Every PEO has probably faced this situation: You run a detailed payroll report on the workforce covered by your PEO agreements and you say, “Wait a minute, when did we get an employee in Texas?” Or, even worse—today’s mail includes a notice from the PEO licensing authority or the state unemployment agency in a state where you thought you had no worksite employees, telling you that you have two worksite employees in that state and informing you of an administrative penalty and fine.
Revising company employee handbooks is becoming an ongoing, quarterly task as federal, state, and municipal laws, agency edicts, and court decisions impact our workplaces. Same-sex marriages are altering how we administer benefits. Legalized and medicinal marijuana can change how we handle workers’ compensation claims. And, the impending details of executive actions on immigration could rock our HR worlds.
The presence of PEOs is on the rise across all types of industries. With the recent passage of the Small Business Efficiency Act (SBEA), that presence will only continue to grow. The presence of a PEO in the employment hierarchy presents special challenges in the context of workers’ compensation claims and we have found that many employees, their counsel, and their employers are still in the dark about what role the PEO plays and how it interacts with their workers’ compensation claims. Dispelling some of this confusion is critical in ensuring that workers’ compensation claims are handled as efficiently as possible and at minimal cost to both the PEO and the client employer.
Executing a PEO start-up from scratch is a major undertaking. A PEO start-up involves many interdependent moving parts executed by a variety of different professionals, not the least of which is the legal piece of the PEO start-up puzzle.
We all know the three “Rs” of elementary education: Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. In the PEO industry, we are all very familiar with our three Rs: Regulations, Rules, and Risk. Thus, it is no surprise that our membership survey results rank the NAPEO Federal and State Regulatory Database as extremely valuable to our members.
As you know, we at NAPEO do a ton of events every year—from local Leadership Council Forums and our annual PEO Capitol Summit here in Washington, D.C., to our Annual Conference and Marketplace, this year in Arizona. But, we also have a CEO Forum program, which is slightly less well known, given the exclusivity of it audience, and also has lower attendance as a result.
NAPEO has taken the first significant step in the implementation of the Small Business Efficiency Act (SBEA).
As part of NAPEO’s ongoing efforts to gauge small business attitudes towards the PEO industry and help members fine-tune their sales and marketing messages, we called again on nationally known pollster Bill McInturff and his company, Public Opinion Strategies, to conduct a nationwide online survey of small business owners.
In a final rule issued on March 5, 2015, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) changed the longstanding requirement that whistleblower complaints be filed in writing. In part, the rule was borne out of the large broom of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (as it had, in turn, amended the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002)—again proving that the Wall Street crisis of 2008 continues to be a gift that keeps on giving for all employers, not just the financial industry.
The implementation of the Small Business Efficiency Act (SBEA) is not the only activity of the federal government that NAPEO is following. While the Treasury and IRS work on SBEA implementation, Congress and the Obama administration continue their work, much of which could impact the PEO industry.
This new column, “PEOs in the Community,” explores how PEOs are developing and nurturing relationships in their communities. Being embedded in the small business world, PEOs are uniquely positioned to lend their time and expertise to serving their communities, while at the same time enhancing industry visibility. This month, Lisa Jackson of Paychex PEO talks about four of the company’s recent community outreach efforts.
They’ve been lauded as tech-savvy and socially conscious, and maligned as entitled and narcissistic. Love them or loathe them, millennials are impacting the workforce in a major way.
On September 16, 2004, Hurricane Ivan made landfall in Alabama and northwest Florida. A category 5 storm as big across as Texas and with winds up to 165 miles per hour at its strongest, it hit the coast as a category 3 with winds of 120 to 130 mph. But still…
Five years after the passage of Dodd-Frank, there is still a vigorous debate in this country about the basics of our financial markets and the regulatory framework that governs them. It’s an issue that incites passion and division, and too often, the truth gets obscured and the point of the debate gets lost in the noise. The point is that we need a financial regulatory system that works. The U.S. Chamber’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness seeks to foster an honest debate based on some key truths: