Healthy Living and Wellness Benefits. Susan Combs, President of Combs & Company, “The biggest benefit that employees ask for is gym membership reimbursement.” Wellness programs like WalkingSpree–which creates walking clubs, assigns teams and creates competitions – are another great way to motivate and engage employees to live healthy (thereby reducing your health care costs).

Flexible Work Options. Telecommuting and other forms of flexible work options make employees healthier and happier. And as Sara Sutton Fell, Founder and CEO of FlexJobs points out, studies show that, “Employers who offer flexible schedules and alternatives to the traditional nine-to-five not only see higher productivity, but also save on health-related benefits they already offer.” Stanford University conducted a big study that showed that telecommuters were four percent more productive than office workers, working more hours and taking a larger workload.

We thought this was an article worth sharing. Take a look at the full analysis on Kyle’s HR blog, and join the conversation.

When creating your company’s direct deposit form for employees to use, be sure to include:

• A header area to explain the agreement being arranged. Something like, “This authorizes (Company Name) to send credit entries, electronically or by any other commercially accepted method, to my account(s) indicated below and to other accounts I identify in the future. This authorizes the financial institution holding the Account to post all such entries.
• An option for at least three different locations to place money.
• Space to list at least three receiving accounts.
• Each account area should include:
• Name of the bank (or credit union) that will be receiving the money.
• The Account Number
• The Routing Number
• In indication on whether to place the money into the Checking or Savings account.
• The amount to place in the account in terms of
• A set dollar figure, or a percentage
• And the “Net” option. To indicate all the money that’s left after other accounts are taken car of.
• Instructions attaching a voided check to the form for each account mentioned.
• At the end, list places for the employee to:
• Print their name
• Sign the document
• Print their Employee ID Number
• Date the form was filled out.

From a business owner’s perspective, just make sure the forms go into the correct files to help handle any misunderstandings about there the employee’s money was distributed.

We have a number of free templates, free forms and example letters on our site.

As a local business service company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with risk management, human resource outsourcing, and payroll management, along with our other core services.

A correct employee discipline template should include a number of elements:

• The date of the discipline meeting with the employee
• The name of the employee
• Employee’s identification number (if applicable)
• Employee’s job position
• Supervisor’s Name
• A list of check with the most common misdeeds
• Performance
• Safety
• Attendance
• Tardiness
• Other
• The degree of the written warning
• 1st Written Warning
• 2nd Written Warning
• Final Warning
• Termination Meeting
• Space for a more detailed description of the violation.
• Space for the expected improvement actions.
• Space for the employee’s statement (if they want to use it).
• What action will be taken immediately following the disciplinary meeting.
• Suspension with pay (starting and ending dates)
• Suspension without pay (starting and ending dates)
• You’ll need a place for the employee to sign and date, to document the employee has read the discipline document and attended the meeting. Something like, “By signing this notice, I am acknowledging that I have been counseled about my conduct and informed of consequences if improvements are not made.”
• A place for the supervisor to sign.

Tips for using the form

1. In the detailed description area, it’s important to list the dates and times of infractions.
2. In the Expected Improvement actions area, make sure to include what happens if the improvement isn’t seen. Be specific about the kinds of improvements you expect to see.

As a business owner, it’s most important to standardize the way your supervisors apply discipline. Having employee discipline forms and processes in place helps to train the supervisors and avoids favoring one kind of employee over another as time passes. Forms, properly used, also create a paper trail of documentation that greatly helps when things become more severe and you start considering terminating an employee. Make sure your human resources procedures and forms are readily available to your staff. Also, make sure they are aware of the forms and procedures. Having the forms in a drawer doesn’t ensure your staff knows how to apply discipline appropriately.

We have a number of free templates, free forms and example letters on our site.

As a local business service company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with risk management, human resource outsourcing, and payroll management, along with our other core services.

Here are a few tips for the form you use to figure payroll deductions for your employees. You should customize the following according to what is relevant for your particular business.

The authorization form usually has the normal areas to identify the employee:

• Company Name
• Name of the Employee’s Department
• Department Identification Number
• Employee Name
• Employee Title
• Employee Number

Have a place on the deduction authorization form to identify the way the form is going to be used:

• Check One:
• Initial payroll deduction
• Terminate payroll deduction
• Change payroll deduction

A list of the deductions being requested, most of which should include options to deduct as fixed dollar amount, or a percentage of net pay:

• 401(k) Plan
• Other Employee Savings Plan
• Union Dues
• Loan Repayment
• Parking Fees
• Health Savings Plan

A place for the employee to sign, authorizing the use of the information to make payroll deductions. Something like:

“I (add employee name) authorize (add company name) to make the above deductions from my gross earnings every month, beginning (start month and year).”

I understand and acknowledge the deduction may not be made if I have insufficient income during a pay period.

I understand and acknowledge dues such as Income Tax and Social Security Tax take priority over these deductions.

I understand deductions may not take effect during the current payroll cycle.

I will not hold (company name) liable for any deductions that are not made.

Employee Signature: _____________________________________

Employee Name (printed): _________________________________

Date: __________________________________________________

At the bottom of the form, list some internal tracking fields to help your human resources staff process the forms. Something like:

FOR PAYROLL DEPARTMENT USE ONLY

Received (date)

Received by (name)

As a business owner, managing payroll is not easy. Try to have a tracking system in place to make sure all new employees fill out this form, and keep it on file. In addition, make it clear to current employees changing their deductions on when the changes will take effect.

As a local business service company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with risk management, human resource outsourcing, and payroll management, along with our other core services.

• Providing physical copies of 1040’s in your employee break area.
• Providing a list of local tax professionals that can help them accurately complete their tax filings.
• Provide links to printable tax forms on the IRS.gov website
• Letting them know physical forms can be picked up at libraries and the Columbia, MO post offices.

Form 1040 Trivia

• The 1040 form is used for individual income taxes.
• The first 1040 was used in 1913.
• People with no itemized deductions, no capital gain or loss, etc., may be able to use the Form 1040A (referred to as the “short form”) or the simpler Form 1040EZ (also known as the “easy form”).
• Did you know the Official IRS printed Form 1040 is blue and the printed form 1040EZ’s are green?
• Remember the form booklets that used to come in the mail? The last time they did was on 2009.
• The form 1040 is due on April 15 every year. If the 15th falls on a weekend, then the returns are due the following Monday.

From a business owner’s perspective, probably the biggest way these forms cause headaches for you is when employees wait until the last minute to fill out their own forms, then they’re rushing down to East Walnut to get to the main post office. It’s not uncommon for employees to ask to leave early, or to come in late on April 15th to get that filing completed and date stamped at the post office. Keep in mind that the Columbia, MO post offices don’t usually change their hours for April 15th. Most of the Post Office locations have “lobby hours” even after their staffed retail windows shut down for the night. Though there is an automated postage center in many of the post office lobbies, there’s also a tendency for them to break due to the high workload during April 15th. It might be worth the time to just check out the nearest post office to your company location and see what the retail hours are, and whether they have the lobby opened after hours with an automatic postage machine. Putting a little effort to reminding employees to file their taxes in advance might help avoid some workflow interruptions during April.

As a local business service company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with risk management, human resource outsourcing, and payroll management, along with our other core services.

As a business owner in Columbia, MO, you should strive to create a business relationship with legal counsel before you are part of situations, like an employee lawsuit. You should have an outsource, that is up-to-speed with your business and history. Your legal resource can then help you make changes to your company’s policies and procedures to help prevent employee claims and keep your HR department policies and procedures legal. Columbia, MO firms that can offer solutions for a variety of areas is probably a good candidate to help you. Think of your legal needs in the following areas:

• Writing Contracts – to help you stay out of misunderstandings and to be able to collect on billings. Also comes in handy when looking at employee contacts or joint ventures with other companies.
• Human Resource Issue Mitigation – To advise when a bad situation is developing.
• Intellectual Property – To protect, and profit from, your company’s unique ideas, logos and products.
• Business Incorporation – To appropriately and legally create a company structure that meets your needs today, and down the road. Also comes in handy when considering having business entities in other states.
• Human Resource Policies and Procedures – To create an environment that is built to avoid lawsuits and promote training and policies that are legal.

Columbia Missouri offers a variety of options for fulfilling your company’s legal needs. Depending on the size of your company and your business model your might consider:

• Hiring staff in-house
• Utilizing a firm that can handle all your business legal needs, as well as other areas of business
• Utilizing a firm that specializes in specific legal areas where you need strong representation; for example: patent filing, business incorporation, or risks associated with running outdoor events.

As a local business service company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with risk management, human resource outsourcing, and payroll management, along with our other core services.

Now, to get started, Harassment is normally considered any improper conduct directed at a co-worker that is taken as disturbing, offensive, or upsetting by the perceiving employee and would also be perceived the same way by a “reasonable person.” The harassment activity can be in the form of comments or acts that intimidate, threaten, demean, cause embarrassment or cause humiliation.

The harassment must be so persistent that the employee is unable to do his or her job dues without interference, for an employee lawsuit to hold up.

Certain types of workplace harassment can escalate to a hostile work environment.

Columbia has some unique aspects about it that can contribute to more frequent occurrences of harassment.

Small Town Charm – Buy not being in a large metroplex area, like St. Louis or New York, there are fewer businesses with large human resource departments geared to educate and train the staff about HR issues like harassment.

College Workforce – The college students working full, or part-time, at your business generally have less experience in the workplace than other kinds of employees. This puts them in many first-time situations where they can draw on their years of corporate experience and training to react appropriately. For example, your grad student part-time employee overseeing the summer interns might not know how to handle worker complaints appropriately and legally.

Columbia’s night life – Columbia has a higher than average number of places to entertain and consume alcohol. When your employees go in a group to places to socialize, it can create situations where some employees, including senior executives, act differently because they feel they are “off the clock.” This can create very complicated situations with other employees both at the event, and back in the office the next day.

To steer clear of these needless risks, as a business owner try to:

Create a written company harassment policy and review it with your staff at least once a year. Also, include it in the new employee training process.

Make it clear and use lots of examples in the training. Talk about what kinds of things could be considered harassment and how people should report it. Harassment can include things like references to an employee’s sex, race national origin, religion and other topics like the person’s age, veteran status or disability (both physical and mental).

Make sure you have a documented process for how to handle complaints quickly.

As a local business service company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with human resource outsourcing, payroll and risk management, along with our other core services.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) website: http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/ list the kinds of discrimination that we’ll keep in mind as we read further:

• Age Discrimination
• Disability Discrimination
• Equal Pay/Compensation Discrimination
• Genetic Information Discrimination
• National Origin Discrimination
• Pregnancy Discrimination
• Race/Color Discrimination
• Religion Discrimination
• Retaliation Discrimination
• Sex Discrimination
• Sexual Harassment Discrimination

Let’s go through a few of the special things about Columbia that would contribute to a discriminating situation.

Limited Work Experience of Columbia’s college students

The college students we hire typically have a very limited amount of work experience, this puts them in situations and relationships with co-workers, subordinates and supervisors that they’ve never experienced before. Something as simple as a co-worker wearing an inappropriate blouse or shirt to the workplace could create a situation where young employees of the opposite sex make comments that could be interpreted as sexual harassment. A young supervisor might not understand that their comments about older workers, or the assignments they give subordinates, could be seen as age discrimination.

Columbia’s diverse international culture

With students from all over the world living in Columbia and starting families, our local businesses need to be prepared to handle the diverse appearances and beliefs of the workforce. Some religious beliefs dictate the appearance, clothes and daily activities of their followers. Rejecting those aspects in your workplace can place you in a lawsuit based on religious discrimination. Racial slurs of staff may be overheard and lead to a suit based on Race or Culture.

Young companies lead by first time entrepreneurs

As Columbia grows its business eco-system, there are hundreds of companies created each year. Many of them are created by first-time entrepreneurs. Whether they are created by former employees of other companies, or by students; it’s not uncommon for the entrepreneurs to be facing new kinds of business risk with which they have no experience. For example, when a business owner interviews employees for the first time, the questions they ask may seem to make sense, but can still be illegal and contribute to many aspects of a discrimination suit. Asking questions about hometowns, past illnesses, children, birthdays and religion may sound like a great way to break the ice with a candidate, but they are white-hot danger areas from a legal point of view. When offering salaries to new employees, the new entrepreneur will need to be careful to avoid the beginning of an equal discrimination situation by offering inappropriate salary levels to one sex, versus the other. Even celebrating business success can be a challenge for the new entrepreneur. Any event created by the company, even if it’s a party at the local bar, can expose the business owner to lawsuits when bad things happen.

As a business owner, you should have legal and human resource experts at your disposal to help understand areas where you didn’t even know you were taking on risk. Whether these experts are in-house staff, or outsources, it’s important to have them looking out for your company’s best interests.

As a local business service company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with human resource outsourcing, payroll and risk managment, along with our other core services.

It’s handy to have a few document templates around to help speed the process. This post focuses on the letter you use to offer employment. One key reason you want to use a letter is to document what you’re NOT promising. For example, make it clear that you are not contracting them for a certain length of time, nor are you promising the job duties won’t change. These little things can make life much easier down the road.

You’d normally include salary information, but again, don’t phrase it as an annual amount if you’re not committing to at least a year-long length of employment. Use the amount that would be paid during a single pay-period.

Include the main duties related to the position, but make specific note that the letter does not attempt to list all the duties.

To offer competitive employment in Columbia, MO you’ll need to offer a salary level and benefit package that is appropriate for the local mid-Missouri population.

Here’s a sample template to consider customizing to suit your business.

Sample Offer of Employment Letter:

Date

Employee’s Name

Employee’s Address

Dear (INSERT FORMAL NAME, LIKE “MR. SMITH”)

(INSERT COMPANY NAME) is pleased to offer you the position of (POSITION TITLE). We are very excited about the potential you and your experience bring to the table. We expect your start date to be (START DATE).

You will be working in our (COMPANY LOCATION) location. Your initial direct supervisors will be (MANAGER’S NAME AND TITLE). Upon the completion of new employee orientation, you will begin your job functions. These duties include, but are not limited to (JOB DUTIES).

Your initial compensation includes a bi-weekly salary of (WEEKLY SALARY AMOUNT) payable bi-weekly. Employee benefits are covered in the enclosed information. (INCLUDE ANY APPLICABLE PROVISIONS).

By signing this offer of employment letter, you acknowledge that your employment will be on an at-will basis. Neither you nor the company has entered into a length of employment contract. This means you are free to leave the company at any time and we have the right to change your job position, compensation or terminate you at any time.

We look forward to a long lasting and mutually beneficial relationship and are confident your abilities will play a key role in our company. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

_________________________

(YOUR NAME)

(YOU JOB TITLE)

(YOUR COMPANY NAME)

As a local business service company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with human resource outsourcing, payroll and risk management, along with our other core services.

As a business owners, here’s a review of both the traditional services, and strategic benefits of utilizing and HRO company.

Traditional Services of local HROs

Human Resources Consulting – HROs usually are great resources for fielding needs and problems that come up during the year. For example, if you have a big happening in the company, the HRO should be able to help prepare your leadership with change management techniques and how to design the internal communications program.

Employee Benefits Support – HROs have great experience designing benefits packages that are appropriate for your business and locally competitive so you retain a higher percent of employees and can also attract quality talent. They also have business relationships with benefit providers and can usually “shop around” to get you the best return on your benefits investment.

Risk Control and Workers’ Compensation Insurance – An HRO can interview you and your staff, then bring its own experience to bear on your legal risk management. Do you have the right kinds of insurance? How does your workers’ comp history affect your insurance rates? How to limit your risk to employee lawsuits. These are all common areas where an HRO can help you understand, and become aware of, risks to your business future. Again, the HRO will be familiar with the best insurance companies and rates for the different types of insurance appropriate for your business.

Payroll Administration – Because HRO work with many companies and become very familiar with your business, they frequently offer payroll processing services. This allows you to off-load the time and effort you place toward managing the bi-weekly payroll process. HROs also typically will be best informed on how to classify your workers to help manage your company payroll deductions and government filings.

Strategic Benefits of utilizing a local HRO

HROs can scale up with you – By servicing many client companies, an HRO can scale its services to meet your growing needs. You don’t have to spend the time and money to hire and retain HR and payroll staff. The HRO uses up no office space.

HROs are reliable – An HRO company never calls in sick on the day the checks are printed out.

HROs are informed – An HRO makes it its business to stay informed with the local, state and national legal developments in the risk management and taxation areas. They make it a priority to be the experts on the latest developments that can help save you money and limit your exposure to new legal risks.

HROs understand your city – A local HRO is familiar with your local city. For example, this allows them to make recommendations based on the ebb and flow of the student population that comes and goes throughout the year in Columbia, MO. A local HRO would also anticipate the kinds of insurances your business may, or may not, need based on the mid-Missouri weather (snow, tornadoes, flooding).

As a business owner, looking into an HRO, or trying to switch to a local one is probably worth the time to at least get a quote. That way, you can make the most informed decision for your company.

As a local HRO company in Columbia, MO, Moresource strives to provide informative resources relevant to business owners and c-level executives. We provide help with human resource outsourcing, payroll and risk managment, along with our other core services.