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To further prove that immigration reform is still on the front burner, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced its plan to implement a nationwide audit of employer I-9s.

ICE announced that it’s drawing up  Notices of Inspection to review the I-9 records of 652 employers — names not released yet. In some instances, the notices will include subpoenas for records such as

1. quarterly wage reports
2. EINs
3. business licenses
4. correspondence from Social Security Administration regarding no-match letters, and
5. payroll data.

Employers whose I-9-related records don’t pass muster with ICE will then receive Notices of Intent to Fine.  Also in the announcement, ICE officials said the audit is just a “first step,” so employers probably can expect more audits and inspections.

What happens if you’re contacted for an audit? Make sure you know:

• The name and contact information of company legal counsel. If the company’s legal counsel is not in-house, there should be written instructions for personnel to contact outside counsel immediately.
• Who, in HR or otherwise, will be the the company’s representative for the ICE investigation or audit. You’ll want all communication with ICE channeled through that person to avoid redundancy or contradictions in information. If you are a client of Workforce Solutions, Inc. we provide this service for you.
• The names of company managers who should be informed of an ICE investigation or audit.

And keep in mind:

• An investigator may contact you and ask for an interview, but you have the right to refer the investigator to an attorney.
• An investigator has no right to files and records without a search warrant or subpoena.
• Once you’re informed of an intent to investigate, take special care to secure all related records. Destruction or loss of records after notification could be seen as an attempt to destroy evidence or sabotage the investigation.

Clients of Workforce Solutions, Inc. should notify our corporate office immediately if their client company is contacted for an audit. This is a free service that Workforce Solutions, Inc provides for all our clients. 

The benefits of aligning your company with a PEO, or professional employer organization like Workforce Solutions, Inc. are many, and allow a business owner or CEO to focus on their core competencies to save time, increase profitability, control cost and reduce risk. Having a PEO, though initially seeming like a dispensable cost, is actually something that most business would be remiss to do without.
The biggest benefit to employers who choose to use a Professional Employer Organization company is the fact that they may not have to staff and maintain several departments in their company. By working together with a PEO, client companies will not have to worry about having a human resources department who takes care of scheduling, benefits, and employee complaints. They also will need a much smaller accounting department, if they even need one at all. This is because they do not have a payroll department to deal with in their accounting department. Other accounting tasks, such as taxes, bookkeeping, can often quite easily be outsourced at a much more affordable rate.

“Workforce Solutions enables companies to cost-effectively outsource the management of human resources, employee benefits, payroll, and workers’ compensation. Using the best web based Human Resource Information System, Workforce Solutions helps clients focus on their core competencies to save time, increase profitability, control cost, and reduce risk”

As firms continue to fight for their survival in the current recession, an increasing number of their employees have moved up a weight class – or two.

According to a recent Workforce Solutions, Inc. survey, 43% of our client companies workers have gained weight in their current jobs.

A combination of stress over the current economy and poor eating habits seems to be spurring the increased weight gain in the U.S. workforce.

Just how much weight are employees packing on? According to the study:

* 25% have put on more than 10 lbs., and
* 12% have put on more than 20 lbs.

• The study also dissected people’s eating habits and found:
  • 39% of employees eat out for lunch two or more times per week
  • 12% of employees buy lunch from a vending machine at least once a week
  • 67% of employees snack at least once a day, and
  • 24% of employees admit to snacking twice a day.

There’s a good deal of research that proves unhealthy staffers carry significantly higher healthcare costs. Taking a proactive approach to helping these employees can benefit their overall well-being, as well as your bottom line. This has been a proven fact in keeping the annual Health Insurance Premium increase below the national trend.

Fortunately, reversing bad habits doesn’t take a complete lifestyle overhaul. Experts stress that little things can have a tremendous impact in halting the weight gain, including:

  • bringing a lunch to work
• making it a point to get up from your desk several times throughout the day
• taking walks during lunch breaks, and
• biking to/from work

Find out how Workforce Solutions, Inc. can help your company manage Employee Health and minimize Health Insurance Premium increases.

Heads up: If your firm has hourly employees who work through lunch or break periods, you could be at risk of being force-fed the lawsuit du jour.

In recent years, several state supreme courts have  ruled that employers can be held liable for up to four years of back pay and/or overtime for violations of  mandatory breaks. Ever since, there’s been a wave of employee lawyers around the country looking to cash in.

Two key steps for avoiding trouble:

1. verify your state laws on mandatory lunch and/or rest breaks, call Workforce Solutions Inc for a review of your employees
2. remind supervisors to insist non-exempt employees take their breaks, even if the employee says he or she wants to skip them.

It can be quite a painful fact that many managers, when faced with having to fire someone, forget, or are unaware of the emotions that are experienced by the person being fired. Nor are they usually aware of the behavior that most often results from these emotions. It has been well documented that the death of a loved one, a marriage or long term relationship breakup and the loss of one’s job, have an equal and similar impact on one’s emotions — and life. Think for a moment about the loss of one of your dear relatives or friends through death — how did you feel? That’s exactly the same feeling that people have when they suddenly and unexpectedly lose their jobs.
One factor that is often overlooked when firing someone, is that the way it is done can have as much impact (positive or negative) on the people who remain. They will be watching (and will invariably get a first hand report from their colleague) about how well or otherwise the process was managed. The people who remain in the organization, and whom I assume you want to keep, get a good look at both the manager’s and the organization’s real people management skills when under the stress of firing someone. They’ll most certainly ask "Could this happen to me?"
When a client company partners with a PEO, like Workforce Solutions, Inc., they gain valuable access to our in-house legal council to help them through the firing process. Workforce Solutions, Inc. helps our clients by coaching them and providing them with the needed resources and will even conduct the firing process.

With the sharp increase in layoffs nationwide, many benefits departments are swamped with COBRA paperwork. At Workforce Solutions, Inc. we process all the necessary COBRA paperwork for our clients, just another benefit of working with us. However, many clients are confused about how the new Stimulus Package, that President Obama signed into law yesterday will impact their company when it comes to offering COBRA to terminated employees.

At least there’s a little good news about COBRA and the stimulus package. Many companies are relieved by the scaled-down COBRA subsidy that accompanied the economic stimulus package passed by Congress. Under the original House version of the bill, there was provision to allow eligible workers to maintain COBRA coverage – at their own expense – until they became Medicare eligible (age 65) or received coverage from another employer.

The rule would’ve applied both to former employees age 55 and older and to workers who worked for the same employer for 10 or more years.

The final bill that President Obama signed into law doesn’t change the COBRA coverage time limit.  If the other bill had passed, it would’ve created a lot of extra burden on employers.  Even though workers take on the direct cost of COBRA coverage, employers are left to deal with legal compliance headaches, increased utilization of their health plan resulting in increased premium costs as well as administrative time.

Though it was only signed a few weeks ago, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act has already caused big legal problems for some companies.

Signed by President Obama on January 29, the Ledbetter Act gave employees more time to sue when they believe they’re victims of pay discrimination. The Supreme Court had previously ruled pay bias suits had to be filed within 180 days of the discriminatory decision.

But the new law gives employees a new 180-day window to sue every time they receive a paycheck in which they claim they are discriminated against.

The Act was effective immediately — and applies retroactively to lawsuits still pending as of May 28, 2007, the day before the Supreme Court’s decision.

It’s already made it tougher to prevent discrimination suits:

In one case, three women sued their employer, claiming they were unfairly demoted because of their gender.

The demotions occurred in 1990 — so the company argued the employees missed out on the statute of limitations.

But the court issued a ruling on February 2 — four days after the Ledbetter Act was signed. And, since the demotions resulted in a loss of pay that continued to the present day, the court ruled the new law applied to their lawsuit.

The judge noted that just a week earlier, the case would have been tossed on those grounds. But not anymore.

Eventually, the case was thrown out because the company proved the demotions were based on non-biased factors (Cite: Bush v. Orange Counry Corrections Dept.).

In another recent case, an employee believed he was being paid less than his colleagues based on his race and gender. He sued.

The company tried to have the case dismissed because his pay was set several years before — well outside the statute of limitations. But the judge let the case go forward, applying the Ledbetter Act to his claims (Cite: Rehman v. State University of New York at Stony Brook).

What can HR do now?

Given the law’s immediate impact, what steps can HR take now to prevent lawsuits based on decisions that occurred far in the past?

Workforce Solutions, Inc. recommends conducting a self-audit to uncover anything that could look like pay discrimination.

First, examine company policies on starting salaries and raises. Many companies don’t have a formal policy, giving individual managers wide discretion in pay decisions — which could turn out to be a liability under the new law.

Next, consider analyzing pay data to make sure no employees have been harmed by unfair decisions that violated your policy. Then, your company can remedy the situation without having to go to court.

Finally, if you feel that your company might be at risk, please contact Workforce Solutions HR department to schedule a meeting to discuss the particulars of your case.

Even experienced benefits pros can struggle to keep on top of the feds’ crazy 401(k) reporting requirements and special-case distribution rules.

Here’s how to handle four areas where people often get tripped up:

1. Year-end 401(k) enrollment

Suppose you hired an employee in late December and he enrolled immediately in the 401(k) plan.  His first contribution to the plan likely came out of a January check.

So should you count him in your 2008 plan report or wait until you file your 2009 report?

Answer: The feds say to wait until 2009 for record-keeping purposes, because he had no 2008 compensation from which he could make a salary deferral.

2. Distribution without consent

Generally speaking, you must contact a former employee for verification before making any 401(k) distribution over $5,000. But there are exceptions:

• distributions of under $5,000 made after age 65 (although best practice is to notify the retiree anyway), and
• situations where you’re unable to get current contact information for the person after at least four unsuccessful contact attempts.

In the latter case, keep in mind that your firm has limited choices for distributing the money. One legal option: transfer the money to a state unclaimed-property fund.

3. Contributions not withheld

What if an employee signs up for the 401(k) but, due to a clerical error, the money was never deducted from the person’s paycheck?

Here’s how to straighten it out: The IRS requires your firm to make the missing contribution on behalf of the employee, plus any related matching contributions.

Finally, you must also make up for any lost earnings on the money the employee intended to invest.  Bottom line: This is a very expensive mistake to fix, but once its done, your firm is back in ERISA’s good graces.

4. Small refunds

Suppose Payroll accidentally took out a little too much money. Example: The department took out an extra $10 per check for three checks before someone caught the mistake.

Are you required to issue a $30 refund to the employee? Yes.

Small-business owners focused on finding and keeping customers in a difficult economy have little time for managing human-resource functions. Here are some questions asked of Matt Peterson, C.O.O. of Workforce Solutions, Inc.. Workforce Solutions, Inc. is the leading HR Outsourcing company along the Wasatch Front and has now expanded throughout the United States. Matt Peterson helps companies with the task of managing employees.

What sort of demand are you seeing for your services?

Our clients are placing a stronger emphasis on cost reductions and cost containment without affecting their strategic plans. We have received requests to review payroll processes, employee benefit programs and overall HR processes. Most of these requests are geared toward ensuring the value of the current process. We operate as HR generalists, allowing us to provide support in all areas of HR, including payroll, benefits, workers compensation, hr legal compliance, recruiting and training.

Is outsourcing human-resources functions an enduring trend?

This is the best way to do things in this economic state. We are seeing an increase in business because people can no longer devote their own time to HR functions when they need to be focusing on growing or retaining their business. Workforce Solutions, Inc is on-site as much as our clients want us to be.

HR is one of the biggest expenses and it’s hard to find qualified employees to do what we do. Generally companies have a benefits person, a payroll person, a recruiter and an employee-relations person. We provide a single source for these functions.

How does the cost of outsourcing compare with handling these functions in-house?

We operate under a co-employment relationship with our clients. As co-employers we are able to group or client base together and thus are able to provide lower costs on Health Insurance, Workers Compensation, Unemployment Insurance, Payroll Processing and Hr Legal services then if our clients were to try and handle those functions in-house.

Are employers taking a selective approach to outsourcing, giving consultants domain over certain areas but not all HR functions?

Companies are really doing both. For some companies, outsourcing the entire function is ideal. For others, it makes sense to have help with a few areas of HR management. It just depends on the company and its needs. We help companies identify which approach would work best for them.

Employee relations must be taking a hit as employers ponder or act on staff reductions. Can outside HR expertise help?

We have a unique perspective on the situation. Sometimes it’s difficult to see all the angles when it’s your company and you are making decisions from the inside. Quite often we find we are able to offer insight and direction that helps business owners reach the right decisions.

What are the growth areas in your business?

The overall management of health-insurance programs is a major emphasis right now. We partner with clients to help with the entire process of designing a program, vendor selection and rollout of the program. Clients want to know what happens if they do something different with their health insurance. Benefits have a huge financial impact on companies.

You offer employee training. Isn’t that one of the first expenses cut when businesses face a downturn?

Frankly, quite often yes. Training is the first area to go. However, it certainly isn’t needed any less. The need to train employees is constant. Companies often suffer because they choose to cut this particular area. Again, this is an area where we can most effectively assist our clients. We are a less-expensive avenue to critical training.

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