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Compensation & Benefits

Does birth order affect your earning potential?

04/27/2009

The baby of the family may get the most attention, but the oldest gets the cash. That’s the message of a CareerBuilder survey that found employees who were firstborn in their families were more likely to earn $100,000 or more annually compared to their siblings.

Staples gets nailed for breaking overtime law

04/27/2009

A federal jury in Newark has awarded $2.5 million in damages to 343 sales managers employed by office superstore Staples. The court determined the retailer misclassified the managers as exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act when they were not.

Labor Department sues Pennsylvania benefits firm

04/22/2009

Bridgeport-based employee benefits firm Penn-Mont faces charges from the U.S. Department of Labor claiming the company failed to pay full death benefits to the families of deceased employees covered under its plans.

Plymouth House nursing home slammed for ‘bad faith’

04/22/2009

A federal jury has awarded $74,000 to Melissa Brown, a former food service director at Plymouth House nursing home in Plymouth Meeting, after the contractor employing her dismissed her when she sought maternity leave. But that was just the beginning …

How often can we request medical information from a chronically absent employee?

04/22/2009

Q. If an employee constantly calls in sick because of migraine headaches, how can we verify the real reason for the absences? Can we ask for information each time the employee is absent?

Vacation, PTO and unexpected Saturday work: How should we pay?

04/22/2009

Q. We have a nonexempt salaried employee who normally works Monday through Friday. We pay her biweekly. She took a weeklong vacation, which normally would come out of her paid time off (PTO) bank. We had a customer emergency and called her into work on the Saturday of her vacation week. How should we pay her? …

How can we legally handle paychecks when employees use designees for pickup?

04/22/2009

Q. Once a year, we have employees show a picture ID and provide a signature that allows them to authorize someone else to pick up their paychecks for them. If an employee doesn’t provide ID and a signature, we will mail the check or hold it until he or she personally picks it up. Is this legal?

Turnabout is fair pay: EEOC broke overtime law

04/22/2009

An arbitrator has ruled that the EEOC willfully violated the Fair Labor Standards Act by forcing employees to take comp time instead of overtime pay when they worked more than 40 hours a week. The EEOC will be liable for back pay, plus liquidated damages that so far haven’t been determined.

Street Smarts: Your peers weigh in with 5 real-world comp & benefits solutions

04/21/2009

Try these practical, workplace-proven compensation and benefits tips to recognize employees and save time and money.

Turn Gen Y’s ‘unreasonable’ requests into a negotiating tool

04/21/2009

The two biggest comp and benefits myths about Generation Y employees—your youngest workers—are that they don’t care about money … and that they care only about money. They want more than that. In fact, they want way more. Use their demands as a negotiating tool, and watch the productivity of these young, tech-savvy go-getters soar in response.