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The 5 Scariest ERISA Cases You Need To Know About

5/28/2017

ERISA is the law that governs benefit plans for employees. These usually mean retirement plans like 401(k)s and related plans that offer monetary rewards to employees other than wages.

ERISA is a huge, complicated law with almost fifty years of caselaw under its belt, and yet for reasons totally beyond me, many business owners just take it for granted that nothing under ERISA can bother them as long as they don’t have (or at least, think they don’t have) any retirement plans, or run it all through an outside company. Not so. Read on, and be chilled by just how easy it is to become subject to ERISA’s onerous disclosure requirements and other expensive compliance rules:

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Do You Need a HazMat Binder?

4/3/2017

The short answer? Yes.

Some industries are more dependent on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations and guidelines than others, but all employers should understand the basics.

What is OSHA?
The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act) requires employers to keep their work environments safe for employees. The Act is administered by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), within the Department of Labor.
The Occupational and Safety and Health Act established two key federal agencies, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). OSHA was created to administer and enforce the Act. NIOSH is a research organization. It conducts research on occupational safety and health, and makes recommendations to OSHA.

What You Need to Know

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Should HR Go 'the Way of Acid-Wash Jeans'?

3/27/2017

Human Resources often gets a bad rap for being bureaucratic, unnecessary and even mean (like in this very bitter Forbes article). This is an older Forbes article (2013) but it pops up in my news feeds often enough for me to want to respond with another side of the story.

In his article, the Forbes Contributor who, according to the tagline under his name, writes about economics, politics, media, business and film gives his opinion about how awful HR is and how young, single women in HR are discriminatory against prettier women candidates. (Forbes notes that opinions expressed by Contributors are their own)

Let’s break down his reasoning, starting with the experiment he mentions.

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HR or Finance, Where Does Your Benefits Specialist Land?

3/16/2017

I was at a talk in Denver recently, hosted by tech staffing solution BWBacon, stacked with speakers whose talks were on the theme of disrupting the status quo in HR practices. Interesting idea – while there have been tons of serious innovations in HR, staffing, and payroll processes in the last few years, nobody has really heard about them – and one talk struck me as particularly insightful. The speaker explained that in her business, the person responsible for controlling their labor cost outflows wasn’t an HR person – it was an analyst from their financial department.

It’s definitely food for thought. There’s a certain intuitive disrupt-y-ness to it: getting the important money decisions out of the hands of those fluffy HR people and over to the professional money-people. I bet you could even drum up some fun-sounding rationalizations about using technology to change a landscape, or making “data-driven decisions“ about something or other.

I appreciate the attempt to innovate in the area of human resources but I think that this attitude fundamentally misunderstands the role of a good HR person.

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30% of Businesses Misclassify Employees - Do You?

3/14/2017

A Department of Labor study found that up to 30% of businesses misclassified employees as independent contractors.

Should you be hiring employees or independent contractors? There’s no one size fits all answer, it depends on how you want to accomplish your goals.

The main importance behind employee classification regulations is their effect on taxes, payroll items like overtime and deductions, and eligibility for benefits, such as health insurance and paid time off. Classifying employees can be complex and if not done properly, can be very costly and time-consuming for businesses.

The Department of Labor (DOL) is the governmental agency that handles misclassification of employees (among many other things, of course). You can find out more about misclassification directly from the DOL here.

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Bringing Your Whole Self To Work + An Interview with Caitlin Pickett

2/22/2017

Work/life balance is the concept that you should prioritize your work life and home life according to what brings you the most achievement and enjoyment. Sounds nice, right? There are a million articles on work/life balance and even an entire site dedicated to the concept.

While this idea works for some, I’ve found that my work life and my home life often distractedly interweave instead of the graceful, compartmentalized scale that comes to mind with work/life balance. This has been true whether I was working in a startup environment, a corporate office and especially now when running my own business. The best work/life balance for me is one that allows me to bring my whole self to my whole life.

So how do you handle your work/life stresses and bring your whole self to the forefront?

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Hiring Remote Employees

2/15/2017

The shift to a primarily remote workforce is happening. After a recent Fieldglass study on the average company workforce, researchers predict that that by 2017, the allotment of "nontraditional" workers would grow to 25% contingent (freelancers, interns, and contractors), 34% remote and part-time workers, and 41% traditional workers.

Remote employees can be a huge asset for your company and many employees are moving this way to allow themselves more work-life balance. As I’m sure you know if you’ve ever gone through the hiring process, hiring is hard! There are a lot of elements to be aware of, and adding remote employees isn’t exactly the same as hiring employees to work shoulder-to-shoulder with you in the office. These are four of the most important attributes to keep in mind when hiring remote employees.

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What is Human Resources? (Fixing HR’s Marketing Problem)

2/8/2017

This is a question I am asked often when meeting new people. The conversation usually goes “What do you do?” “I’m a Human Resources Consultant.” “Oh! ...So, what exactly is Human Resources? Aside from firing people.”

I’m always happy to chat about the glory of a solid HR foundation any business, and of course the question comes from a place of genuine curiosity. However, the frequency of this conversation is worrisome. It tells me that HR has a marketing problem.

Before the marketing difficulties can be addressed, it’s important to note that business owners and their management staff should all be familiar with basic HR functions. This action alone can mitigate a variety of risks.

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What do private equity investors look for in your payroll and HR processes?

2/6/2017

You're a small businessperson. Maybe you've gotten an idea built out enough to pitch to investors, maybe you've been running for a while and investors have come calling on you instead. You're in your meeting, your pitch deck is pristine, and you're ready to go. This is your big moment. The make-or-break for your business, your goals, for your life. Right?

I hate to break it to you, but that's the easy part. You're already passionate about your product or service, and turning that into a sales pitch is not the most difficult part of raising outside funding.

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8 Reasons You Don't Need HR or General Counsel - not even part-time!?

9/23/2016

Lets be real: your small business is too cool to have an HR department. You've watched enough TV to know that HR is a job for dumpy middle-aged cat ladies who lecture people over liberal claptrap like "discrimination," "gender equality," and "doing your payroll taxes right." HR is one of those boring corporate-y jobs that has no place in your hip young crowd of millennials, who are too busy innovating, synergizing, and killer-apping to waste time on trivialities like "complying with the law."

But here at C-Squared Consulting, having your back is our job. In case you need the talking points, maybe for an upcoming EEOC grievance, wrongful termination case, or unemployment hearing, here are the top 8 reasons you don't need an HR person - not even a part-time one:

8. Affordable Care Act compliance is easy

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