Year and Guide for HR Leaders

Either bonus type increases the total wages an employee receives and you should double check withholding criteria for the money you pay. But non-discretionary bonuses could have further implications on nonexempt hourly workers and overtime calculations. See this IRS article for more information on taxable situations. 

The most secure and scalable way to send bonus checks would be through an HRIS system where payroll admins can select bonus amounts per employee and issue deposits through employees’ existing direct deposit accounts. This automatically withholds taxes appropriate for each employee type, and also renders employees’ whereabouts moot. 

For companies without an HRIS system, or who issue paper checks, the situation can be more time consuming. Once you have the amount to be included in your bonus pay, and have calculated and manually subtracted and paid your employer income taxes, you’ll need to issue a net new check or add the amount to the employees normal wages and ship it to your employees’ address. Try to deliver those checks before any company announcements regarding bonuses are made so that those receiving or expecting bonuses aren’t worried. 

• Holiday parties, dinners, or get-togethers have been a sure fire way of bringing people together in positive ways. But what if your employees are remote? Or what if your workforce is SO distributed that you live and work in different states or countries?
• Here are a few helpful ways our People Operation leaders at TriNet shared to drive engagement around the holidays:

Be inclusive and recognize all holidays represented by your workforce.

Ask employees to share their holiday or religious ceremony pertinent to the end of the year. Gather those holidays and descriptions together and share them more broadly across the organization. Share at an all hands meeting, or in a shared Google Slides deck. This is a great way to support your entire team.

Set up Zoom calls that don’t require people to be sitting in front of their desks.

Zoom meetings. We hear you “Ugh. You’re over them!” But Zoom, or other video conference providers, are still useful in providing ways for people to share facial expressions, ideas, and camaraderie when working distantly. But to make it more fun for the holidays, take the pressure off! Ask employees to join a holiday gathering, but don’t require them to be sitting down and attentive. Allow them to just have the camera turned on while people are at home doing normal things. More like how families sometimes use Facetime. Walking around the house with cameras on, pulling people into the kitchen as you fix up your favorite Holiday Mai Tai.

Host an in-person gathering anyway!

Maybe not all employees can attend an in-person gathering, but there’s really nothing that beats in-person fun. Accept that remote employees have unique benefits like less commute time, and local or in-person employees have the unique benefits of being able to attend in-person meetings. You don’t need to adjust for the worst case scenario to be inclusive. Instead, celebrate the diversity of what it means to be an employee in the various ways people choose to participate with work, these days.

To keep your Year End data secure, it’s smart to consider sending sensitive info via encrypted email.
This is getting easier to do, but will depend on your email provider. We will cover how to encrypt your email in three of the biggest email providers here: Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail.

Outlook

Outlook offers easy email encryption when email senders are ready to send their content. They literally have a button called “Encrypt” which ensures that all contents of the email are converted from readable plain text into scrambled cipher text. Only designated recipients of the email may read its contents. Here is their step-by-step guide to setting up encryption and using it on Outlook email.

Gmail

Gmail offers a confidential service on its emails that allows senders to specify if and when emails expire. Recipients will not be able to copy, print, forward, or download messages and the email will disappear upon its expiration date. You can also password protect these messages via a second-authentication SMS code. Here is Google’s step-by-step guide for sending confidential emails.

Apple Mail

Apple Mail has two services: signed mail and encrypted mail, both of which provide security measures to protect sensitive information. To send an encrypted email, both sender and receiver must have a personal certificate in their keychains. When an email is delivered, it will be designated as encrypted with an icon, but unless both parties have the correct “keys” Apple Mail will fail to decrypt the contents. Emails sent this way are read only. Here is Apple’s guide to encrypted emails.

Communicating important company information is key to transparent culture. But it’s imperative that sensitive data remain confidential and safe.

Goal-setting is a known tactic to fuel productivity. One Harvard Business Review study showed that of those surveyed, 84% had no specific goals at all; 13% had goals but they were not committed to paper; 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them.

The 3% with clearly written goals were earning 10X as much as those without goals, and the 13% with goals (but unwritten) were earning 2X as much as those without goals. 

This isn’t the only goal-setting study that demonstrates the effectiveness of goal-setting on outcomes. But you’re wondering how to go about setting goals through the Year End and onto the New Year.