According to the Family Caregiving Alliance, at least 7 million Americans are caring for a parent at any given time. Between one-third to one-half of all caregivers are also employed outside the home and 12 percent eventually quit their jobs to care for a loved one full-time. Negative effects of working caregivers include taking time off from work to provide care to a loved one, decreased productivity and absenteeism due to stress-related illnesses to which they are more susceptible.

However, when hiring ...

Companies throughout the U.S. are offering convenient online training and many employees are opting to complete their assigned online training sessions after work hours away from home. If you—the employer—make online training mandatory, and your employees opt to do the training after work, when do you need to pay them overtime and when do you not?

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued a ruling in an opinion letter in response to a case where an employer required some employees to take training via the web. The company in question was a communications company that “employs technicians who install, monitor, and service voice and data communications circuits”. The company was using a networking system manufactured by an outside ...

We all know that the current economic recession has taken a toll on employees’ financial health, but what about their mental health? The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which measures perceptions of both current and projected future well- being, revealed that by the end of 2008, 58% of Americans reported suffering in their lives; 22 million more Americans than when the study was conducted a year before. A 2008 survey from the American Psychological Association found that 80% of Americans say the current economy has caused them stress. Studies have shown a linkage between economic-related stress and prevalence of mental and behavioral health issues.

As far back as 1999, the U.S. Surgeon General reported that indirect costs alone from& ...

The Problem:

In 2008, a record 79 million identity thefts occurred in the United States. According to a report by the Alexander Hamilton Institute, an estimated 50-70 percent of these thefts happened in the workplace. Employee benefits documents—and employee files in general—contain all of the information necessary for an information thief to steal someone’s identity.

Benefits identity theft can come both from within the company (i.e. a temporary employee working in HR who has access to employee information file ...

Employees are spending more time at work than they ever have before, mostly in sedentary careers. At the same time, both healthcare-related costs and the obesity epidemic are on the rise in our nation.

One way employers are responding to these trends is by introducing wellness initiatives such as fitness classes and nutrition specialists into the workplace. Employers who do this make it easier for their employees to access and participate in activities that will improve their heath. When effective, workplace wellness programs help employers to reduce employee absenteeism, curb increasing healthcare costs, increase employee productivity and reduce costly employee injuries.

One of the quickest and most effective ways to reduce the time costs and complexities of administering your employees’ benefits is eliminating manual, paper-based administration entirely. Manual benefit administration is highly labor intensive, stressful and is an inefficient use of HR staff time. It also places HR Departments at risk for costly (and avoidable) errors and compliance-related penalties.

Our cutting-edge, digital HR management solution The HR in a Box™, helps small-to-mid size companies decrease operating costs and makes it easier for HR teams to avoid errors of interpretation through its clear, consistent message communication from a single source. The HR in a Box™ also creates more flexibility for ...

The US Homeland Security Department (DHS) has, for the third time, pushed back the deadline for implementing the final rule for employers to use the E-Verify employment verification system. The rule was originally scheduled to go into effect January 15, 2009, was initially pushed back to February 20, then to May 21 and now will go into effect six weeks later on June 30.

What is the E-Verify system:

The E-Verify program is jointly run by the DHS and Social Security Administration. ...