Topic: HR News - page 4
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is in the process of amending the overtime exemption rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Currently, the FLSA provides an exemption from overtime pay for employees who meet certain tests regarding their job duties and who are paid on a salary basis at no less than $455 a week.
This new rule would dramatically increase the number of employees eligible for overtime pay by the end of 2016. Under the proposed new regulations, the threshold for exempt status would go from $23,600 per year ($455 per week) to $50,440 per year ($970 per week) – an amount in the 40th percentile of earnings for full-time salaried workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The DOL estimates that this increase in salary threshold for exempt status would affect approximately five million workers, making them eligible for overtime pay. In California alone, 420,000 workers would be affected.
Why the increase in exempt status salary?
President Obama directed the DOL to change their minimum pay for exempt status because more and more employees worked in excess of 40 hours per week for pay that would put them below the federal poverty threshold. The wage threshold hasn’t changed since 2004, which is the only time it has been updated since the 1970s. Importantly, the new regulation would also include changes to the salary threshold every year, based on wage growth and inflation.
Business today is all about leveraging the power of technology for efficiency, security and convenience. With new cloud technologies, automating your HR tasks doesn’t need to be cost-prohibitive. Instead, it can be an indispensable tool for managing your most important resource (your employees) at an efficient price and pace.
Human resources creates dozens of pieces of paper for every employee, including applications, background checks, insurance, employment and benefits forms, and post-separation forms.
Luckily, there is an answer to dealing with paper, and achieving more oversight and control over HR records. Mobile HR and cloud applications are changing the way people work – helping to alleviate the cost and time burdens of managing documents and ushering in a brand new era of data management.
Dear 2016 Presidential Candidates:
As the CEO of TriNet, I work to provide HR services for more than 12,000 U.S. small businesses and their 314,000 employees every day. I see firsthand the struggles these aspirational companies go through as they try to grow their businesses while navigating an increasingly volatile regulatory landscape. What’s even more challenging is that when they flourish, they face a heightened impact of ever-changing regulatory issues.
Whether it’s differing tax or labor laws at the federal, state and local levels, or the states’ varying degrees of Affordable Care Act implementation, there is a plethora of employment law with which they have to comply. What you perceive to be a minor tax change at the federal, state or local level may impact a small business to the tune of $20,000. This can put them out of business. Large companies can more easily absorb these unanticipated costs. These complexities skew the focus of small businesses away from successfully executing their business plans.
