mark spots on the floor where they should stand to ensure social distancing between your staff.
  • Social distancing in break rooms and supply areas (such as device charging stations and packaging supplies) may be addressed temporarily by spacing out tables, chairs and microwaves.
  • Another option is to use partitions made of plexiglass so workers can communicate and make eye contact.
  • In addition, you may want to abandon the popular open workspace concept and revert to using cubicles, which gained popularity in the 1980s and 1990s as a way to increase productivity by putting barriers between office workers. Having that divider will make your staff feel safer and can offer some protection.
  • Reconfigure furniture placement in offices, public seating areas and other non-warehouse or production areas to support physical distancing.

Cleaning and circulation

A recent research study that analyzed superspreading events showed that closed environments with minimal ventilation strongly contributed to a characteristically high number of secondary infections.

If you have fans or air conditioning units blowing, take steps to minimize air from fans blowing from one worker directly at another. Also consider opening windows to improve circulation.

Also important are:

  • Disinfecting frequently touched surfaces in workspaces, as well as doorknobs, buttons and controls. More frequent cleaning and disinfection may be required based on level of use.
  • Providing workers and customers with tissues and trash receptacles.
  • Employees who are cleaning and disinfecting should wear disposable gloves.
  • Cleaning surfaces using soap and water, then using disinfectant.
  • Sanitizing any other personal protective equipment such as hardhats after every shift.
"paid
Healthcare

New Law Requires COVID-19 Paid Sick Leave, FMLA Benefits

by Inoventive Solutions
April 1, 2020

Legislation signed into law by President Trump will extend sick leave benefits for workers who are sickened by the coronavirus, as well as provide for additional weeks of time off under the Family Medical Leave Act so they can be guaranteed of being able to return to their jobs afterwards.

Public and private employers alike need to pay extra attention to the added paid sick leave and FMLA provisions of this new law. Both sections apply to employers with fewer than 500 employees.

Paid sick leave

Employees are entitled to two weeks (80 hours) of paid sick time for coronavirus-related issues. Eligible workers will receive their regular pay, up to $511 per day and $5,110 total. Those caring for someone subject to quarantine due to COVID-19, and parents of kids who can’t go to school or daycare, will receive two-thirds of their regular pay, up to $200 daily with a $2,000 cap.

The emergency sick leave benefit can be used immediately, regardless of how long the worker has been employed with you. It can be used when they cannot work or telecommute for any one of the following reasons:

  • The employee is subject to a government quarantine or isolation order related to COVID-19;
  • The employee has been advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine due to COVID-19;
  • The employee has symptoms of COVID-19 and is seeking a medical diagnosis;
  • The employee is caring for an individual subject to quarantine due to COVID-19;
  • The employee needs to care for a child whose school or place of care is closed or whose childcare provider is unavailable due to coronavirus.

The law does not require certification of order by the government or a health care provider. But employers can require reasonable notice procedures, such as not announcing in the middle of a shift that they take COVID-19 sick leave. But they cannot require the employee to find a replacement worker to cover the shifts they will miss. Employers must post the law’s requirements “in conspicuous places.”

Employers are not allowed to discipline a worker who takes this sick or FMLA leave for coronavirus purposes and, if an employer refuses to provide the leave, they can be ordered to pay both back pay and statutory damages that are equal to the back pay the employee is owed.

This law provides payroll tax credits to offset all costs of providing these paid leaves.

FMLA

The FMLA portion of the law provides for 10 additional weeks of FMLA leave, but only for those who must stay at home to care for a child whose school is closed or their childcare provider is unavailable due to COVID-19-related issues.

These 10 weeks will be paid at two-thirds the employee’s regular rate of pay, up to $200 per day with a cap of $10,000. They will also receive 12 weeks of leave with job protection, though employers of health care or emergency care providers can exclude such employees.

The employee would likely use up their two weeks of paid sick leave before applying for FMLA benefits, which unlike traditional FMLA (which is unpaid), are paid leaves after the first 10 days under the new law. 

Employees who have been working for more than 30 days are eligible, and the employer can require them to provide reasonable notice that they are taking leave.

A final word

This law only applies to employers with fewer than 500 workers, so it leaves uncovered those people who work for larger companies.

Also, employers need to make financial plans, as the credit cannot be claimed until after the employer pays their payroll taxes.

A bigger issue is that the law requires that workers be paid the sick leave even if they are not sick, but have been ordered to self-isolate. In states that have ordered workers to self-isolate, such as California, employers could be faced with an avalanche of paid sick leave claims all at once.

This law sunsets on Dec. 31, 2020.

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Industry News

Generic Drug Makers Sued over Pricing Practices

by Inoventive
December 10, 2019

One of the country’s largest health insurers has sued a number of pharmaceutical companies, accusing them of running a price-fixing cartel of common generic drugs.

Humana Inc. has accused the companies of colluding on the prices of generics to the detriment of health insurers that have to pay for these drugs. Humana said in its lawsuit that this collusion prevented fair competition among insurers that could have reduced the cost of many of these drugs.

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Finance, Healthcare

Reference Pricing Can Reduce Medical Outlays, Costs

by Inoventive
November 26, 2019

In an effort to coax health plan participants to use price-shopping behavior when deciding on where to have a procedure, more insurers are starting to roll out a system known as “reference pricing.”

With reference pricing, the health insurer imposes a limit on the amount it will pay for a particular procedure – a limit that is reasonable and allows access to care for patients. The price is usually a median or average price in the local market.

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Healthcare

Your Last-Minute Open Enrollment Checklist

by Inoventive
November 8, 2019

By now you should be prepared and ready to go for your 2020 employee benefits open enrollment. You should have all your plan documents and have prepared or held presentations for your staff to explain the benefits package and any major changes to the plans that you offer. 

Employees should be familiar with how to use the enrollment portal and who they should talk to if they have questions. 

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