So far, you’ve learned when to update your business’ employee handbook and how to avoid potential handbook horrors.  In our third and final entry into our employee handbook series, you’ll find out key points to include in any effective handbook.

When properly prepared, the employee handbook should be a critical communication tool between your business and its employees.  Your handbook should explain your business’ expectations from its employees and establish what your employees can expect from the business.  This information should be presented in a clear and easy-to-understand fashion.

Here are ten essential items that should be included in every employee handbook:

1. A form acknowledging the employee’s receipt of the handbook
2. A disclaimer reserving the employer’s right to change the handbook’s content in the future
3. The organization’s mission statement
4. Recruitment practices, including how open positions are posted and filled
5. Salary administration practices, including merit increases and performance reviews
6. Computer and Internet use policy
7. Employee code of conduct
8. Absence policy, including maternity leave, bereavement leave, and jury duty
9. Complaint and grievance procedures
10. Guidelines for employment termination

If your employee handbook was last updated in the age of high hair and parachute pants, it lacks key legislative changes such as the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and the Polygraph Protection Act.  Relying on an out-of-date handbook is a surefire way to invite litigation!

Your HR team should continually review the handbook for necessary updates.  Employment law is constantly changing, so your HR team should check new laws against your employee handbook’s policies.  Your HR team should also confirm handbook policies match actual practices.  The last thing anyone wants is to be cornered by an employee armed with a handbook offering six weeks’ vacation, when current company policy only offers four.

Having an up-to-date handbook provides many benefits beyond avoiding uncomfortable confrontations.  Not only does the handbook provide guidance to employees and supervisors, but it also establishes consistent policies important to risk management.  Consistent policies also ensure a more harmonious work environment, since everyone knows what to expect.

If it’s time to update your employee handbook, consider the following steps:

1. Regularly review the handbook to ensure the most current policies.
2. Have an attorney review the handbook at each phase.
3. Implement a plan to address policy updates and how to communicate them to everyone in the business.
4. Train management staff to consistently follow handbook policy.
5. Record all updates and changes in a log.

Check back soon for Parts Two and Three of our Employee Handbook series!

It’s 2011, and with a new year brings a new way to steer your small business toward success!  One strategy you might not have considered: enlisting a professional employer organization (PEO) like Global Human Resources Outsourcing to take care of your business’ Human Resources needs.  By partnering with a PEO like GHRO, your business will benefit from a skilled and efficient Human Resources team at a fraction of the cost of maintaining an internal HR department.

So what can GHRO do for your business?  Our experienced specialists provide all the services of complete HR and payroll departments.  We’ll act as your personal staffing agency; start to finish, from developing a customized recruitment strategy, to screening potential candidates, to assisting with employee selection and negotiations.  Additionally, we’ll function as your payroll department, keeping abreast of the latest payroll laws and regulations.  We’ll also act as HR consultants and risk managers, monitoring safety and workers’ compensation law, government compliance, and employee benefits.  We can also help you establish an employee wellness plan, an employee handbook, and other strategies to best fit your business’ unique needs and goals.  With GHRO, you can efficiently outsource the employee relations that can stress your business’ time and budget.

With GHRO on your side, you’ll be gaining a trusted business advisor, just like your CPA or attorney.  So let us assume the risks and responsibilities of maintaining your employees while you concentrate on your core business.  We have a package to meet the needs of any small business.  Contact us today to see how your business can benefit from GHRO!

As we look toward a new year, many of us start thinking about how to change ourselves for the better.  That’s where the New Year’s resolution comes in.  Several consistently popular resolutions across the years: to lose weight, to exercise more, to manage stress, to quit smoking, and to drink less alcohol.  What do all these resolutions have in common?  They’re related to health and longevity.  As we look toward a new year, why not consider giving your employees the gift of health through an employee wellness program?

Wellness programs focus on employees’ physical well being, including medical requirements and general health.  Wellness programs offer a variety of health-related solutions, which may include weight loss plans, stress management training, smoking cessation programs, nutrition coaching, physical fitness advice, behavioral health therapy, and physiological testing, like blood pressure screenings and cholesterol checks.  If your business already offers an employee wellness program, why not give the gift of a special alternative therapy, such as a massage session?  Your employees will thank you well into the New Year.

How can healthy employees benefit your small business?  Perhaps the most obvious way is through reduced absenteeism.  Healthy employees show up ready to work and to keep productivity levels high.  They also arrive with improved morale and loyalty, since well-cared-for employees are more likely to feel appreciated by and connected to their employer.  This also contributes to the invaluable harmonious workplace.  Healthy employees also provide the business with reduced health care and insurance costs and, indeed, lower overall costs.  Dollar for dollar, the investment into an employee wellness program is well worth the return.

If your business is interested in establishing an employee health and wellness program—or improving upon an existing program—GHRO can help with our HR Total Solutions Package.  With GHRO Total Solutions, your business will be on its way to an employee wellness program, and it will also have direct access to unlimited services, such as asset protection, cost containment strategies, and turnover reduction strategies.  With nearly one hundred years of combined HR experience, GHRO’s team is committed to meeting your HR needs.  Visit our website to receive a free quote.

As outsourcing becomes increasingly common in today’s business world, one unlikely partnership is defying the odds and teaching a message of tolerance.

A small but persistent stream of Israeli technology companies are putting good business sense before political conflict by teaming with their Palestinian neighbors in the West Bank.  Israeli branches of Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Microsoft are all outsourcing work to the Palestinian territories.  Such partnerships mark a trend over the last three years of Israeli technology companies turning to Palestinian engineers and programmers instead of traditional outsourcing to Europe, India, or China.

Tapping employment resources in the West Bank makes smart business sense.  Palestinians are ambitious and work in the same time zone as Israeli workers.  Outsourcing to a West Bank company also costs roughly half the cost of outsourcing to an Israeli company.  While it remains cheaper to outsource to India or China, many Israeli companies prefer Palestinian workers because the workers demonstrate more loyalty and a tireless work ethic.  Also, and perhaps most surprisingly, Israeli workers are finding their Palestinian counterparts are not so different as they once thought.  They are able to put politics aside to work together on common goals.

Not all Israelis and Palestinians are able to overcome their political differences, which complicates parts of the outsourcing agreement, such as face-to-face meetings.  Although offices may be a few miles apart, the Israeli military prevents most cross-border meetings because of security concerns.  Special permits are required to cross the maze of fences and walls separating Israel from the West Bank.  While difficult to arrange, face-to-face meetings are becoming more common, with the military’s cooperation.

Some hurdles remain in the partnership between Israeli technology companies and Palestinian engineers and programmers, but the existence of such outsourcing means leaps and bounds in a hostile political climate.  The trend may have only just begun; one Palestinian firm received 20 inquiries from Israeli companies this year alone.

Ah, December—a busy and tumultuous time for many businesses . . . a time of holiday office parties, secret Santa exchanges, and most important to many—time off to spend with family and friends.  When December rolls around and employees are itching to clock out, does your company’s holiday pay policy look more like It’s a Wonderful Life or does it look more like How the Grinch Stole Christmas? Much of how your company shapes its policy will depend on the needs of the business (and of course, the holiday spirit!), but when it comes to legal requirements for holiday pay, this employer’s guide to common questions and answers can help.

Q: Must employees get paid time off for nationally recognized holidays?

A: No.  Federal law doesn’t require employers to provide holiday time off, paid or unpaid.

Q: What about accommodating a religious holiday?

A: In short, yes, employers must accommodate their employees’ religious practices unless the business would suffer an undue hardship.

What is reasonable accommodation?  Allowing an employee to use a floating holiday, a vacation day, or unpaid time off are all reasonable ways to accommodate religious observances.

Q: Must employees be paid for employer-provided holiday time off?

A: This answer depends on the employee’s classification.  Employers are not required to pay hourly employees for holiday time off; employees must only be paid for time they actually worked.  On the other hand, employers are required to pay salaried employees who work without regard to overtime for holiday time off if they worked any hours in the holiday week.

Q: Must paid time off be included in determining an employee’s entitlement to overtime?

A: No.  Employer-provided paid holiday hours are not required to count toward an employee’s hours worked ,for the purposes of determining overtime eligibility.  Typically, an employee must work 40 hours in a week to become eligible for overtime.  This may be overridden, however, by collective bargaining agreements.

Q: Can conditions be attached to holiday pay?

A: Yes, but those conditions should always be in writing.  As examples, an employer may prorate holiday pay for part-time employees or may require a certain amount of service time before an employee becomes eligible for holiday pay.

Q: If an employee works a holiday, must they get premium pay?

A: While a common practice (and a kind gesture) to pay a premium to employees who work holidays, it is not a legal requirement.

Q: Must the same holiday benefits be extended to all employees?

A: No, as long as any differences are not a result of potential discrimination, such as age or gender.  Employers can, for instance, grant holiday pay to full-time employees only, or to office workers instead of field workers.

Q: What happens if a holiday falls on an employee’s regular day off or on a non-business day?

A: No legal requirement governs this area; however, a popular practice is to allow employees to take another day off during that pay period.  This is typically seen when holidays like Christmas fall on a Sunday and employees are given the following Monday off.

When it comes to managing your company’s payroll services, GHRO can help!  Our seasoned professionals have years of experience in Human Resources and can help you develop the best policies for you and your employees.  For more information about how GHRO can meet your business needs, visit our website.

Everyone’s favorite federal organization, the IRS, recently released guidelines to help business owners distinguish employees from independent contractors.   The IRS is following up these guidelines with random audits of employee classification.  Sure, classifying an independent contractor can save your business money in taxes, overtime, and workers’ compensation, but if the IRS finds the contractor should actually be an employee, that business will face stiff penalties.  To avoid this costly and all-too-common mistake, remember these tips the IRS wants you to know about classifying employees.

1.  The IRS uses three characteristics to determine the relationship between businesses and workers: behavioral control, financial control, and type of relationship.  All of these factors will affect whether a worker is rightly an employee or an independent contractor.  If a business has behavioral control, it has the right to direct or control how a worker performs the work, via instructions, training, or other methods.  If a business has financial control, it has the right to direct or control the financial and business aspects of the worker’s job.  Finally, the IRS examines the type of relationship, or how a worker and the business owner perceive their relationship.

2.  If you, the business owner, have the right to control or direct the work to be performed and also how the work will be performed, then your workers are most likely employees.

3.  If you, the business owner, can direct or control only the result of the work to be performed—and not how that result will be achieved—then your workers are most likely independent contractors.

4.  If you have misclassified workers as independent contractors, you may face a hefty bill come tax time.  In addition, the IRS can assess penalties for failure to file required tax forms and pay employment taxes.

5.  If any doubt remains whether a worker should be an employee or an independent contractor, both employers and workers can file IRS Form SS-8: Determination of Worker Status for Purposes of Federal Employment Taxes and Income Tax Withholding, which lets the IRS make the classification call.

In addition to offering payroll services, and managing employee benefits and government compliance issues, GHRO offers recruitment services for businesses looking to outsource their human resources needs. Recently, we received a letter from one of our clients telling us how GHRO was able to help her out.

Hi Margo:

You went above and beyond! I appreciate it.

I am doing great. I have to say I absolutely LOVE working for Job Corps.
The people are fantastic, and the Center Director is amazing. I love her
spirit and she is quite the mover and a shaker.

Working for an organizations whose core values that parallel my own is a
breath of fresh air and the students are absolutely delightful. I think
you did an excellent job of pairing us together and hope this is the
beginning of a very long relationship!

Best,
Renee

If you’re looking to hire professional caliber employees, or you’re looking for the next step in your career, Global Human Resources Outsourcing may be able to help you on your way!

It is not Wall Street, the large multi-national corporations or even the vast banking institutions that are the driving force behind the American economy. Small businesses remain the dominating factor that figure into the continuing success of the U.S. Economy. Small businesses with less than 500 employees support more than half of the private sector American workforce. By hiring a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) to help stay profitable in turbulent financial times, small businesses are able to reduce their operating costs, raise the efficiency of their management and stay competitive in the marketplace, thus keeping them playing a successful role in U.S. economy.

Small businesses do the following:

• Employ over half of America’s private sector workforce.
• Are responsible for hiring at least 40 percent of workers in the technological fields such as science, engineering and computer programming.
• Include over 50 percent of home-based businesses.
• Make up nearly all of the firms dedicated to employment.
• Generate the majority of new inventions and innovative breakthroughs in science and technology.

Despite the fact that banks and other lending institutions are currently creating more barriers than providing assistance to small businesses relying on loans to establish credit lines for commercial mortgages, vehicles, equipment and leases; as well as the fact that government regulations are making it increasingly difficult and more expensive per employee to stay in compliance, it has never been more crucial for small businesses to survive in the down economy.

Your PEO to the Rescue

For the reasons above, Professional Employer Organizations are coming to the aid of small business and providing hope for the future to many small business owners.

Why use a PEO? To help small businesses survive in a down economy,­­ a PEO will offer the following solutions:

• Establish an employer relationship by contractually assuming many employer risks by becoming the employer of record for government compliance, safety and worker’s compensation and employee/labor relations.
• Incorporate optional health benefits, 401k administration, general liability coverage, background checks, recruitment services and payroll services.
• Provide relief from the burden of HR management, employee benefits, employee leasing and HR audits.
• Improve employment practices, compliance and risk management in order to reduce a business’s liabilities.
• Allow access to a comprehensive administrative service, employee benefits and HR Consulting.

The astronomical cost of health insurance and related benefits is forcing small and mid-size businesses to cut back on full-time employees. However, in order for companies to continue meeting productivity goals, stay competitive in today’s marketplace and remain profitable, they are turning to Human Resources Outsourcing as a solution to offset the rising cost of employee benefits.

Due to soaring medical costs, it is now estimated that employee benefits make up approximately 30 percent of the total employee compensation dollar. As a result, the days of employers offering first dollar health coverage are long gone.

Presently it is more likely that employers will offer options such as employee contribution, co-pays, deductibles and co-insurance as part of their benefits packages. Yet during these troubled economic times the price tag of these measures is still too high for many small and mid-size companies.

When a company turns to human resources outsourcing as a solution and hires a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) to assume the responsibility of employee benefits, they are able to provide competitive benefits packages while saving a substantial amount of money. This is because many insurance carriers offer PEO reduced prices for employee benefits while offering a full range of healthcare plan options.

By offering comprehensive employee benefits packages, smaller companies are better able to attract, recruit and maintain more qualified employees.

PEO’s not only help small businesses with employee benefits but also assume many other HR responsibilities including:

• Employee/Labor Relations
• Employee Leasing
• Government Compliance
• HR Audits
• HR Consulting
• Safety and Worker’s Compensation

Many small and mid-size companies are finding that by outsourcing their recruitment, HR management and other services that a PEO provides they can expand their core business with greater success.

By leaving the HR management to experts who have years of experience in not only finding a skilled labor force, but also in training and maintaining them, small and mid-sized companies can focus on productivity and growth while cutting costs at the same time.