Four Approaches to Managing the Impact of the DOL Overtime Rule Changes

To comply with the Department of Labor’s overtime legislation, all employers must decide whether their salaried employees will be exempt or non-exempt from overtime by December 1^st of this year.  The DOL predicts the new regulation will cost private employers in the neighborhood of $1.8 billion in 2017.

There are four basic scenarios that employees will encounter in the coming months:

1. They will be paid the exempt base salary of at least $47,476 per year
2. They will be reclassified as an hourly employee and eligible for overtime compensation
3. They will be kept at their current salary level and payed for any overtime hours
4. Their typical overtime hours will be factored into a 40-hour work week to convert their current salary base into an hourly wage

Although these four scenarios differ greatly from one another, employers can navigate each one of them effectively if they follow the corresponding four phase engagement process.

Phase I – Employee Reclassification Checklist

1. Initiate a formal review of job descriptions to confirm exempt or non-exempt status
2. Review employee benefits, eligibility, and plan design
3. Retool employee handbook and policies (meal breaks, overtime, working from home, etc.)
4. Analyze workload  and overtime alert procedures to minimize overtime exposure
5. Firm-up hours, tracking expectations, and engagement goals for exempt supervisors
6. Restructure commission and non-discretionary bonus impact (only 10% qualify as salary)

Phase II – Employee Perception

1. Foresee various reactions from employees
2. Acknowledge that some employees will see this as a demotion, while others will see it as beneficial
3. Combat the negative stigma that comes with being salaried and then having to track hours
4. Anticipate negative employee feelings and determine how the employees, who have converted to hourly, fit within the new structure

Phase III – Employer Messaging

1. Propose an introductory meeting prior to December 1^st to notify employees of impending changes
2. Address the group as a whole concerning fairness and equality issues
3. Encourage follow-up communications and be prepared for informal employee inquiries
4. Issue the new policy with an updated employee handbook
5. Sample pay-stub layout for each affected employee
6. Reinforce employee value to company operations, explain rule is mandated by federal law
7. Update Job Description and Employee Acknowledgment signature

Phase IV – Employer Opportunity

1. Increase employee transparency with hours tracking
2. Improve performance reviews, productivity, and job cost
3. Minimize the risk of missing important issues that typically come to light for hourly employees

Although there is a lot of negative buzz concerning The DOL’s new overtime legislation, there is potential upside for employers. The DOL has prompted the need for a formal reset of how time is tracked and how jobs get done. If employers are able to comply with this legislation and minimize employee unrest simultaneously, they will be able to increase productivity and augment their bottom-line.

If you have any questions about this new overtime legislation or would like to talk with an expert to learn how Mosaic can help you navigate it successfully, call (303) 645-4270 or visit www.mosaices.com.

       

The Growing Cost of Ever-Increasing Benefits Administration Complexity

Health insurance premiums are expected to continue to increase:

• 77% of employers expect the Affordable Care Act will increase their company's health care costs dramatically
• 2017 premium increases are projected to be the largest in recent history (InternationalFoundation Survey)

Benefits administration complexities and increasing premiums are elevating the risk that your benefits cost will rise faster than the rate of overall premium growth.  To avoid this risk, you must carefully manage your employee benefits.  

Inaccurate or missed premium deductions are expensive, but fixable.  Understanding the causes of increasing benefits cost is half the battle.  Some of the most common causes include:  

• Competing payroll timetables vs. carrier cut-off dates and retroactive limits
• Challenges recovering lost premium dollars after the fact
• On-going age-banded rate adjustments
• Carrier customer service challenges (poor communication and follow-up)
• Numerous carrier invoice delivery methods (electronic and paper), including confusing self-bill invoices
• Inefficient, outdated, and inaccurate carrier technologies
• Matching plan premiums with employee pre- and post-tax deductions
• Competing demands of payroll and carrier invoice deadlines
• Post open-enrollment and renewal invoice confusion

Mosaic HR Services delivers customized solutions that save you time, increase accuracy, and manage your premium costs.  Our benefits administration solutions are designed to complement your benefit administration strategy. To learn more and to see how Mosaic HR Services' benefits administration service can help, visit www.mosaices.com/mosaic-hr or talk with an expert at (303) 645-4270.  

The Power of a Single-Platform HCM System

Organizations are quickly moving away from disparate workforce management systems that attempt to share data through integrations that are slow and unreliable.  The best Human Capital Management systems are those that house Human Resources Information Systems, Payroll, and Time and Labor Management functionality on a single-platform with a single database and a single user interface.  Integration between disparate systems is not only inefficient, it is becoming impractical in today's complex employment environment.  A single-platform HCM system is now the industry standard for managing your workforce.  

Benefits of a single-platform HCM solution:  

• Electronic Forms - Deploy your forms and allow employees to complete and sign them electronically.  Schedule forms for completion and the system will manage employee compliance.  Save the forms in the system for easy retrieval from any functional area of the platform.  
• HR Actions - Automate process and activities so that the software guides employees through the process.  Automatically update payroll when HR actions change benefits or payroll information.  
• Workflows - Processes that require the involvement of multiple people, including approvals, can be automatically directed by the software using the workflows that match your requirements.  Workflows can be implemented for electronic forms, HR actions, applicant tracking, employee onboarding, and other processes you want to automate.  
• Applicant Tracking - Candidates can view your job openings and apply directly through your platform and track their progress to hire.  When an applicant is hired, you can automatically make the applicant an employee without migrating, or worse, manually entering employee data captured during the application process.
• Onboarding - When an applicant is hired, the employee can review and electronically sign forms directly within the system and be immediately activated as a hired employee.  Tasks can be assigned to other employees to provision the new hire's work environment.  
• Performance Management - Manage your employee review process natively within the system.  
• Other areas of an all-encompassing HCM platform:  
• Training and Certification Tracking
• Asset Management
• Online Benefits Enrollment and EDI Carrier Feeds
• Workers Compensation Tracking
• FMLA
• Turnover, Job History, and Position Management
• Skills, Education, and Credentials Tracking
• Compensation Management

Single-platform HCM systems are imperative to comply and thrive in an employment landscape that is increasingly complex.  To learn more and to see how Mosaic's Workforce One platform can help, visit www.mosaices.com or talk with an expert at (303) 645-4270.  

Department of Labor Overtime Changes and Automated Time and Labor Management

The Department of Labor recently increased the earnings threshold for employees to be classified as exempt from overtime compensation.  This will require that employers evaluate their systems for tracking time worked.  This change is just one of the many ways state and federal regulators are elevating their oversight of how employers compensate their non-exempt employees.  To minimize compliance risk, employers need to evaluate their systems for tracking time worked and appropriately pay overtime to eligible employees.

The complexity of managing and paying employees in today’s highly regulated employment environment requires a comprehensive system that does not rely on the integration of separate systems.  Mosaic’s Workforce One platform has the payroll, time and labor, and human resources capabilities employers need, all housed on one database and one application.

Workforce One delivers enterprise-class time and labor management capabilities including:

• Sophisticated Pay Calculation Engine supporting more than 250 calculation rules
• Multiple-EIN functionality that supports employees working in more than one legal entity
• Custom Overtime Flags
• Approaching Overtime Email Triggers
• Multiple Time Collection Profiles
• Overtime Requests
• Daily/Weekly Overtime Reports and Notifications
• Discretionary Bonus Calculations
• Quarterly Salary Level Reporting
• Catch-up Payment Support
• Blended Hours Overtime
• Weighted Average Overtime
• Tipped Overtime
• Multiple Pay Rates – Individualized or Global Rate Tables
• Workday Breakdown
• Scheduling Application

How will the Department of Labor’s Overtime Rule impact your organization and what steps should you take to ensure compliance by December 1^st? If you have any questions about this new overtime legislation or would like to see how Mosaic can help you navigate it successfully, call (303) 645-4270 or visit www.mosaices.com. 

6 Strategies to Retain and Engage Employees

In a recent study from the Energy Project (2013-2014) only 7% of employees have their core needs met at work with slightly over 59% surveyed not having any core needs met.  There were four core needs measured in this survey: renewal (physical), value (emotional), focus (mental), and purpose (spiritual).  These statistics are staggering given the fact that employees spend approximately 80% of their work week interfacing with clients.  If employees are not growing and being nurtured, can it be expected that they will be able to delight clients by helping them thrive?  Attracting top talent continues to be a key component of any company’s strategy.  However, the ways in which top talent is recruited and retained is a hot topic that is largely debated in today’s literature.  Too many companies hire good people only to let them flounder once they come aboard.

Quality onboarding practices embraces ideas such as making new hires aware of company history, their specific services that are unique to the marketplace, and intensive job-specific training.  Driving high performance, creating a common language across the company, and strong cultural buy-in are essentials in today’s employment landscape.

In the last several years, employee dissatisfaction has become a major hot-button issue for many employers.  This is supported by a Kelly Services survey that reports that around 44% of respondents feel valued by their employer, yet they actively are looking for better job opportunities.  Employees who are content with their current position are actively seeking greater meaning and engagement from their positions; an attitude and activity that must be nurtured and encouraged. 

Here are 6 strategies to increase retention and engagement amongst employees:

1. People want to be valued, cared about, listened to, appreciated, respected, and involved. These values directly relate to basic human needs that, if nurtured, will contribute to an employee that exhibits ‘leadership from the heart’.
2.  ‘Face to Face’ appreciation for a job well done carries clout and strengthens workplace relationships.  People need to feel that their work is valuable and makes an impact. 
3. Create a healthy work environment by committing to positively blend the different generational needs and values of the workforce to leverage their diverse strengths of knowledge and skills towards productive activity.
4. Set reasonable expectations for work-life balance and affirm them with positive reinforcement and incentives.
5. Communicate company values and strategy often to maximize employee buy-in.
6. Encourage creative out-of-the box thinking.  Let employees know you’re receptive to new ideas.

Your employees directly affect client experience and the bottom line. The moral of the story is if a company does right by the employees, they will do right by the clients, and new business will follow as a consequence.  A simple statement that requires a complex approach.  

The Ugly Truth about Affordable Care Act Compliance

Many employers do not have the systems in place to support efficient compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Deploying the right solution is critical given the requirement that 1095-C forms need to be delivered to employees by January 31^st.  The ugly truth of ACA compliance is that it will remain painful for employers until they embrace technology that can make compliance truly efficient and accurate.

An efficient solution for ACA compliance must have four core capabilities:

1. Track the data necessary for reporting compliance:

• Group health premiums, coverage dates and, for self-funded plans, dependent information
• Compensation data (payroll)
• Time (hours worked)

2. Aggregate the data:

• If the required data lives in disparate systems (Human Resources, Payroll, Benefits, and Time Keeping) it must be aggregated to present a clear, timely, and accurate picture of ACA status in real time.  Aggregating this data is hard enough to do at the end of the year, not to mention continuously to support real-time decision making
• If employers are members of a control group (related employers that consist of more than one legal entity), data must be aggregated for the entire control group

3. Measure and analyze the data to support real-time decision making throughout the year:

• Alert the employer when employees attain or lose coverage eligibility
• Understand affordability to avoid substantial penalties for not offering affordable coverage

4. Report the required data to employees and the IRS each January for the preceding year:

• Self-insured plans must complete Section III of the 1095-C form and therefore must track and report dependent information
• Large employers (250 or more employees) must report data to the IRS electronically using the IRS AIR reporting system

Can your technology efficiently deliver on the requirements of the ACA during the 31 days of January?

Mosaic’s Workforce One platform is uniquely positioned to address ACA compliance.  Workforce One is a comprehensive workforce management system that has the Human Resources, Payroll, Benefits, and Time Keeping capabilities the ACA requires – all delivered on a single database with a single user- interface.  

If you would like to see how Workforce One can take the ugly out of ACA compliance, call (303) 645-4270 or visit www.mosaices.com.

5 Reasons to Outsource Benefits Administration Tasks

Employee benefits administration outsourcing is becoming a large and growing part of an employer’s overall business strategy.  Turning benefits administration from a back office function over to a trusted administrator can promote efficiency, increase compliance, and improve overall employee satisfaction.  If not done well, employees may feel the company doesn’t care about them and that can put a company at risk.

The following are 5 important reasons to outsource benefit administration responsibilities:

1. Right-sizes your staff. Outsourcing benefits administration can free up HR resources.  Existing HR personnel can now focus on more strategic activities, such as shortening response time for employee concerns, increasing employee engagement and retention, and recruiting top talent. 

2. Makes expertise affordable. A benefits outsourcing company can give you access to a superior level of talent and knowledge without taking on the expense of an in-house benefits expert.  Hiring in-house benefits expertise doesn’t come cheap and is often out of reach for small to medium sized businesses. 

3. Boosts efficiency. A great employee benefits administration outsourcing company can help employers streamline their processes and find ways to reduce over and underpayment of premiums for insurance plans and other programs. They can also help employers create effective employee benefit communications. 

4. Reduces exposure. Outsourcing benefits administration can reduce liability in the case of mistakes.  It also protects companies by implementing ‘objective checks and balances’ between management and those who make the day to day decisions about terminations.

5. Upgrading technology. Working with an outsourcing company gives organizations the opportunity to upgrade their technology without incurring big investments in IT infrastructure.  Consumer attitudes toward technology have become far more sophisticated in recent years, and those expectations extend to how workplace benefits are administered.  Employees expect well-designed online benefit enrollment systems that they can access from anywhere, 24/7.  Building such a site internally -- with the security headaches involved when managing sensitive healthcare data -- is a massive undertaking.  A benefits administration company has already done that work in advance.  The best companies can even tailor the site with your branding and messages.

Health and welfare benefits is one of the largest and fastest growing expenses incurred by organizations today.  From open enrollments, onboarding new benefited employees, managing payroll benefits deductions up to and including COBRA; outsourcing benefit administration tasks is increasingly becoming a compelling and viable strategy.

For more information regarding MosaicHR’s benefits administration outsourcing, contact us at (303) 645-4270 or visit www.mosaices.com.

The Trend Towards the Cloud Continues

It’s easy to forget that companies are still using on-premise solutions when you see cloud adoption rates over the past few years. In fact, according to Gartner, the traditional deployment model for on-premises software is expected to significantly shrink from 34 percent today to 18 percent by 2017. With this data, we can assume that 82 percent of all software deployments will be in the cloud in the next two years. And if you’re not providing a SaaS-based solution, you’re limiting your company to a fraction of the sales you could be generating.

We’re in the midst of something of a computing revolution. It’s comparable to how products were built and distributed prior to the industrial revolution versus after the industrial revolution. The cloud is continually a topic across the internet and it will not be losing traction anytime soon.

Cloud is constantly being covered as a trend – especially in the small and midsize business (SMB) space. But why?

Because it’s simple.

When we look at cloud vs. on-premise solutions, there are a number of reasons leveraging a cloud, or more specifically software as a service (SaaS), based solution is much easier not only for SMBs, but larger organizations as well.

Here are 7 reasons why cloud-based solutions are helping businesses thrive and how they will continue to do so into the future:

1. Upfront costs are minimal.
   • Outside of an implementation fee, there’s nothing to pay for upfront. SaaS uses the same model as your electric company or cable provider – it’s simply a month-to-month payment for the service you provide, which typically allows customers to cancel at any time. The perpetual license constraints no longer have to be a problem or risk for your prospects.
2. Installation isn’t necessary.
   • Leveraging a new solution no longer has to be the major undertaking it was in the past for customers. As a result, leveraging a new solution can provide an incredibly short time to value for the customer, allowing ROI to be realized much faster.
3. Hardware doesn’t exist.
   • Unless we’re talking about employees clocking in and out on a computer or a time clock, the need for hardware no longer exits. The entire solution is accessible on the web via a browser.
4. Maintenance isn’t required.
   • Security, reliability, availability, performance, and infrastructure, oh my! These don’t have to consume your thoughts and create that stress knot in your back anymore. They’re all covered by the service-level agreement (SLA) guaranteed by the vendor you partner with.
5. Data backups are no longer your problem.
   • The risk of data loss is mitigated with SaaS. With an on-premise solution, if your location was hit by a natural disaster and flooded for instance, the businesses solutions would be inoperable. With SaaS your data is always accessible from anywhere at any time, and if the vendor’s data center is taken down, you can confirm with the SLA that there is a warm standby facility ready to go that mirrors your and your customers’ data.
6. Upgrades are automatic… and free! 
   • Upgrades to the software simply happen with SaaS. You’ll see new features as they’re released typically every one to three months. There’s nothing your IT team needs to do in order to make them available. And the pay-as-you-go model mentioned above means that you’re already paying for you and your customers to get access to the latest and greatest version of the software – there’s no additional cost.
7. IT resources can focus on other initiatives.
   • With the vendor taking care of the software, support, and troubleshooting for you, your IT resources are suddenly freed up to focus more on high-value activities and work on the greater strategy of technology and the role it plays in your and your customers’ businesses.

The cloud and, more specifically, SaaS helps organizations of all sizes to operate more efficiently. Check out more information here or consult an expert at 303-645-4270.