Author: Site Staff

Recently, Ron Rosenberg of QualityTalk was telling the story of his trip to the airport to exchange some tickets. The trip was the culmination of a series of very frustrating phone calls and a trip to the city ticket office that unfortunately was closed that weekend.

Ron had wasted an incredible amount of time exchanging tickets, and, needless to say, was in a bad mood as he left the airport.

He stopped at the parking lot toll window and handed the clerk his ticket. She put it in the slot to be read; and in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, said “That will be $75 and you¹ll have to give me your credit card too.”

As Ron was just about to grab his credit card out of his wallet, her words finally registered. “What?” his mind screamed. “The fee should only be 75 cents!” He got a puzzled look on his face, and as he turned back to look at her, noticed that she had a huge grin on her face. He started to smile too as she chuckled and said, “Made ya smile!”

They say comedy is all about timing, and this humor came at a time when he was most tense.

Interviews are another one of those times, and livening them up by making a joke or cracking a smile once in a while won’t hurt. If you do it enough, it will be contagious, spreading throughout the rest of your day, and the rest of your employees’ days.

SOURCE: © 1999 QualityTalk. All Rights Reserved. Ron Rosenberg, President, QualityTalk, 800-260-0662, www.qualitytalk.com

Why do you think the best employees leave: More money? More of a challenge? A better chance to move up the ladder?

Yes, all of the above. But many employees leave because of bad managers, or overly critical managers. They don’t like working for them, so they quit.

This is true whether you’re at a hotel, a retail store, or at a high-tech outfit (it’s been studied). Train your managers to treat employees well, and you’ll see an improvement in your retention figures.

SOURCE: From a speech by John Sullivan, San Francisco State University, at a conference on Recruiting & Hiring in a Tight Labor Market: New Practices in Recruitment & Selection, May 5-6, 1999.

SIMPLE 401(k)s are designed to be cheaper for employers to sponsor than traditional 401(k)s because employers aren’t required to satisfy complex nondiscrimination rules that apply to traditional 401(k) plans.

SIMPLE 401(k) plans have been available to employers since 1997. They were created under the Small Business Job Protection Act. The IRS considered the creation of SIMPLE plans to be the most important provision of the Small Business Job Protection Act.

Can any employer set up a SIMPLE 401(k) plan?
No. Congress designed the SIMPLE 401(k) to address the needs of small employers. Only employers that employ 100 or fewer employees who earned at least $5,000 in compensation during the prior year and that do not maintain other qualified plans may adopt SIMPLE 401(k) plans.

What does “SIMPLE” stand for?
The acronym “SIMPLE” stands for Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees.

How much can employees contribute to a SIMPLE 401(k)?
The maximum salary reduction contribution is $6,000. Note that this dollar maximum is less than the dollar limit on salary deferrals under traditional 401(k) plans, which is $10,000 in 1999. In addition to the dollar limit on salary reduction contributions, a separate limit applies to all contributions to an employee’s account in a SIMPLE 401(k), as in a regular 401(k) plan. The limit in 1999 is the lesser of 25 percent of an employee’s compensation, or $30,000.

Are employer matching contributions discretionary?
No. An employer under a SIMPLE 401(k) plan is generally required to match employee deferrals on a dollar-for-dollar basis, up to a limit of 3 percent of the employee’s compensation for the entire calendar year.

Can employers design the SIMPLE 401(k) to defer vesting?
No. In a SIMPLE 401(k) plan, all contributions, including both employer and employee contributions, are fully vested and nonforfeitable when made.

Source: CCH Incorporated is a leading provider of information and software for human resources, legal, accounting, health care and small business professionals. CCH offers human resource management, payroll, employment, benefits, and worker safety products and publications in print, CD, online and via the Internet. For more information and other updates on the latest HR news, check our Web site at http://hr.cch.com.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion.

When heavy computer usage is involved, your employees’ eyes may be the first thing to go.

One study found that in 1991, about one of every seven eye-doctor visits were for computer-related problems. Certainly, that number has increased through the decade.

What kinds of monitors are best at reducing glare?

Well, the University of California at Berkeley researchers recently completed a study to see if computer monitors with vacuum-deposit thin film coatings reduce glare better than uncoated or standard-coated monitors. The profs found that such monitors indeed work better (a 15 times glare reduction vs. 4-8 times for spin coating).

Employees with those kind of monitors were found to perform visual tasks considerably faster and more accurately on these displays than on either uncoated or standard-coated (spin) displays.

The study was funded by Viratec, maker of the monitors deemed to be the best. Nevertheless, it’s a good reminder to at least do a little extra research when choosing a monitor and see which one can best keep the doctor away.

SOURCE: Apogee Enterprises, Inc., Minneapolis, September 1999, and James E. Sheedy, a professor at Berkeley.

It’s important to use demographic characteristics when considering where you’re going to go hunting for employees.

Cisco Systems, now one of the most prominent technical companies in the world, goes to beer festivals as well as home and garden festivals. They figure their demographic targets like micro-brewed beers, so they go to where the targets are.

McDonald’s likes to get applicants who like their restaurants, so they put applications on meal trays. Other companies know their employees attend football games, so they recruit at the stadium.

A corollary: consider benefits that your demographic targets will be interested in. Cisco found out that day care was extremely important to its employees. As a result, they put video cameras in child-care centers so that parents could occasionally make sure their little ones were OK. They also gave grandparents computers so that they could check on their grandchildren via the Internet.

That’s not something every company can do, but it does help reinforce the importance of figuring out exactly who you want to attract to the organization, and then tailoring your benefits and recruiting accordingly.

SOURCE: From a speech by John Sullivan, San Francisco State University, at a conference on Recruiting & Hiring in a Tight Labor Market: New Practices in Recruitment & Selection, May 5-6, 1999.

Issue: You have an employee who has worked for at least 12 months, and in the 12 months prior to leave he worked more than 1,250 hours. Since, during his leave, he was hospitalized for inpatient treatment of depression and alcoholism, he satisfied the requirement that he had to have a serious health condition. Thus, his absences qualified as Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave.

Two doctors released the employee to return to work without any restrictions to prevent him from performing the essential functions of his job. Both doctors supplied the required information. The employee contacted you and asked that he be restored to the position he held when his leave began, but you deny his request. Did you violate the FMLA by failing to restore the employee to his former or an equivalent position?

Answer: Yes. The overall scheme of the FMLA is to protect an employee’s job while he or she is on leave occasioned by a serious health condition, and to protect the employee’s medical privacy by having the employer deal with the employee’s own health care provider first. The right of job restoration is a substantive statutory right that is guaranteed to eligible employees by the FMLA-unless the employee is unable to perform an essential function of his/her position.

What you should know:

1. In order for an employee to prove that he was entitled to recover on a job restoration claim, he must show that:

• during his absences, he was eligible for FMLA leave;
• he took a leave for the intended purpose of FMLA leave; and
• he sought to be restore to his former or an equivalent position, and that the employer denied, restrained or interfered with his/her right to restoration.

1. The right of restoration is a substantive statutory right guaranteed to eligible employees by the FMLA. As such, it cannot easily be diminished or taken away by a collective bargaining agreement. Congress specifically explained its intent behind the references to a CBA in the FMLA. The statute provides that nothing in the FMLA shall be construed to diminish the obligation of the employer to comply with any collective bargaining agreement … that provides greater family and medical leave rights to employees than the rights established in the FMLA. Similarly, it states that the rights established in the FMLA shall not be diminished by any collective bargaining agreement or any employment benefit program.
2. The FMLA regulations have articulated an exception to the reinstatement requirement, which is that if the employee is unable to perform an essential function of the job, then there is no right of restoration. An employer who raises this exception to an employee’s substantive right has the burden of proving it.

Cite: Thomas A. Routes v. William Henderson, Postmaster of the United States Postal Service, (SD Ind 1999) 139 LC 33,934.

Source: CCH Incorporated is a leading provider of information and software for human resources, legal, accounting, health care and small business professionals. CCH offers human resource management, payroll, employment, benefits, and worker safety products and publications in print, CD, online and via the Internet. For more information and other updates on the latest HR news, check our Web site at http://hr.cch.com.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide useful information on the topic covered, but should not be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion.

A recent study of 1,000 young employees from 73 nations found that companies may not be delivering on the things that matter most to these folks.

In fact, 40% of the respondents said they’ll leave their company with two years; 7% plan on staying five years or more; and 73% have recently been approached about another job offer.

These employees may not have the same needs as you think, so you’ll have to ask them what motivates them to stick around. But some general suggestions follow:

• Offer international assignments. Most employees are willing to work abroad, and the more they do it, the more they like it.
• Offer good information on internal job openings—they may not realize they have a promising future in house.
• Help them with career planning and personal development. They’ll want to know what skills they need, and how to acquire them.
• Make short-term partnerships with non-core employees or contractors, and longer-term growth arrangements with a core group of key workers.

Finally, remember the old paradox: The more you do to make people more employable, the more they’ll want to stay working for you.

Source: Whiteway Research International, England, 1999.

You’re probably using Yahoo to find things online. But are you Yahooing to find the job candidates you need?

Here’s the best way to do so:

1. Click on “Jobs” on the home page. It’s under the “Business and Economy” heading.
2. In the search box, type in the word “resumes.”
3. Click on “individual resumes” in the industry of your choice (the other categories besides “individuals” will give you staffing companies and such).

You now have lists of job candidates, and can check out their resumes individually.

SOURCE: Workforce Online Editor Todd Raphael.

Right Management Consultants, based in Philadelphia, asked senior executives in 179 organizations to rank their success in a Merger or Acquisition on a scale from one to five.

The following results show the percentage of people who had clear success doing the item referenced. Clear success is understood in this case to mean the execs marked a four or a five, indicating they were “very successful” or “extremely successful.” in doing the item listed.

SOURCE: Right Management Consultants, Philadelphia, 1999.

This weekend a friend told me about a “Stone Soup” comic strip he read. In the first frame, a dog was pictured running after a ball, while a caption showed the dog’s thoughts: “Ball! Ball! Ball!”

In the second frame, the dog ran after food, with the caption showing the dog thinking “Food! Food! Food.”

In the third frame, a young boy turned to his mother, and asked, “What’s the secret to life?” She wasn’t sure, but the dog was.

“Simplify,” the dog thought to himself.

Certainly, life can be a bit more complicated than just a tennis ball and a dog dish. But focusing on the things most simple—and most important—to you can improve your outlook.

SOURCE: Workforce Online Editor Todd Raphael.