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.

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.

Workers’ compensation benefits can only help you and your employees with work-related injuries if you are properly insured.  If you’re uninsured and an employee suffers an on-the-job injury, you are responsible for paying any damages relating to that employee’s claim.  Also bear in mind, in addition to filing a workers’ compensation claim, that employee can file a civil suit against you because you’re illegally uninsured.

Most important, it’s a criminal offense not to have workers’ compensation coverage!  Under the California Labor Code, failure to provide workers’ compensation coverage is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $10,000 fine or up to one year in county jail, or both.  The state’s Division of Labor Standards Enforcement may also issue penalties of $1,000 per employee, to a maximum of $100,000. In addition, if an injured worker’s claim successfully goes before the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board and the judge finds the employer was uninsured, the employer may be fined up to $10,000 per employee, to a maximum of $100,000.

Don’t get caught in a workers’ compensation bind!  Global Human Resources Outsourcing is here to help.  As one of Southern California’s leading HR professional employer organizations, GHRO can assist your company with its workers’ compensation needs.  GHRO offers workers’ compensation support with all three of its HR PEO packages, from the basic HR Essentials package to the comprehensive HR Total Solutions package to care for all of your company’s human resources needs.  For more information and to receive a free quote, visit our website or call 888-308-0338.

Small businesses would benefit greatly by educating themselves about how safety and worker’s compensation actually work. They should know what the law requires in their particular state, what each business needs to do to assure coverage and how best to manage their compensation programs.

Some Facts about Safety and Worker’s Compensation Every Small Business Needs to Know:

Know the Safety and Worker’s Compensation Laws in Your State.

Although safety and worker’s compensation is required by all states, the laws vary from state to state. In many states, safety and worker’s compensation is encompassed by a larger statewide program while in others it is left up to the private insurance companies. It is important to know the specific laws that govern worker’s compensation in your state.

Know What Safety and Workers Compensation Covers.

When an employee is injured on the job “in the course and scope of employment,” even if it was the fault of the individual, he or she is qualified to receive compensation benefits. This means that even if an employee causes an accident, they will still receive workman’s compensation benefits if the incident took place at a jobsite or while executing any job function on company time.

Know if Your Business is Required to Have Safety and Worker’s Compensation Benefits.

In most states, employers with less than 5 employees are not required to have worker’s compensation benefits. However, even if a small business has under the minimum it is often times beneficial for both the employee as well as the employer to carry worker’s compensation insurance for added protection.

Know Each Individual Employee’s Classification.

Usually states only require full-time employees to be covered by workers compensation benefits. Part-time and contracted employees are considered to be exempt under the law.

Know How Safety and Worker’s Compensation Protects the Employer.

Worker’s compensation insurance not only protects employees from injuries sustained on the job, but it also serves to protect employers. Workman’s compensation insurance will shield employers from potential lawsuits resulting from employees being injured at work while also protecting them from the high cost of health care should any work related accidents require an employee to seek medical attention.

Some Facts about How Professional Employer Organizations (PEO’s) Can Help Small Businesses Manage Worker’s Compensation Benefits

Small businesses can take advantage of the reduced cost of safety and worker’s compensation that a Professional Employer Organization will provide because of the bulk rate insurance carriers often offer to PEO’s.

Many times a PEO will offer a small business a “pay as you go” worker’s compensation system that only calculates the exact amount of the premiums necessary for every pay period. This will help a company improve its cash flow and free up funds for other uses.

When a small business hires a PEO the safety and worker’s compensation is managed under their policy. This means that any claim by an employee will be filed under the PEO’s policy.

The PEO will manage all claims while also instilling best practices and risk management procedures to keep claims to a minimum. PEO’s will also perform safety inspections and train employees to take safety precautions to help prevent workplace injuries.

Small businesses that have more than 5 employees are required by law to carry safety and worker’s compensation. By utilizing the expertise of a PEO they can cut cost, raise efficiency and lower their risk by sharing the burden of providing employees with safety and worker’s compensation benefits.

Volunteer chiefs, captains and other fire officials are due to loose their “Deliberate Intent” insurance coverage, an extension of Safety and Worker’s Compensation, as of September 1 of this year. This means they will no longer have immunity from being sued and will be left vulnerable to law suits. Fire officials could be held personally liable for any fire fighter “deliberately” sent into harms way and is injured or killed as a result.

The Parkersburg volunteer fire department is not the only volunteer department slated to lose their liability coverage. According to State officials 129 departments will also be losing their coverage. By the end of this year every volunteer department in West Virginia will be working without this vital insurance.

Despite the fact that a few of these volunteer department are threatening to strike, most of the others are still planning to continue with the job of protecting their communities with or without the extended Safety and Worker’s Compensation coverage.

“The chiefs are going to have to meet to discuss this but our department is not on board with a strike,” said Kim Marshall of the Deerwalk Volunteer Fire Department. “We expect people to recognize there’s a problem, come up with a solution and keep moving. How do we say we are going to go on strike; how could you live with yourself? I’ve been doing this for 35 years. It’s just not in us not to respond. We are not a union. There have been firefighter’s unions going on strike but when you are a volunteer and it’s your neighbor are you going to sit in a recliner and not go? Of course not. We aren’t being paid. We could be sued personally. It doesn’t matter. You have to go. We can talk about strikes and not responding, but in reality the Legislature needs to put in an amendment and cure this problem and stop the silliness.”

Marshall’s frustration continued as he met with local insurance representative seeking some solutions but left without any success. He went on to say, “It’s the deliberate intent language that makes it. If you order two men at a scene to go into a structure to do an interior attack on a fire that is a deliberate act and fire officials and others will be personally liable to be sued as individuals if the firefighter is injured.”

Although these fire officials are deeply concerned about losing their insurance coverage and recognize that not having it could have serious consequences, they are still willing to put themselves on the line for their community’s safety.

Jay Parsons, Chief of the Mineral Wells Volunteer Fire department summed it up best by adding, “We have too many residents and too many families. It is a bad situation. We hope the county commission does something at least; maybe provide coverage until the State gets it worked out. That would be a big help.”

• On-site safety evaluations by certified safety pros
• Hazardous Communication Programs
• Safety handbooks
• Injury and Illness Prevention Programs
• Safety incentives
• Compliance reporting (OSHA logs)
• Back to work programs
• Safety training
• Assistance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as it relates to Workers Compensation

GHRO can provide strategic direction to bring your Workers Compensation costs down, and we’ll design workplace safety solutions to meet your unique goals and objectives.

And we’ll work with your employees and insurance companies to manage claims and to get your employees back to work! Keeping your business moving. That’s what GHRO is about.