Category Archives: CEOHR Tips

Work Opportunity Tax Credit and Empowerment Zones Extended through 2020

January 6, 20200
CEOHR, Inc. PEO

On December 20, 2019, the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act was signed into law by President Trump. Included in this newly enacted legislation are “Tax Extenders” which include valuable provisions for employers. These provisions include the following: • Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC): Extended through December 31, 2020 • Federal Empowerment Zone Tax Credit: Retroactively extended for 2018, 2019, and 2020 • Employee Retention Tax Credit: Enacted for specified disaster areas designated and determined by the federal government, including places of business impacted by Hurricane Michael, Hurricane Florence, and the 2018 wildfires in California • Indian Employment Credit: Renewed through 2020 • WOTC Funding for Fiscal Year 2020 increased by 2.5 million dollars Please reach out to Josh Emerick, Director of …

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Are Your Controls In Place

January 6, 20200
CEOHR, Inc. PEO

It’s January 2020 – Have your exempt (salaried) employees been reclassified to non-exempt (hourly)? Have you put controls in place to manage this change? 1) Punching In/Out – It’s a new concept for salaried employees to track their time. If your salaried employees have been reclassified to hourly to comply with the new law, these employees are now eligible for overtime if they work over 40 hours in one workweek. 2) Morale – If employees don’t know why their status is changing, (especially true for Managers) morale may become an issue. They should be told of the law change, and depending upon the state you work in, how this change impacts their daily work, it’s certainly not a demotion! 3) …

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Winter Storm On The Horizon? New FSLA Overtime Rule January 1, 2020

December 20, 20190

Here we are at year end again. There’s a cluster of new laws that go into effect next month, but the biggest on the federal level is Fair Labor Standards Act ‘Overtime Rule’ which makes 1.3 million American workers newly eligible for overtime. The ‘Overtime Rule’ is a simple concept and has been sold as a benefit for the middle class – but if you are not ready for the change, it’s an unexpected dent in your labor budget. The Overtime Rule is an increase in the federally mandated minimum wage threshold for salaried employees. The ‘Overtime Rule’ updates the earning level necessary to exempt executive, administrative or professional employees from overtime requirements. The ‘Overtime Rule’ raises the standard salary …

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Data Security – Fresh Reminders to Minimize Your Risk

January 17, 20190

Many small business owners assume they are not famous enough to be the target of cyberattacks. This mindset can lead to all sorts of trouble, including loss of your most valuable assets: customer and employee data. In 2016, 71% of ransomware cyberattacks were aimed at businesses with less than 100 employees.**** Even though small businesses tend to neglect cybersecurity, one thing is for certain: it’s much easier to get inside an unprotected system than it is to penetrate the security of big corporations. Remember that hackers can steal money, employee details, customer data, and other valuable information. Moreover, a data breach can permanently damage your relationship with employees and customers. In the end, it will hinder the growth of your …

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Year End: Are You Ready?

October 22, 20180

‘Hard to believe, I know, but the end of the year is fast approaching! Preparing now can save you a lot of headaches as December 31 gets closer. Three of the top tasks to accomplish prior to the end of the year are discussed herein. Included with this month’s blog is a more comprehensive listing of year-end tasks, in the form of a Year-End Checklist to help you manage the items that can cause the most problems if left unattended. One of the biggest and more time-consuming of the year-end tasks is ensuring your employees’ address information of record is correct. By tackling this now, you can reduce or eliminate the number of W-2s that are returned to you due …

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Where Have All The Manners Gone?

September 11, 20180

              We laugh at the workplace sarcasm found in cartoons, such as those created by Scott Adams of “Dilbert” fame, then perpetuate the sarcasm and uncouth behaviors by Sharing them on Facebook. We have seen t.v. shows, like The Office, with their parodies of life at work, including the exaggerated personalities we can all identify with: the bombastic, egotistical boss; the snarky busy body; the sarcastic sales dude; and the my-crisis-must-now-be-your-crisis co-worker. When the laughter ends and the t.v. is turned off, we sadly realize that these personalities and lack of good manners are what gobble up any sanity we have left when we are in our work environment and indeed make it an …

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Time to Get Serious About I-9 Compliance: Part 2

July 18, 20180

Did you know that if ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) does an inspection of your I-9s, you can be penalized even if you do not have unauthorized aliens on your workforce? The penalties can come from errors on the I-9 forms. And if you lean towards apathy where I-9s are concerned, snap out of it before you are faced with one or more penalties that are regularly imposed on companies who are less than diligent in that area of their business. In case you did not read our HR blog from last month, the penalties can be per error, per employee! One news commentator said that your I-9 diligence should be equal to the diligence you have when dealing with …

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Safety Tips Every Country Club Manager Should Know

June 25, 20180

This month I will talking about country club safety. In the country club industry a lot of things can go wrong as far as safety is concerned due to not having the proper training or just plain not knowing. If you take a few minutes to review these tips hopefully together we can minimize typical safety issues and reduce lost time accidents.   Safe Lifting: The club industry has various lifting exposures including picking up bags of fertilizer, installing golf cart batteries, removing tree limbs off the fairway, unloading trucks, and carrying sacks of food and canned goods. All of these can be done safely without hurting yourself or others around you. So let’s get to the safe lifting basics; Load at the load and decide if …

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Time to Get Serious About I-9 Compliance: Part 1

June 11, 20180

The Trump Administration has given the directive to hire 10,000 new ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents to keep employers and their hiring practices in check, while penalizing, and possibly arresting, those who violate I-9 regulations. With that many new agents on board, it is easy to see how the plan to conduct up to 15,000 I-9 audits this year can be done. 1 In a year where worksite investigations have already surpassed the number of investigations for all of 2017, 2018 may just be the harbinger of the new status quo. Not only have investigations doubled, but arrests associated with those investigations have quadrupled! Most of those arrested were workers, but it is still not clear if any employers …

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If We Require Employees To Arrive Ten Minutes Early To Prepare For The Start Of Their Shift, Do We Have To Pay Them For This Extra Time?

June 6, 20180

Q: If we require employees to arrive ten minutes early to prepare for the start of their shift, do we have to pay them for this extra time? A: Yes. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (and likely state law as well), you must pay employees for all hours worked. This includes the time they are required to be on your premises, even if they haven’t begun their “regular” duties. Preparing for work—if it must be done at work—will be considered part of the employee’s continuous workday. You are certainly welcome to have an attendance and tardiness policy that requires employees to be at their desk or assigned location and ready to work exactly when their shift begins, and to …

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