Human Capital Management Blog

Simplify HR and keep my costs low—has a nice ring to it. Managing employees and their benefits can be expensive and tedious, and the problem only grows as your expand. A Professional Employer Organization (PEO) is certainly an option for employers looking to offboard HR tasks and find some possible savings on health insurance. The question—is a PEO a good fit for you? Here are a few pros and cons to consider, as well as some topics that most PEOs like to avoid discussing in their sales presentations. Joining a PEO is a big commitment, so the following tips will help you walk into the discussion with eyes wide open.

When Governor Cuomo signed the 2018 Budget Bill, one of the provisions was a prohibition against employers including any written clause in employee’s contracts or company policy requiring sexual harassment allegations to go through mandatory arbitration prior to outside courts. The only exception would be where this provision was inconsistent with federal law.

A Section 125 plan, AKA a cafeteria plan, allows employers to give employees the option of taking cash or make a pre-tax contribution to their employer-sponsored health plan. This is a great benefit to employers (reduced payroll and FICA tax) and employees (reduced taxable income and paying health premiums with pre-tax dollars). While cafeteria plans have been around for decades, we still run into employers who deliver their plans on a post-tax contribution basis and miss out on the savings for their business and employees. A simple $300 plan document can save thousands of dollars year-over-year. But that aside, there are stipulations to gaining the tax benefits of a Section 125 plan, and the IRS imposes strict testing to make sure that an employer's plan does not discriminate in favor of highly compensated employees.

Question: What are the differences between NYS and NYC Sexual Harassment Laws?

Hey this is Matt from Benetech answering your common questions when it comes to NY State’s new Sexual Harassment Training. Today’s question:

Hey this is Matt from Benetech answering your common questions when it comes to NY State’s new Sexual Harassment Training. Today’s question:

On December 14, 2018 a federal judge in Texas ruled that because the individual mandate (which penalized individuals for failing to have health insurance) would no longer be in effect in 2019, that the “entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) is invalid. They argued that the individual mandate would no longer be a valid tax since the penalty had been reduced to zero, and the entirety of the ACA was unconstitutional.  Does this mean that the Employer Mandate is going away in 2019?

NYS contractors, you can thank your associations and lobbyists. They just got a clarification in your favor for the state's new mandatory Sexual Harassment Training requirements.