employee benefits | Connect to HR | Strategic HR Advisors & Executive Coaching

Archive for employee benefits

New Parent Leave Act Benefits Employees Not Covered by FMLA/CFRA

California’s New Parent Leave Act (NPLA), which goes into effect on January 1, 2018, will expand family leave benefits to employees who are ineligible for FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act) and CFRA (California Family Rights Act). The new law allows eligible employees to take up to 12 weeks of leave to bond with a new child. The law applies to employers with at least 20 employees, whether or not they are covered by FMLA/CFRA. This is lower than the 50-employee threshold required by FMLA/CFRA.

The NPLA provides eligible employees with 12 weeks of leave to bond with a child within one year of the child’s birth, adoption, or foster care placement. This is in addition to any leave provided under the Pregnancy Disability Leave (PDL) law.

In order to be eligible for the NPLA, employees must have more than 12 months of service with the employer, and have worked at least 1250 hours during the previous 12-month period. Also, they must not be eligible for FMLA/CFRA.

The law applies to all California employers who have at least 20 employees, including those already covered by FMLA/CFRA who have locations with between 20-49 employees. Employers must continue group health insurance coverage for employees on parental leave, and must provide a guarantee of employment in the same or similar position upon the employee’s return.

Unlike FMLA, the NPLA does not provide leave to recover from the employee’s own serious health condition, or to care for family members with a serious health condition, or for pregnancy disability.

If you are an employer who will be affected by the new law, be sure that you update your form leave letters, Maternity Leave policies, and Employee Handbook to reflect this new benefit.

Compensation Step One – Developing a Pay Philosophy

For the past couple of blogs, I’ve been talking about various aspects of HR planning and the importance of being proactive vs. reactive around people-related activities. One of the most important activities to plan for is compensation. What have you budgeted for compensation, and how will you allocate it for merit increases and adjustments needed to attract and retain the skills identified in your workforce plan?

Step one is clarifying your pay philosophy. A pay philosophy is a set of guiding principles that identifies compensation priorities, and supports organizational values and goals. It explains why the company makes the decisions it does about employee pay, and creates a framework for consistency across the organization. Although a pay philosophy will differ from company to company, all are aligned in the goal of attracting, retaining and motivating the best talent.

Some factors to consider in creating your pay philosophy are company size, financial position, level of difficulty in finding needed talent, the industry, and market salary data. An example might be that you know you have to pay a starting salary slightly above the market in order to attract the right people. Or, your financial position is such that you have to pay slightly below market, but make up for it with a more generous vacation benefit.

As you define your pay philosophy, be sure to consider total compensation – base salary, incentive pay, and benefits. Examples of incentive pay are bonuses, commissions, and profit sharing. Benefits may include medical, dental, and vision insurance; life insurance; paid vacation; leave policies and 401(k) programs. Some companies choose to match 401(k) contributions up to a certain amount, which is an attractive benefit. Recognition is another factor to consider, especially from the perspective of motivating employees. Recognition can include cash awards, or non-cash awards such as sports event tickets, travel vouchers or other “thank you” gifts.

Once you’ve defined your philosophy, commit it to paper and review it periodically to assess how it’s working and identify any changes needed based on changing company circumstances, the market or the economy in general.

If you need more information or need a sounding board as you create your philosophy, please contact me.

5 Budget-Friendly Employee Development Ideas

Surveys show that one of the key factors in keeping employees engaged and motivated is the opportunity to learn and grow. For small companies, however, who often have limited (or non-existent) training budgets, providing those opportunities can be a challenge. Yet there are a variety of ways you can develop your employees without a lot of expense. Here are five of them.

Cross-training. Consider putting together a program where employees cross-train each other. Not only will the “trainee” learn new skills and knowledge, the “trainer” will improve in their job by having to teach it to someone else. This also can build closer relationships in the organization and a better understanding of the company overall. When employees learn what others on their team and other teams do, they have a better appreciation of how all the roles fit together to keep the company operating. It can eliminate silos and increase organizational communication.

Internal skill sharing. Identify employees who are particularly skilled in an area and give them the opportunity to share their knowledge in a workshop or “Lunch and Learn.” This increases the knowledge of the participants, and gives the employee sharing the knowledge the opportunity to develop and improve additional skills – leadership, facilitating, organization, communication, etc.

Mentoring. Create a mentoring program or identify individuals who can coach others in areas where they’re struggling or want to develop. This is a great way to tap into the knowledge and skill base of your more experienced employees to ensure that your company mindshare gets transferred. And the beauty about mentoring relationships is that there are benefits to both mentor and mentee as they learn from each other.

Online courses/books. There are myriad free and low cost online courses available on a variety of topics from business knowledge to leadership skills to software. Books are another way to provide learning. Consider setting up a small library or book sharing program.

Special projects and stretch assignments. On-the-job training through a special project or stretch assignment can be very effective when combined with adequate management support and/or a mentor or coach. Have a special project coming up? Consider assigning someone who wants to develop leadership skills to head up the project.

Be sure that you include in your employee development program not just the job-related skills tied to your future needs, but also soft skills that have been identified as essential for the 21^st century: communication, emotional intelligence, collaboration, problem solving, and adaptability.

Recognize that the time spent in learning activities – whatever those may be – is an investment in the growth of the company and in the growth and satisfaction of employees.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin

New Ordinances Enhance Family Leave and Paid Sick Time

If you have employees in San Francisco, you should be aware of the new San Francisco Paid Parental Leave law, and amendments to the city’s paid sick leave law, both of which will go into effect next year.

Note that San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Emeryville, Santa Monica, and Los Angeles all have sick leave laws that vary slightly from the California law. If you have employees working in those cities, be sure to check with your employment counsel to ensure you are complying with the appropriate requirements.

Paid Parental Leave. This ordinance will require employers with employees in San Francisco to supplement California’s Paid Family Leave (PFL) so that employees received 100% of their gross weekly wages while on a parental leave of absence. PFL currently provides eligible employees with up to 55% of their regular wages, subject to a maximum weekly benefit of $1,129. Employees may receive these benefits for up to six weeks in a 12-month period. San Francisco’s law will require covered employers to provide additional wage replacement benefits of up to 45% of the employee’s wages, subject to the weekly maximum.

This law goes into effect on January 1, 2017 for employers with 50 or more employees; July 1, 2017 for employers with 35 or more employees; and January 1, 2018 for employers with 20 or more employees.

With the employee’s agreement, an employer may apply up to two weeks of the employee’s accrued vacation to meet their supplemental compensation obligation. If the employee does not agree to this, the new law gives the employer the right to choose not to provide supplemental benefits.

Also, employers must display a poster with information about the supplemental benefits and must maintain records of the supplemental benefits paid to covered employees for at least three years.

Paid Sick Leave. The amended San Francisco paid sick leave law, which goes into effect January 1, 2017, simplifies the sick leave pay calculation to match that of the California state law. For non-exempt employees, this means paying them for sick leave using either their regular rate of pay, or, a rate calculated by dividing total wages (excluding overtime) by total hours worked in the previous 90 days of employment. Exempt employees should be paid for sick leave at the same rate they are for other leaves.

The amended law will also prohibit an employer from requiring employees to take sick leave in increments of more than one hour.

Los Angeles also recently passed a sick leave ordinance. This new law allows employees working in the City of Los Angeles the ability to accrue and use up to 48 hours of sick leave. This is twice the amount provided by California state law. The ordinance went into effect on July 1 for employers with 26 or more employees, and will go into effect on July 1, 2017 for employers with 25 or fewer employees.

San Diego’s paid sick leave law went into effect on July 11 and provides employees with 40 hours of sick leave per year.

As with all changes in employment law, it’s important to update your Employee Handbook to reflect the latest requirements. Please contact me if you need help making these updates or would like to discuss a handbook review.

Archive for employee benefits

New Parent Leave Act Benefits Employees Not Covered by FMLA/CFRA

Compensation Step One – Developing a Pay Philosophy

5 Budget-Friendly Employee Development Ideas

New Ordinances Enhance Family Leave and Paid Sick Time

Recent Posts

Want to stay connected?