Category: Archive

Beware the office full of closed doors, gossip, and behind-the-backs: Research shows that employees who work for companies with good communications are more satisfied, more productive and stay longer.

Tracking the effect of poor communications on your turnover problem starts by noticing early signs of communication breakdown such as:

• Information taking too long to reach its destination
• New information relevant to the current problem never reaching the appropriate people for action
• More committee meetings being scheduled and canceled
• Lots of closed-doors and closed-door meetings
• Employees afraid to speak their mind or object for fear of “looking bad”
• Key people on projects no longer as accessible as they once were
• Overall employee attitude is, “Things just don’t work around here any more”

To improve communications in your organization, first make sure you understand the high cost of turnover. Then, analyze exit interviews for trends indicating why people leave. Determine which trends are directly impacted by communications. Estimate the bottom-line cost of improving the situation, and then implement a plan to improve it. When done, do estimates of the cost-savings you have achieved through the communications program.

SOURCE: O’Connor Kenny Partners, Memphis, TN, April 1999.

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Issue: A medium-sized business is considering discharging one of its employees, who has been absent for 28 days and been involved in numerous altercations in the office. What can the company do to ensure that its experience-rating remains good in the event it decides to go ahead with the discharge?

Answer: Use the following checklist as a guideline for limiting state unemployment insurance liability:

• Be aware of your state’s experience-rating system.
• Understand how your account may be charged. Guard against the making of improper charges to the experience-rating record.
• Become familiar with the noncharging provisions of the UI state law. Contest improper claims lodged against your account quickly and effectively.
• Carefully check over the statement of accounts furnished by the state agency that reflects the charges on account of benefits paid to employees. Errors can be made.
• If the rate has been incorrectly determined, notify the state agency immediately.
• Do not allow unsatisfactory employees to build up base-period wage credits. This can increase the potential charges to an employer’s account in certain states.
• After hiring new employees, carefully follow their progress and dismiss them promptly if they prove unsatisfactory. The longer an inefficient employee remains employed the greater the potential charges against the company’s experience-rating record will be.
• Do not allow weeks of partial unemployment to become “waiting period” weeks. You may want to plan temporary layoffs so that the waiting week will be a week of total unemployment, thus possibly reducing the amount of benefits charged to your account.
• Give every employee who leaves a separation interview. Inquire carefully into the reasons for leaving the company or the circumstances surrounding the dismissal. Remember, in most states every employee who leaves for whatever reason may represent a future benefit charge.
• Keep accurate records concerning the circumstances surrounding an employee’s dismissal or leaving. If possible, secure a signed statement from the employee as to the reasons for leaving.
• Notify the separating employee at the time of separation of his or her rights to unemployment insurance. You should also stress your intention to protest any unjustified claim that the worker might later file.
• Carefully check and reply where necessary to all notices concerning benefit claims, benefit charges, rate determinations, or requests for separation information.
• In supplying separation information, you should use the form supplied by the state agency rather than writing a letter. Include the exact reasons for the separation, giving the facts accurately and completely.
• File reports and pay contributions on time. Many states deny experience rates to employers that are delinquent in filing reports and/or paying contributions.
• Estimate the effect of future charges to your account. Very often, one benefit charge may be sufficient to throw the employer into a different, higher rate classification.
• Preclude employees from receiving unemployment benefits if they are receiving any other form of compensation from the company.

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.

Here are four pointers on giving feedback that is correct, balanced and appropriate.

1. Remember, your credibility is on the line.
   Every time you give a person accurate feedback, you have an opportunity to build trust. If you don’t do it right, you lose trust.
2. In preparing to give feedback, stop and reflect on the content of the feedback.
   Do you really understand the situation? Are your sources reliable? Are they double-checked?
3. Balance praise and criticism.
   When you are giving criticism, don’t forget that the employee is often working very hard and making many valuable contributions. Mention them first. Also, focus on the performance, not the person or the personality.
4. Refine and rehearse your message.
   If it’s written feedback, do a first draft, and then come back in a couple days and revisit it. If it’s verbal, repeat it to yourself at least once before delivering it.

SOURCE: Bruce Tulgan, RainmakerThinking, Inc.

Issue: An employee of your company who recently had a new home built owes money to the general contractor, who has commenced with garnishment proceedings in order to collect the debt. Your company has received the wage deduction order, but to complicate things the employee is challenging the amount of the order. How should you proceed toward processing the wage deduction?

Answer: Follow these guidelines for procedures that employers should follow each time a wage deduction order is processed:

• Read the order as soon as it is received.
• Provide the employee with a copy of the wage deduction order. (Note that the employer may not be legally required to do so.)
• Determine the purpose of the wage deduction order. In other words, is this a tax levy, child support order, debt, etc.?
• Determine what portion of the employee’s wages may be exempt from the order.
• Determine in what priority multiple orders (if any) against the same employee must be satisfied.
• Answer the wage deduction order as stated on the face of the order or as required by state law.
• Withhold from the employee’s wages the amount required by the order. Begin to withhold based upon the order, even if the employee is currently challenging the legitimacy and/or amount of the order.

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.

Issue: A payroll professional has several responsibilities when a new employee is hired. Most importantly, a determination must be made whether to treat the new hire as an employee or an independent contractor. An employer-employee relationship will give rise to employment tax obligations. In addition, new-hire reporting requirements and employment verification requirements under federal immigration law must be complied with. What should you do, as a payroll professional, upon the hiring of a new employee?

Step 1: Determine if the new employee is classified as an employee or an independent contractor for employment tax purposes.

• Determine if the worker is classified as an “employee” by the IRS.
• Use the 20-factor “Right to Control” test to assess the worker’s status if it does not fall within statutory rules.
• Review Sec. 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 to see if the worker falls within the “safe harbor” rules, which do not allow the IRS to challenge the status of workers as independent contractors.

Step 2: Have the new hire fill out Form W-4.

• Record the employee’s name and social security card number exactly the same as they appear on the employee’s social security card.
• If the employee has neither a social security number nor a receipt indicating that he has applied for one, ask for a dated and signed written statement containing the employee’s name, address, gender, and date and place of birth.
• If the employee has not given you a social security number, you must request it, stating that it is required by law.
• If an employee fills out an invalid W-4 and refuses to fill out a new one, you must withhold from the employee as if he or she were single, claiming no exemptions.

Step 3: Comply with new-hire reporting requirements.

• For each new hire, the following must be submitted to the appropriate state agency:

1. the newly hired employee’s name, address, social security number; and
2. the employer’s name, address, and federal EIN number.

Additional information may be required based on state law.

• New-hire information may be submitted via first class mail, by fax, electronically, or using magnetic media. Methods of data transmission differ by state. If sent by mail, new-hire reports must be submitted within 20 days of the date of hire. Reports submitted electronically or magnetically must be submitted twice a month, and not fewer than 12 days or more than 16 days apart.

Step 4: Comply with employment verification requirements.

• Have employees fill out their portion of Form I-9 when they begin work.
• Check documents establishing employees’ identities and eligibility to work.
• Complete the employer portion of Form I-9.
• Retain I-9 Forms for at least three years or until one year after an employee leaves employment, whichever is later.

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.

If you have an e-mail, Internet, or voice-mail policy, you may want to include in it a clause that reminds employees you have the right to review such communication tools. Here is a sample clause you may want to use as a starting point.

Because e-mail, voice mail and Internet access are business tools provided by the Company to employees for business purposes, the Company reserves the right to access and review employees’ e-mail and voice-mail messages and Internet activity. In addition, the Company in its discretion may disclose the contents of e-mail and voice-mail messages and Internet activity when it determines that there is a business or other appropriate reason to do so. All e-mail and voice-mail messages and records of Internet activity are also subject to backup or other form of electronic storage or reproduction.

Employees are not permitted to access the e-mail or voice mail or Internet activity of any other employee without the approval of that employee or the approval of a Company supervisor or manager, unless there is a pressing business reason to do so.

SOURCE: Brown & Bain, P.A., Phoenix, AZ, April 13, 1999.

Issue: A pregnant part-time employee has refused your requests to return to a full-time schedule. Your company is about to embark on a significant and lucrative new project. Several new employees have been hired and her return to full-time work would round out the number of employees needed to complete the project. The employee explains that she has commitments to her children and a graduate program she enrolled in at the local college. Her supervisor has tried to sway her by offering to fill in for her one afternoon a week so she can leave early for her classes. She still refuses, despite being told that she will be terminated if she does not agree to return to a full-time schedule. You issue a written notice of termination and select a full-time worker to replace her. The employee claims you only fired her because of her pregnancy. What now?

Answer: You were aware of the employee’s pregnancy and the likelihood of an upcoming request for maternity leave. However, you can show that the employee was terminated because she refused to work on a full-time schedule when she was needed. Although she could argue that she was offered an opportunity you knew she would refuse so you could fire her, there are several factors which could prevent her from proceeding.

Prior accommodation.
It’s undisputed that your company has never denied any employee maternity or paternity leave. You didn’t oppose the employee’s previous maternity leaves and, after she returned to work, she wasn’t punished for having taken maternity leave. In fact, you granted her request to work on a part-time schedule so she could spend more time with her family.

Significant new project.
Your company is about to begin an important new project and had specifically hired several new employees for this project. The employee was deemed important enough to the project that you requested she return to a full-time schedule. It was clear you needed an individual working full-time in her position because the day the employee was discharged, you selected a replacement who was already working full-time and immediately started looking for someone to fill that worker’s position.

Reasons for refusing full-time schedule.
The employee was not prevented from returning to a full-time schedule by any disability associated with her pregnancy. Part of the reason the employee refused to return to a full-time schedule was due to her participation in a graduate program. She turned down the request for full-time work even after her supervisor offered to cover for her one afternoon a week.

Inference that discharge was due to pregnancy unlikely.
Although the employee could possibly establish a prima facie case because she was pregnant and qualified for her job at the time of her termination, it is unlikely that a court would infer from these facts that the employee was fired in order to avoid giving her maternity leave. The employer was able to clearly demonstrate that the employee previously had been accommodated for pregnancy; that an important new project was about begin and the employee was considered important enough to repeatedly seek her to return to a full-time schedule; and that part of her refusal to return to a full-time schedule was due to her own agenda stemming from her participation at a local college.

Cite: Gleklen v Democratic Congressional Campaign Comm, Inc (DDC 1999) 75 EPD P45,774.

SOURCE: CCH Incorporated is a leading provider of information and software for human resources, legal, accounting, health care and small business professional. CCH offers human resource management, payroll, employment, benefits, and worker safety products and publications in print, CD, online, and via the Internet.

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.