Human Capital Management Blog

On October 1, 2018, the NYS DOL and NYS Division of Human Rights released final guidelines for employers to build compliant sexual harassment policies and training. While little has changed from draft regulations, there were two significant changes impacting employers.

Benetech is excited to announce the launch of its NYS Sexual Harassment Prevention Training Solution. In response to new state regulations mandating written sexual harassment policies and mandatory annual training, Benetech has developed an affordable series of webinar trainings through which employers can meet the new law’s requirement to complete annual training and train all new hires within 30 days of employment.

There has been a lot of recent focus on the rules governing employee schedules in New York State. Currently, there is a bill pending on new call-in pay regulations, which would penalize employers who failed to publish employee schedules with enough lead time, changed schedules in the last minute, or required employees to fill a schedule in the last minute.

On August 24, the New York State Department of Labor released their promised model guidance for mandatory sexual harassment training. NY employers must have updated sexual harassment policies in place by October 9 of 2018, and must have all employees complete mandatory sexual harassment training by January 1, 2019.

As of today, the NY State Senate and General Assembly have both approved bill "S8380A", which is proposing to add the death of a family member to the list of qualifying events for Paid Leave. The bill is currently awaiting Governor Cuomo's signature.

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.

Bottom line, if you are a general or maritime employer subject to the new OSHA Silica Standard, OSHA is offering a 30-day grace period for employers who make “good faith efforts” to comply with the new rule. OSHA will extend compliance assistance to applicable employers.

On May 21, 2019, the IRS issued the new affordability rates for determining compliance with the ACA’s affordable coverage requirements. For plan years starting in 2019, the new affordability rate will be 9.86% of an employee’s household income for both the pay or play guidelines and premium tax credit eligibility. The .30% increase from 2018’s affordability rate (9.56%) is the largest increase since the ACA became law in 2012.