Judging by the reaction of the audience at a presentation on the new overtime rule I made a couple of weeks ago, that rule is going to create significant problems for independent insurance agencies. I barely had time to introduce myself before the first question came and they just kept coming. The focus of many […]
Read more...Category: Employment issues
The New Overtime Rule – What You Can Do to Comply
My last post was about the requirements of the new rule for the payment of exempt employees. This post will focus on the options available to an employer to comply with those requirements and the information needed to decide which option works best for each affected employee. Almost every payroll service company has materials on […]
Read more...The New Overtime Rule – What You Need to Know
Last July, I wrote a post about a new rule for the payment of overtime that had recently been proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor (“USDOL”). That proposed rule was made final by the USDOL on May 23, 2016, with its formal publication in the Federal Register. The final rule differs in several ways […]
Read more...Summer Interns- What You Need to Know to Avoid Trouble
Memorial Day weekend is right around the corner. Since it is traditionally considered the unofficial start of summer and most schools have begun their summer break, I thought it would be a good idea to remind my readers of the rules that apply to the hiring of interns. If those rules are not followed, a […]
Read more...Is Your Agency a Top Workplace?
Last week’s post asked if your agency met the benchmarks established by the Best Practices Study for financial well-being. This week I will discuss what it takes to be a top workplace in the eyes of your employees, at least according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. It recently published its annual list of the best places […]
Read more...Department of Labor Goes After Independent Contractors
A little over a week after issuing its Notice of Rulemaking that will result in more than doubling the minimum salary that must be paid to an employee for them to be eligible for the administrative or executive exemption from the overtime pay requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”)(click here for my blog post on […]
Read more...Avoiding the Payment of Overtime is About to Get Much More Expensive
In a blog post this past March about which employees must be paid overtime for working more that 40 hours in any one work week, I mentioned that President Obama had directed the U.S. Department of Labor (the “USDOL”) to review the exemptions from the overtime pay requirement and that most knowledgeable commentators expected the minimum […]
Read more...Bad Work Habits and How to Break Them
I hope all my readers had a great 4th of July holiday. I know that I enjoyed my three-day weekend very much. Having that free time for a holiday that celebrates freedom got me to thinking about ways to create more free time to do the things I enjoy doing. One of the ways to […]
Read more...Employee Smoking & Ride Share Updates
In last week’s post, I discussed the ability of an employer to fire an employee who began smoking cigarettes after they were hired. A couple of weeks before that, I talked about ISO’s new motor vehicle insurance policy forms that addressed the use of a personal passenger vehicle for ride sharing through Uber and similar services. Since […]
Read more...Smoking by Employees – What Are the Rules?
A couple of months ago, I had a call on the Free Legal Service Program that I run for the Independent Insurance Agents of Georgia from an agency owner who had recently hired an employee who decided after being hired to start smoking cigarettes. The agency was a small one and none of its other employees smoked. […]
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