While there are regular updates to the minimum wage for hourly employees, at least on the state level, changes to the minimum salary for Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) exempt employees are not as common. Looking back twenty years ago to 2004, the minimum weekly salary for a FLSA exempt employee was only $445. In 2016, President Obama attempted to double that weekly amount to $913, but a federal judge blocked it just days before it was to take effect. It was ultimately increased to $684, effective January 1, 2020, where it currently stands. As of July 1, 2024, the…
Posts published in “Employee Management”
Time rounding. A practice that once had a purpose, should go the way of the dinosaurs. Back in the caveman days, when an employee stuck their timecard in a dinosaur’s mouth to punch in and out, payroll administrators needed a quick way to total hours. The fastest way to do that was to round punches; Looking at a shift and seeing 9:06 a.m. to 5:03 p.m. or 8:55 a.m. to 5:07 p.m. and calling them both as eight-hour days. With modern technology, that is no longer the case. Automated timekeeping systems are able to calculate punches to the minute without…
They say timing is everything, and if there were ever a time to implement a 401(k) plan, the time is now. We first wrote about the Secure Act 2.0, in this post back in February 2023, a short time after it was signed into law by President Biden. One of the best parts of this act is that the government wants to give business owners money to start a plan AND even better, they want to give you money to give to your employees. This is accomplished in three different tax credits to small business owners, as covered below. Let’s…
We are often asked, in regards to rehires, if a new Form I-9 or E-Verify case is required. Employers have the option of treating all rehired employees as new hires by completing a new Form I-9 and creating a case in E-Verify. This may be the best practice because you will always have your bases covered. The only downside is the time it takes to perform the possible repetitive work. If you rehire a former employee within three years of the initial execution of the previous Form I-9 but did not create an E-Verify case and receive an ‘employment authorized’ response…
Selecting a health insurance plan for your employees is harder than ever, with the exponentially rising costs and endless number of plans. Not only are there many different carriers to choose from, but there are also three different types of plans available: Fully-insured health plan: You may even call this the traditional insurance plan, where the employer pays a monthly premium and the insurance company pays all claims. Self-funded health plan: This is where the insurance company is paid an administrative fee and the employer acts as the insurer, paying the claims as they are incurred. This plan is typically…
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to ensure safe and healthful working conditions for workers. It is a division of the U.S. Department of Labor and they set and enforce standards, as well as reporting requirements. In short, it is one more set of government regulations many businesses will need to comply with or otherwise, face penalties. Employers with 11 or more employees, at any point in 2023, are required to post OSHA Form 300A, Summary of Work-Related Injury and Illnesses, from February 1 through April 30, unless they qualify…
According to Payroll.org (formerly the American Payroll Association,) 93% of employees they questioned use direct deposit. My belief is that they only surveyed their members, payroll professionals. I doubt they surveyed real America and got feedback from the fast food worker, agricultural workers or the mechanic down the street. Not that payroll professionals aren’t real America, but you know what I mean. Based on what I find in practice, direct deposit is less than a 60% adoption rate. Maybe even much less than 50% because I am not looking at the small businesses that run their own payrolls in-house on…
On August 1, 2023, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services published the latest version of Form I-9. The new version can be downloaded here: https://www.uscis.gov/i-9. Employers should begin to use this new form immediately, and starting November 1, 2023, ONLY this new version will be allowed. If your employees use PayMaster HCM to complete the Form I-9, we will update to the new version in the coming weeks. There are many big changes with this version. Wording has been changed from ‘alien’ to ‘noncitizen,’ which I always thought was weird in the first place, and the form was redesigned to…
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Florida’s Senate Bill 1718 into law on May 10, 2023. This bill has a broad purpose to obstruct the flow of illegal immigration in the state and imposes some of the toughest penalties in the country. It ‘enhances’ the crime of human smuggling, which is a good thing, but imposes a new rule for employers in the state. Effective July 1, 2023, private employers with 25 or more employees, and public employers, are now required to use the federal E-Verify system to verify employment eligibility of ALL new hires. There is NO requirement to verify employees who began employment prior to that effective date. So…
There has been an increase in biometric privacy class action lawsuits, which should bring concerns to employers. First and foremost, what is biometric data? Biometric data refers to any data that identifies or is related to an individual’s physical, physiological or behavioral characteristics, such as fingerprints, iris scans, facial recognition, hand recognition, voice recognition, DNA or any other unique biological information. With the rise of biometric technologies, concerns over the privacy and security of biometric data have become increasingly important. Securing an employee’s biometric data should be held in the same regard, if not higher, as other data, such as…