Payroll & HR Solutions

You saw that you had a job that needed to be done at your place of business. You publicized the opening, sorted through the applicants, interviewed the top candidates, and finally made an offer. Good news: they accepted it! Now you just need to start getting your new employee up to speed as a valuable part of your business.

Right?

Sure. But before your new hire rolls up their sleeves to tackle their first project, you need to manage their onboarding. Onboarding isn’t the most exciting part of hiring someone. It involves a lot of paperwork, and each form comes with its own quirks and legal requirements.

There are many joys when it comes to managing employees. Termination, however, isn’t on the top of anyone’s list. Regardless of your skill level, employee termination is fraught with negative emotions, disappointment, and a sense of failure. And it can be just as hard on the employees who remain, who often worry about their own job security and find themselves picking up additional responsibilities until a replacement is hired and trained.

When entrepreneurs and small business owners imagine their companies growing, becoming more profitable, and needing the support of more employees, they often think about all of the exciting things that are going to happen with that growth. Building a company culture, increasing profits, and gaining more and more customers--these are some of the most exciting parts of being an entrepreneur. Payroll taxes are not one of the exciting parts.

Employers may choose to run background checks on current and potential employees for a variety of reasons. Background checks may be mandatory for jobs that require a government security clearance, but that's not the only reason they're conducted. Most private employers that run background checks on potential employees before they hire them do so by choice - as a precautionary measure to protect the company against people who are more likely to steal from the company or commit other crimes at the workplace. This resource page is explains everything employers need to know about background checks.

ACA. Affordable Care Act. Obamacare. It’s frequently a hot topic of discussion for political pundits, but for all that everyone seems to have heard of it and have differing views on the matter, there’s little public awareness or understanding of what the ACA actually means for employers.

This leaves businesses—especially smaller ones without robust HR departments—scrambling for information about how to remain in compliance with a complex set of rules that can have a major impact on how businesses operate.

When you run a business (or even a small part of a business), you know that there is nothing more precious than time. Time is the difference between a satisfied customer whose products arrived on time and an angry one who is still waiting for their promised goods. Time is the difference between keeping payroll within budget and experiencing runaway overtime costs. And time is the difference between a satisfied workforce that can go home at the end of the day and spend an evening with their families and one that must burn the candle at both ends until there’s nothing left.

As you can imagine, being lackadaisical about timekeeping is not an option if you want to build a healthy business. This guide covers the foundations of timekeeping: how to do it, what tools can assist you, and what pitfalls to avoid.

As part of its 2019 budget, New York State has finalized new requirements designed to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace which are among the strictest in the nation. They key components of the law are as follows:

• Employers must establish a formal sexual harassment prevention policy and share it with all employees.
• The policy must also include and share a complaint form with employees that can be used to file formal sexual harassment complaints.
• Employers must also provide mandatory sexual harassment prevention training to all employees on an annual basis.

The policy and complaint form must be adopted and shared with employees by October 9, 2018. The annual training must be in place by October 9, 2019, exactly one year later.

So you want to hire a new employee. Great! There’s a lot that goes into hiring - especially for your first employee. This resource is going to walk you through all the steps you need to take, beginning with the most critical tasks, like making sure your business is properly set up to legally and effectively hire and pay an employee. Following this advice will ensure that you are prepared to start the hiring process and grow your business in exciting ways.

There is no “typical” remote employee. Companies that hire employees to work remotely look different from one to the next. Understanding how to best manage remote employees can be complicated, and it can also come with a pretty steep learning curve.

In this Employer’s Guide, we want to walk you through some important definitions, trends, upsides, and downsides to having a team that includes remote workers.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards affecting full-time and part-time workers in the private sector and in Federal, State, and local governments.

The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) administers and enforces the FLSA with respect to private employment, State and local government employment, and Federal employees of the Library of Congress, U.S. Postal Service, Postal Rate Commission, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. The FLSA is enforced by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management for employees of other Executive Branch agencies, and by the U.S. Congress for covered employees of the Legislative Branch.

Special rules apply to State and local government employment involving fire protection and law enforcement activities, volunteer services, and compensatory time off instead of cash overtime pay.

The act is meant to improve employee and consumer protections against data leaks and cyberattacks by increasing legal requirements placed on employers and corporate entities. The act takes effect on March 21, 2020.

Every year the United States Equal Opportunity Employment Commission mandates employers submit a compliance survey called the EEO-1, which collects employee data regarding race, gender, ethnicity, and job type or level.

The IRS is rolling out a new version of the W-4 Form and requiring employers to use it starting January 1, 2020. This is a comprehensive guide that explains each change and provides instructions for both employers and employees alike.

Effective January 1, 2020, the salary threshold for exempt employees is increasing from $455/week to $684/week. The DOL expects this to affect 1.4 million workers nationwide. This is a guide for employers to make sense of the update and their options.