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Compensation & Benefits

How do we decide whether we need to pay for responding to off-duty phone calls?

02/23/2011
Q. We would like to require employees in one of our departments to promptly answer their company-provided cell phones even when they are away from work. If we impose this rule, do we have to pay these employees around the clock?

Should we pay for training time?

02/23/2011
Q. Occasionally, we offer in-house training and development programs for our employees. The training is strictly voluntary and isn’t conducted during normal working hours. Our company has never paid employees for the time spent attending such training. Is that legal?

Health care workers at five hospitals ratify new contract

02/23/2011
More than 2,700 staffers at five hospitals run by Hospital Corporation of America will get pay raises following ratification of a new contract by members of the United Healthcare Workers-West (UHW) union.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Raises for Chronicle workers!

02/23/2011
Increases of any kind are rare in the newspaper business these days. Thus, it was big news late last year when the San Francisco Chronicle and the California Media Workers Guild agreed to a two-year contract that increased wages for some employees as much as 5% and added benefits, too.

Provide wage statements to all employees–even if they can’t give a Social Security number

02/23/2011

Under California law, all employees must receive regular wage statements. Employers that “inadvertently” fail to provide pay information might get away with it, but they shouldn’t count on it. Recently, the Court of Appeal of California considered the meaning of “inadvertently” and upheld penalties assessed against an employer that classified workers as independent contractors when they could not provide Social Security numbers.

What keeps HR awake at night?

02/22/2011
Rising health care costs, implementing the new health care reforms, rapidly changing business and labor markets, growing regulatory complexity and managing the aging workforce top the list of challenges HR pros face. That’s what the Society for Human Resource Management found when it surveyed more than 9,000 practitioners.

Make the independent contractor vs. employee decision before you bring person on board

02/22/2011
Make sure you make the employee-or-contractor call before you hire an employee. Don’t assume you can make the designation later. That usually won’t work. And you probably won’t even discover the problem until it’s too late to fix it—when a terminated worker files an overtime lawsuit.

Employees win $15,000 for wellness screening

02/22/2011
Two employees of Virginia-based coal supplier Alpha Natural Resources won $15,000 each for participating in an employer-sponsored wellness screening. Last year, the company began offering prize money to encourage employees to participate. Everyone who volunteered for the screening was eligible to win.

Can workers use FMLA and sick leave back-to-back?

02/16/2011
Q. One of our employees thinks she will need about five months off for medical treatment. She wants to use her accumulated vacation and sick time and then go on FMLA leave. Do I have to allow this?

Florida sued over floating minimum wage calculations

02/14/2011
In 2004, state voters approved linking the minimum wage to inflation. All went well for a few years, but now a lawsuit says the state got the math wrong two years ago.