Employee Benefits

Insuring the Uninsured

Health insurance costs play a large role in growing a business. When you offer insurance benefits, you are spending a great deal of money that may also be needed to buy new machinery, expand operations, or just pay the bills.

California’s governor and other legislators, and even presidential candidates, continue to work on plans to insure the uninsured. One plan was bill AB 8, which would have made each employer (that doesn’t offer a healthcare plan) pay a 7.5% payroll tax to help fund a healthcare program run by the government. Schwarzenegger vetoed that plan. Schwarzenegger’s pet plan appears to be dying slowly because no one can figure out how he plans to pay for it.

As a small business owner, you can read about these plans and breath a sigh of relief that you aren’t being forced to cough up money. However, don’t take too big a breath. While none of the current plans seem to be making huge headway, it is a trend that means one of these days someone will come up with a plan that will be approved and put into action.

Offering a healthcare plan doesn’t mean you need to pay for it 100%. [click to read more ...]

Holidays are Free

Labor Day seems to begin the holiday season for me. In these last few months of the year most companies observe the majority of the holidays provided for the year. However, it’s tradition, not employment laws that dictate these holidays for companies.

It’s true, there are no laws stating a company must be closed for the day or pay employees higher rates for working on a holiday. As far as the state and federal government is concerned, a holiday is just another work day if your company is open. But that’s just the legal side of holidays.

As any recruiter can tell you, the number of holidays a company provides each year is a strong enticement or deterrent for job candidates. If you offer 10 paid holidays each year, an employee perceives that as two additional weeks of vacation. Plus holidays are very special to many people. Many holidays are family events and having that time off allows your employees to satisfy one of their basic needs: reconnecting with family and friends.

The basic holidays observed by most companies include: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Many companies often add President’s Day to help [click to read more ...]

Keeping an Employee Productive has a Cost

What happens when an employee is worried about a sick child, has problems with finances, is constantly fighting with a spouse or has health issues? The employee’s productivity goes down.

When productivity goes down, your costs go up. So, the real question ends up being “Where do you want to invest money to make more money?” One choice would be to replace that troubled employee. Not much of a choice though because everyone comes with his or her own set of personal issues. You can’t tell (and certainly can’t ask) what the problems are for each employee or job candidate, so you won’t know if the replacement has fewer issues than your employee.

Another choice would be to put pressure on your employee to bring up productivity. This isn’t a totally bad idea but you need to recognize the difference between a temporary personal issue and a lack of effort. If your employee has been on the job for a long time, you have a good idea of his or her normal output. That’s a great place to begin the discussions. Of course, now the employee’s drop in productivity has affected your productivity because you need to deal with the [click to read more ...]

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Insuring the Uninsured

Holidays are Free

Keeping an Employee Productive has a Cost

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