Human Capital Management Blog

It’s common around election time for employees to request time from their employer to vote. On April 12, Governor Cuomo signed legislation S.B. 1505 as part of the 2020 New York State budget package, impacting employer requirements for voting accommodations. The changes are as follows:

We had a question come through yesterday from a client experiencing some confusion over tracking NY Paid Family Leave. I imagine its a common scenario, so chances are you will face something similar to this situation in the future. So take two minutes to get prepared. Here's the situation.

8 billion times per day—the number of times U.S. citizens look at their phone according to a recent report by Deloitte. If every citizen had a mobile phone, that's more than 24 times per day! It's no wonder that HR departments leveraging mobile tools reach 51% more employees when they invest in self-service, mobile, and help desk solutions.

In a 2015 Harris Poll, 74% of respondents said that their company needed to be more data-driven (ie. fact-based) in workforce decision-making. Not a surprising statistic, considering only 27% of C-suite executives found their HR team able to provide them with actionable analytics to improve their decision-making. There are useless Human Capital Management (HCM) analytics—then there are HCM analytics that drive business decisions. As far as business leaders go, leave the “useless HCM Analytics” to the academics. What good is it to tell me that my turnover rate has dropped 3% on key employees when reducing key-position turnover has a negligible impact on bottom-line performance? So how do you start quantifying HCM analytics that can have a measurable impact on business performance?

In war, the victor’s write the history textbook. In marketing, those with the bigger marketing budgets define the industry terms. Human Capital Management (HCM) is indeed something new that businesses need, and HR Tech companies are expanding their technologies to help businesses put HCM strategies into practice. But the average mid-market business owner doesn’t know what HCM is, and technology companies don’t have time to educate them. Therefore, in marketing the term HCM often comes with a parenthetical message (Hey, we’re still talking about payroll, and time-tracking, and all the daily HR stuff you are familiar with). Because of this, HCM technology gets put in a box of “HR Streamlining technology” or "a full workforce management suite." But those are severely deficient definitions. More than just a suite that simplifies daily HR and personnel management, true HCM technology helps organizations begin the journey of applying the science of HCM in their organizations.

Applying yesterday’s health plan strategy to today’s market can produce some rotten emotions around renewal season. If you find yourself or your staff murmuring one or more of the following, you might be ripe for considering a new health plan strategy.

Given the release of the final regulations for NY Paid Family Leave (PFL), and the optional deduction period starting on July 1, 2017, there’s been an uptick in chatter about the new benefit. New regulations mean new policies, admin responsibilities, and reporting requirements…and new stress. The number one question from employers: “What do I have to do?” In talking with various legal counsel and reading up on the regulations, the honest answer at present is, “We don’t fully know.” However, there appear to be a few concrete responsibilities that are falling on employers, especially those with self-insured disability insurance. Here’s what we’re finding so far.

At the Capital Region Human Resource Associations 2017 One-Day Conference, nationally recognized labor attorney, John Bagyi, Esq., provided a brief overview of the draft NY Paid Family Leave regulations released last February, and discussed how the regulation will interact with FMLA. Always amazes me how Mr. Bagyi can take the dryest of regulatory topics, pepper them with story, and make them sticky for the audience.  In this brief blog, I've pulled some tables and notes from his March 23rd presentation for readers to have a quick-fact sheet on what to expect for NY Paid Family Leave come next January. Of note, the NY Workers' Compensation Board will be receiving comments on the draft regulation through April 7, 2017. Final regualtions are anticipated this June, as participating insurance companies will need ample time to finalize new products to bring to market.