Although the recession hit the global economy very hard, the business environment survived the impact, but many employee benefits have become as endangered as pandas, cheetahs, elephants and many other living species threatened with extinction. According to various studies, U.S. employers eliminated an average of as many as five major employee benefits during 2009.

You may or may not have eliminated the following benefits, but many companies have to survive until the economy becomes robust again.

1.     Luxury Perks: Executives and many other employees certainly enjoyed the free limo service to and from the airport, high-priced client dinners and rewards programs that included paid vacations and expensive electronic toys; however, this is one benefit that many experts think will never return.

2.     Pension Plans: This benefit had been virtually eliminated before the recession of 2009, so that event only reduced the number of plans further. In fact, studies show that only 21% of private-sector employees have defined-benefit pensions today. Most employers have replaced pension plans with 401(k)s and other retirement programs.

3.     401(k) Employer Match: This was one of the few cash-flow-reduction strategies available to employers during the recession. One research group reported that 34% of U.S. employers had reduced or eliminated their matching contributions during the period April 2008 – March 2009. It was a double-whammy for employees; their employers’ contribution to 401(k)s plummeted at the same time the weakened stock market shrank employees’ retirement accounts.

4.     Salaries, Raises and Bonuses: This is one “species” of employee benefits that many experts expect to survive, and even thrive, once the economy rebounds, although a 2099 employment trend survey indicated that more than half the companies surveyed had to cut or lock salaries. During the recession and the recovery period (which will include all of 2010 and probably much of 2011), many employees have had and will have to be content with just having a job.

5.     Educational Tuition Support: The 2009 survey of an educational group revealed that only 29% of U.S. employers offered tuition reimbursement or scholarships to recent M.B.A. graduates. Thirty-seven percent received that support during 2008. This is another double-whammy for employees (and at least a single for employers), since they can’t improve their knowledge either to qualify for advancement and a higher wage/salary with their employers or be better prepared than their competitors in the labor market if they become unemployed. Employers may have had to cut this assistance, but it doesn’t help further the education of their workforce, so it can be more productive and efficient.

6.     Holiday Parties: According to recent trends and the experts, this employee benefit is likely to go the way of the dinosaurs at many companies—never to return! While 87% of companies hosted holiday parties during 2006, the number dwindled to 81% for 2009; and another 15% said there wouldn’t be parties during 2010.

Of course, many of these employee benefits are more important and marginally necessary than others; others are nice, but unnecessary. (The expensive wining and dining of a client to “influence” him or her to sign a contract is no longer very effective.) Employers and employees must both be patient during the recovery period, and then re-assess which employee benefits will continue or be re-instituted.

With the passage of the health care reform legislation, employers and employees are faced with a number of health insurance benefits challenges. Employees fear that their employers will decide that they can save money if they eliminate coverage, pay the penalty, as prescribed by the new law, and expect employees to buy health insurance on the individual market. According to some experts and current research, however, the great majority of companies will not drop or reduce health insurance coverage.

In many cases, employers will choose to maintain health-insurance benefits for their employees, but how they justify that decision is based on a rather complicated calculation and specifics of the new law. Although the penalty is termed an “employer penalty” under the new law, in fact, employees are more likely to “pay” the cost.

As any economist will tell you, the number of employees working for any particular company is based on total compensation costs—wages, benefits, etc. Employers then create compensation packages according to what workers want. For example, a company with an above-average number of young female employees will probably offer various maternity-related benefits. That same economist will also state that as the cost of health care (or any) benefits increases, the amount available for wages or other compensation decreases. The opposite is also true: less dollars spent on benefits is more dollars for wages and, to remain competitive, most employers must maximize the wages they offer.

That leads to a somewhat complicated decision for employers: Does the penalty plus the additional wages employees will need to buy health insurance on the open market cost less than providing employees with full coverage (but at a lower wage)? The complication doesn’t end there, however. Remember, whatever a company contributes to the cost of employees’ insurance coverage is not taxable income, so the tax savings is also a factor in the calculation. Read the rest of this entry

Although the U.S. Supreme Court rules on specific, individual cases argued before it, those rulings can have far-reaching implications for employers and employees in a similar circumstance. That is exactly what could happen in a recent case about an Orlando, California police officer who is charging that his privacy rights were violated when the police chief read thousands of very personal messages the officer texted to his girlfriend. In addition, the police officer had paid for the extra minutes he used.

Two years previously, a lower court ruled that the police chief had no legitimate reason to view those personal messages. The judge’s decision was based on the 4^th Amendment’s unreasonable-search language. Now, the case has proceeded to the U.S. Supreme Court where the judges will be asked for the first time to determine if the right to privacy includes employees’ emails, cell phones and other personal communication devices used during work hours.

During the original case, before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the attorney representing the city of Orlando argued that it’s policy was distributed to all city employees, including the police officer. It states that employees’ pagers, computers, etc. could be monitored. The police officer’s attorney counter-argued that any employee expects some level of privacy when calling a family member, for example, even on a company’s phone system.

A broad ruling that would favor the rights of employers to monitor employees’ personal communications could affect most workplaces. The court could also focus on the specifics of the police officer’s case and decide that someone in his position (a SWAT officer) should not expect complete privacy, since it is routine for officers’ communications to be monitored and reviewed following the commitment of crimes to which they responded.

Writing or talking about corporate, business or workplace “culture” is easy, but it’s a difficult concept for many employers to grasp—literally—because it’s an intangible and doesn’t clearly register on the senses. As true as that might be, the 21^st-century employer is faced with certain facts that require him or her to make the company’s culture more tangible and inviting to employees, so more of them (especially the important and productive ones) are retained longer.

First, the national average length of employment is approximately one and a half years per job. Part of the reason is that employees are prepared to change jobs if their current employers don’t create a culture in which workers recognize an effort to provide choice, balance, development and care. Second, every labor study suggests the available workforce will significantly shrink during the next ten years as Baby Boomers retire. A third fact is that employee retention can no longer be considered a function of the rises and falls in the economy. Progressive companies must make retention a long-term, strategic goal.

Small-business owners are particularly vulnerable because rapid turnover, especially if it occurs during a short period of time, can disrupt sales, productivity and customer service so much as to endanger the very existence of the business. Read the rest of this entry

When the federal Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (HIRE) became law, its purpose was to provide tax incentives to employers to hire more of the high number of unemployed. Employers (including nonprofit organizations) will be exempt from paying their share of Social Security taxes on wages paid from March 19 through Dec. 31 for new employees hired after Feb. 3, 2010. An important fine-print point is that, to qualify, those new hires must have worked 40 hours or less during the 60 days prior to their hire date. Employers also receive a $1,000 credit on their business income tax returns if they keep the new employees for at least one year.

Despite the best of intentions to help the unemployed, business owners and the general economy, the HIRE Act may offer incentives that won’t result in more employers hiring more employees. According to one small-business owner, his decision to hire more workers is not dependent on what he characterized as a “little kickback” from the government. Even as a small-business owner, he clearly understands that labor is also a commodity, and is ruled by the law of supply-and-demand.

A spokesperson for a huge global company echoed that thinking when she also stated that the HIRE Act wouldn’t have much effect on the company’s hiring practices. She said the volume of work is what drives the need to hire more workers. She added that the company is much more likely to expand its workforce because of retirements and typical employee turnover.

Of course, the federal government’s best intentions also include additional information that must be provided by employers on a revised W-2 tax withholding form and the new W-11 form, which eligible employees must complete, so employers can claim the benefit.

It seems that everyone has a cell phone; and, according to one industry report, more than 90 percent of your employees have them. Just because cell phones are virtually ubiquitous doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an employee cell-phone-use policy.

For some companies, safety is the paramount benefit: drivers and delivery personnel being involved in accidents because they were on their cell phones. For other employers, it’s the protection of sensitive data and the bottom line as well as the company’s image that make an employee cell-phone policy so important. There are also Internal Revenue Service considerations, such as what cell phone expenses employees can charge to their employers and who may claim those expenses as deductions.

Most experts agree that your first step to create fair and manageable cell-phone policy is to invite staff members from various departments to participate: technology as the technical phone experts, attorney who understands the legal ramifications, and department managers who know which employees need cell phones for safety reasons or to be highly productive.

Together, you should be able to develop an excellent cell-phone policy if you include:

• The company goals that could be affected, such as closer management of workers in the field, improved productivity and quick access to critical data and information.
• To which cell phones the policy applies: personal (during work hours only), company-issued (always), etc.
• Comprehensively and clearly stated legal and safety issues.
• Cell-phone etiquette.
• Possible disciplinary action when the policy is violated.

Cell phones are too integrated into our modern culture to think they can be banned from the workplace entirely (although there a few extreme examples when that is necessary). Every employer should have a clear employee-use policy, however, so there are no misunderstandings, allowing cell phones to serve both employers and employees within a balanced framework.

The findings of a spring 2010 Robert Half survey reveals that many of the respondents (chief information officers) are troubled at how much social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, distract employees during the workday. This has led to 38 percent of those surveyed stating that they have implemented stricter rules relating to employees’ access to social network sites during the workday. The new survey as well as a similar Robert Half survey in October 2009 found that the number of CIOs with policies that don’t allow any access to social network sites has remained same at a bit more than 50%.

Twenty-three percent of the CIOs in the survey said their policies specifically limit personal use, but more of them relaxed the rules when it comes to using social networks for business purposes; only 15 percent of CIOs instituted more restrictive business-use policies.

“There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to social-networking policies,” said Dave Willmer, executive director of Robert Half Technology, in a statement. “To be effective, guidelines should include input from stakeholders throughout the organization, including IT, legal, human resources, marketing, public relations and front-line employees.”

Employers of any size company are faced with this dilemma because social networks are legitimate business tools, and their importance is only growing. Wasting time tweeting with friends and families is wasted productivity, but employers must also be aware that the casual nature of social networking sites could make it easy for employees to share company information unconsciously (or consciously) that should be protected. That means social networking policies must be comprehensive and very specific, so there are no misunderstandings about what is and is not permitted.

Economic pressures during the last two years have forced employers to freeze or reduce employee benefits. According to a recent Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) survey, employee benefits have decreased at 60 percent of the companies participating in the survey. Some forward-thinking employees, however, have decided to pay employees’ commuter costs as a proactive benefits strategy. There is evidence that doing so can improve a company’s financial picture, help balance employees’ family budgets and contribute to a greener world.

Many of those progressive employers base their decision on the conclusions of a recent white paper. It was prepared by a Web-based business that advises employers how to cut their taxes when they include employees’ commuter costs in their benefits packages. The white paper results include interesting data and recommendations that will help employers understand and justify this additional benefit.

• An Employee Omnibus Survey by SHRM (January 2009) shows that 39% of employees are concerned about the rising cost of commuting and would like benefits to cover or subsidize those expenses.
• Where commuter benefits have been added, the average commuter saved almost 40% of the cost of a transit ticket. In Detroit, that equates to a commuter cost of $12 per week for a two-way bus ticket.
• Employees who don’t use mass transit for various reasons can benefit instead from commute-related parking expenses, vanpools and bicycle allowances.
• For employees who can only commute by car, pre-tax benefits can be used for commute-related parking, and are available as parking vouchers, debit cards or direct payments to vendors.
• Employers can save 10% or more on payroll taxes since the employee commuting costs they pay are deducted from employer’ and employees’ taxable incomes.
• The green benefit can be expressed quantitatively, as one person switching to public transit can reduce daily carbon emissions by 20 pounds, or more than 4,800 pounds, annually.

Employers may find this special employee benefit a competitive advantage because it can improve employee retention. It’s also an important signal to employees that the company is doing its best to expand benefits, even if, in reality, it has had to reduce or freeze traditional benefits.

Part 3 of this news posting presents the methods employers can implement for the third level of three strategies to resolve cypersmearing situations.

The third-level strategy is to look to the laws and courts for an answer. For example, if an employer cannot discover the name of a cypersmearer, the employer can file a “John Doe” lawsuit. Its purpose is to request a subpoena that forces the owner of the Web site where the cypersmear appears to provide information that reveals the cypersmearer’s identity. If an employer can obtain such a subpoena and the name of the employee, then the employer can apply the appropriate discipline, internally, without any further need of the courts. Employers should be aware, however, that not every subpoena request for this purpose would be granted because it may violate the employee’s First Amendment rights. Even when a court may consider issuing such a subpoena, the employer is required to demonstrate he or she has taken certain steps first.

• The plaintiff, or employer, may have to announce that the subpoena has been sought via the Web site, blog or other methods, so the unidentified cypersmearer is aware that legal action is pending.
• The employer must present the specific smearer’s comments that are allegedly libelous or harmful to the business, according to the law; and those allegations must be strong enough to be considered credible by the court.

Employers must rely on legal counsel to educate them about the exact definition of libel and how the courts tend to rule in these cases. For example, a cypersmear is not libelous if its contents are true, even though that truth may be stated harshly or in language that angers the employer.

Cypersmearing is another example of why employers should include very detailed explanations of the company’s computer and Internet policies in their employee handbooks. This is a much less costly solution than legal proceedings, other investigative tools and the time required.

The previous news posting introduced the concept of cypersmearing, which is defined as employees’ unidentified online postings of libelous, harassing or humiliating comments about their employer or co-workers. Employers have three strategies and various methods to address this issue. This posting presents the second of those strategies.

The second-stage strategy requires different methods to lessen the negative effects of the cypersmear. Employers can start by requesting the people who control the Web site or blog where the cypersmear appears to delete it, but don’t expect the site owner to reveal the cypersmearer’s name, voluntarily. Some Internet service companies have the software to move the cypersmear posting to a much lower search position, so it is less likely to be seen. Employers can also use the “Sherlock Holmes” method to “deduce” the identity of the cypersmear. By studying the contents, language and the timing of the cypersmear, an employer could, through the process of elimination, narrow the list of possible perpetrators. Employers have the right to interview the employees on that list and, depending on what is discovered, can terminate the cypersmearer for cause or if he or she is an “at will” employee. If employers have clearly stated policies in their employee handbooks that include the monitoring of employees’ use of the company’s computer system, then those employers can identify cypersymearers if they wrote and posted the blog through the system. Read the rest of this entry