Compensation & Benefits

Status of Health Flexible Spending Accounts, Health Reimbursement Accounts and Health Savings Accounts under the Affordable Care Act

01/22/2014

The ABCs of HRAs, FSAs and HSAs: It can be difficult to pick your way through the alphabet soup of group health plan add-ons, such as HRAs, FSAs and health savings accounts (HSAs). To help you along, this chart lists the characteristics of these accounts and how the health care reform law affects each.

Looming ACA issues in 2014: Nondiscrimination rules & Cadillac tax

01/21/2014

Employers subject to the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2015, have some complicated issues to sort out: How will yet-to-be-settled nondiscrimination rules and the looming “Cadillac tax” affect their benefits plans?

Programmers pitch ideas in ‘Shark Tank’-type competition

01/17/2014

Execs at Geneca, a Chicago-based custom software development firm, took a cue from the hit TV show “Shark Tank” to encourage its 100 employees to come up with innovative ideas. The competition—set up like a science fair—is called the “Innovation Challenge/Shark Tank.”

New employee, old debt: Is pay-back of previous Section 127 benefits taxable?

01/15/2014

Q: A new employee must now pay back money she received from her old employer as a Section 127 educational benefit. We will assume this debt as part of our hiring agreement. The hiring manager said that since this was originally a tax-free benefit, nothing is taxable. This doesn’t sound right to me. Who’s correct?

Workplace lexicon: Value-based insurance design

01/14/2014

This is the insurance industry’s lingo for a system of carrots and sticks that rewards patients for undergoing medical procedures with a good track record of success (think flu vaccines and hypertension treatment) and penalizes them for treatment of questionable value (hip-replacement surgery and many kinds of high-tech imaging, for example).

Mexico’s minimum wage up

01/14/2014

Increasing the minimum wage isn’t just a hot topic in the United States. On Jan. 1, Mexico’s minimum wage rose 3.9%, to at least 63.77 pesos—about $4.88—per day.

More small businesses might drop health benefits

01/13/2014

The Affordable Care Act probably won’t prompt many large employers to drop health insurance benefits, but small businesses are more likely to do so than they were last year, according to the National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans.

Gender Discrimination

01/11/2014

HR Law 101: Your supervisors probably understand that they can’t pay a male more than a female to perform the same job or dole out promotions only to males. What they may not appreciate are the more subtle forms that gender discrimination may take. They may not make an effort to scrutinize their decisions to uncover any entrenched patterns of discrimination and practices that discourage women from applying for promotions or asking for raises …

Tennessee interns score wage of $22 an hour

01/09/2014

College students who are lucky enough to land internships at Knoxville, Tenn.-based WeScore.com will earn $22 an hour. The Internet startup—slated to launch early this year—relies on more than a dozen University of Tennessee students to fill out its small staff.

Make sure your pay policies properly address meal breaks

01/08/2014

Paying employees for break time—or not paying them—is one of the trickiest aspects of wage-and-hour law compliance. Know your obligations!