Tag: Bobbi Kloss

Dress Codes: Designing, Implementing, and Enforcing.

Posted on by Bobbi Kloss, BAN Director of Human Capital Management

There was a time, and still suggested today, when it was advised to dress for the position you wanted, not the one you were in. Dress codes were and still are about empowerment―but the question is, whose empowerment?

Traditionally, dress code policies were designed to set white collar apart from the blue-collar worker, the executive from the administrative staff. They were individualized to the industry one was in or to distinguish the workers from the industry being served (retail, hospitality). Policies focused
their objective on a definition of professionalism that related the clothes to the business attitude of trustworthiness and reliability.

Today, it is still about empowerment. Aligning with the DNA of the generation(s) that employers are focusing on attracting and retaining, dress codes established today focus on setting that individual company culture. Take for example the “dress appropriately” dress code policy at General
Motors. Such dress code policies allow for the actions of the company, its product, and the service-minded ethics of the workforce to exemplify reliability and the attire of the personnel then become about relatability. What becomes created is a culture where supervisors and employees are empowered to think for themselves in determining what is appropriate to wear to work and for them to come together to provide viable solutions when challenges present themselves.

The relaxation of today’s dress codes also allows for more personal expression advancing the forms that diversity in the workforce can take. Whereas men’s haircuts may be longer, non-existent, bolder colors in women’s hair, tattoos, large, bulky jewelry, transgender employees, religious customs, and generational norms, are just a few of the consideration’s employers are looking at within the make-up of the workforce. For many companies, the line being drawn is focused on what
is not distracting or disruptive to the workplace and what falls within non-discrimination guidelines.

In some industries, i.e. tech and marketing companies, the CEO now may be hard to tell apart from the staff. With today’s entrepreneurial-minded generations moving quicker up the corporate ladder, they are the dress code trendsetters versus what may be considered the “suppressed” (ties, dresses, pantyhose, etc.) dress code of the prior generations.

There even seems to be less “casual Fridays,” as every day is business casual or casual. In addition, having the ability to work remotely from home also promotes an unmonitored dress code. Remember the bunny slippers commercial?

In designing or updating dress code policies for today, and as in any policy development, Human Resources needs to define the objective of the dress code. What is the message the company wants to convey to its employees and the customers it represents? Some dress codes are meant to send a
message about the company’s image or style―think about a trendsetting salon or restaurants… [Read the full article]

Written by Bobbi Kloss, Benefit Advisors Network Director of Human Capital Management Services, published in Entertainment Human Resources Network.

Stop Misuse of Family Benefits

Posted on by Bobbi Kloss, BAN Director of Human Capital Management

Written by Stephen Miller, CEBS, including comments from Bobbi Kloss, Benefit Advisors Network Director of Human Capital Management Services. Published on SHRM.org, March 27, 2019.

Some workers intentionally abuse family-perk policies, while others are just confused.

United Airlines fired more than 35 employees in March for selling travel passes intended for employees’ immediate relatives. Free or discounted travel is a common family perk in the airline industry, the Chicago Tribune reported. When selling these passes, sometimes for several thousand dollars apiece, employees falsely registered the buyers as their stepparents or domestic partners.

“The rules are there to make sure everyone can enjoy the benefits,” said Danielle Capilla, Chicago-based director of employee benefits compliance at Alera Group, an insurance and financial services firm. Her father, an airline pilot, made sure everyone in her family understood those rules.

Whether misusing travel perks, allowing relatives to drive a company car or extending discounts to people who aren’t eligible for them, those who violate family-perk policies “think they’re not going to get caught,” Capilla said.

“Abuse of employee benefits and perks is a continuous frustration for employers,” added Bobbi Kloss, HR leader at Benefit Advisors Network, a Cleveland-based consortium of health and welfare benefit brokers. “From the CEO and top executives to the line workers, no level of employee is immune from committing abuses.”

Dependent-Eligibility Audits

A common misuse of family benefits occurs when employees add ineligible relations as family members under their employer’s health plan. To combat this practice, 43 percent of employers routinely conduct dependent-eligibility audits of their health plans, according to a recent report from the nonprofit International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. When conducting an audit, HR consultancy Mercer estimates that most companies will find 3 percent to 10 percent of plan members to be ineligible. Given that the average annual cost of each covered dependent is $4,570, Mercer found, the expense of covering ineligible dependents can add up quickly.

Capilla encourages employers to conduct dependent audits “every year if there have been issues, and at least every three years otherwise.”

“Not all misuse is intentional,” said Anna Phalen, vice president of account management at Jellyvision, a benefits communication software firm in Chicago. “In some cases, employees may not know they’re stepping over the line, or they may not be aware there are penalties for doing so.”

One reason workers grow confused over dependent eligibility, Phalen noted, is that the Affordable Care Act allows adult children up to age 26 to stay on a parent’s employer-provided health plan, whether they are dependents or not. Also, in recent years, many benefit plans have expanded their definition of eligible dependents to include unmarried partners and stepchildren. These developments, she said, “make it all the more important to clearly articulate the rules on who qualifies.”

Family Leave Misuse

Misuse of time off is also costly for employers, especially for intermittent absences taken under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) by employees who don’t actually need to attend to their own or a relative’s health needs.

“You can’t solve for every misuse of leave. But you can design your leave program and policies to help deter misuse,” Capilla said. How employers go about that depends on the problems they’re seeing, she said, joking about the “30 percent of the workforce seeking intermittent FMLA on every sunny Friday.”

[SHRM members-only toolkit: Managing Family and Medical Leave]

Clarify What’s Allowed

Employees may have been told about benefits restrictions when they were hired or went through open enrollment, Phalen said, but that information should be reiterated when they make changes to their benefits, such as adding dependents to a family health plan.

When employees receive a thick handbook during onboarding that’s filled with benefits jargon, “it can be overwhelming,” said Bill Gimbel, president of LaSalle Benefits, an insurance brokerage in the Chicago area. Employers should describe their benefits rules “in terms that are simple enough for all employees to understand, yet thorough,” he said. “A detailed handbook may be helpful for your HR team, but a PowerPoint or visual one-sheeter that provides an overview of your benefits offerings may be better for the rest of your employees.”

Taking Action

Intentional abuse of employer benefits can be a firing offense, and, in some cases, employers may want to sue to reclaim the value of misappropriated benefits or press criminal charges.

However, “for abuses, I advise having a ‘strike’ system,” Capilla said, as in two or three strikes and you’re out. “There are honest mistakes that happen. At the same time, you don’t want to swing to the other end and only slap people on the wrist.”

“No matter what is done to tighten the reins, as long as there are unethical people in the workplace, abuse will continue,” Kloss said. Many employers “jump the gun and discontinue the benefit or perk, affecting all employees instead of addressing the behavior of the abuser,” she added. That can lead to employee morale issues, especially when a discontinued benefit made the job particularly attractive.

To reduce benefits fraud, employee benefits professionals recommend these steps:

  • Work with managers. “Lack of well-being—financial, social, emotional and physical wellness—could be driving employees to make bad choices,” Kloss said. Managers may be able to pick up on those situations. Train your managers to identify signs of misuse, Gimbel added. “Educate them on what to look for, and be sure that they report it back to HR.”
  • Use HR software. Software can be used to track the receipt of health providers’ certifications and recertifications for FMLA leave requests, for instance, which can help expose abuses, Gimbel said.
  • Stay organized and be proactive. Regularly track and monitor benefits use, whether through spreadsheets, online forms or HR information systems, Gimbel advised. “If, along the way, your team catches wind of potential benefits misuse, be proactive and address it immediately.”

View the article Stop Misuse of Family Benefits on SHRM.org

New Benefit Lets Employees Trade PTO for Student Loan Relief

Posted on by Bobbi Kloss, BAN Director of Human Capital Management

Written by Steven Miller, CEBS, with insights provided by Bobbi Kloss, BAN Director of Human Capital Management Services.

Employers seek creative ways to ease student loan burdens

Employers continue to roll out new ways to provide workers with student debt relief. Insurance firm Unum, for instance, announced in January that it will let employees exchange accrued but unused paid time off (PTO) for payments against their student loans.

“This innovative solution gives U.S. employees a choice to use their benefits in ways that work best for them,” stated Carl Gagnon, Unum’s assistant vice president of global financial well-being and retirement programs. The option will be available to any of Unum’s U.S. employees who have student debt, including parents who have taken out loans for their children.

Employers are “finding creative solutions for people to tackle this challenging issue,” said Ashwini Srikantiah, vice president for student debt programs at Fidelity Investments, which is managing Unum’s student debt relief program.

Starting their first year at Unum, full-time employees receive 28 days of PTO, including holidays and personal days, with additional PTO available over time, Gagnon said. Each year, employees can carry over up to five days (40 hours) of unused paid time. Starting in January 2020, participants in the student debt relief program will be able to transfer up to 40 hours of carryover PTO into a payment against student debt.

“Instead of deferring those [accrued PTO] days to take an extra-long vacation in the future, Unum’s benefit will provide employees with an extra payment toward their debt, which is at the forefront” of their financial concerns, said Brian Carlson, vice president for wealth management at benefits broker GCG Financial, an Alera Company, in Deerfield, Ill.

Addressing a Need

“We’re seeing increased demand for student loan repayment benefits both from employers that want to offer it and from employees electing it as a voluntary benefit,” said Jeff Oldham, senior vice president, BenefitsPlace Distribution, at Benefitfocus, a cloud-based benefits management platform firm based in Charleston, S.C. “The solutions we’ve commonly seen from employers include making direct contributions toward the loan amount or connecting employees to lenders offering lower-than-average interest rates to refinance or bundle their loans. The utilization of unused PTO to fund student debt demonstrates a creative way to tackle the issue.”

Bobbi Kloss, director of human capital management services for the Benefit Advisors Network, a Cleveland-based consortium of health and welfare benefit brokers, praised [Read More]

The Benefits of A 401(k), Including Reducing Student Loan Debt

Posted on by Benefit Advisors Network

Written by Bobbi Kloss, Human Capital Management Director. Published in the Los Angeles Advertising Human Resources Professionals Monthly, October 2018.

When private employers think about financial wellness they typically center their thoughts on 401(k) plans. The conversation today though has expanded the discussion on 401(k) programs to include student loan debt and other high-impact life events that have the ability to redirect an employee’s thoughts, and finances, off of savings. These events have the potential to impact saving for today, tomorrow, or the future.

To an employer, it can appear that the focus of the majority of employees is on the financial challenges of today, not on saving for their future. This has prompted employers with an existing 401(k) plan to get involved and figure out how to solve the participation challenge. These challenges also deter other employers contemplating a 401(k), wondering if it would be worth it.

According to a ten-year trend survey from 2007―2017 by Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, more employers are confident that their employees are saving for the future. Meanwhile, plan participation shows that 61% of employees say they are confident that they can retire comfortably versus ten years ago. Additionally, 70% of employers see their 401(k) as an important benefit for the attraction and retention of employees and 80% of employees say a 409(k) plan is an attraction for making an employment [Read More].

Bobbi Kloss is the Director of Human Capital Management Services for the Benefit Advisors Network, a national network of independent employee benefit brokerage and consulting companies. For more information, please email the author at bkloss@benefitadvisorsnetwork.com.

Taking family leave? Your employer could get a tax credit for paying you while you’re out

Posted on by Bobbi Kloss, BAN Director of Human Capital Management

Written by: Lindsay Von Someren, Credit Karma, with contributions from Bobbi Kloss, BAN Director of Human Capital Management Services. 

In a nutshell: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act contains a hidden gem: a tax credit for your employer if your employer pays you while you’re out on family or medical leave. If you’re lucky, you might be able to persuade your employer to take advantage of the credit. Here are a few things both employers and employees should know about the new credit.

Have you heard of the employer credit for family and medical leave?

No? There’s also a good chance your employer hasn’t heard about the new credit either.

“It was one of the new tax laws that was not given as much attention as some of the others,” says Ari Brown, a CPA with Black Mountain Tax & Consulting of Fort Collins, Colo. As a result, Brown says, “I have seen very few businesses respond to the new tax credit.”

But there is a good reason both employers and employees should pay attention. This new family leave credit does provide an incentive for your employer to offer you paid leave. But there are rules and limitations for who can claim the credit. And the IRS has not yet issued detailed guidance to help employers better understand how the credit works.

The good: Your employer can now get a tax credit for paying you while you’re on leave

It’s no secret that maintaining a steady flow of income can be a problem if you need to take leave to have a baby or care for a sick family member. While the Family and Medical Leave Act, or FMLA, may require your employer to give you at least 12 weeks of leave per year to care for yourself or a qualifying family member, it doesn’t require your employer to pay you during that time.

That can create a one-two punch to your finances, because your expenses might be increasing due to family or medical circumstances at the same time your income declines.

Tax reform may have you covered, having created a family leave credit for employers who pay workers at least 50% of their normal wages while they’re on family and medical leave.

Not all “family” and “medical” leave counts, though — a few days off recovering from a cold likely won’t count. Instead, you’d need to have a “serious health condition” that makes you “unable to perform the functions” of your job after any paid sick leave runs out.

This credit is available to employers who provide leave pay for all qualified employees — both part-time and full-time. But there are other qualifications. You’ll need to have worked for your employer for at least a year. And there’s a wage cap that applies for the year prior to the tax year the credit is being claimed. For example, for an employer claiming a credit for wages paid to you in 2018, you must not have earned more than $72,000 in 2017.

The bad: The family leave credit is complicated

Unfortunately for your employer, this tax credit could require some additional paperwork.

To claim the credit, employers must have a written paid leave policy in place that provides for a least two weeks of paid family and medical leave annually to all full-time qualifying employees. The policy must provide paid leave that’s at least half of the wages the employer would normally pay the qualifying employee.

If your employer doesn’t already have such a policy in place, it would need to write one in order to claim this credit. What’s more, the IRS has left several questions about the credit unanswered, including when the written policy must be in place. The uncertainty could make it difficult for employers and their accountants to figure out whether they can claim this tax credit — which could mean fewer will see it as an incentive to pay workers on leave.

“I do see tax professionals tend to avoid some topics that the IRS hasn’t lent additional clarification on,” says Brown.

That’s especially unfortunate for this tax credit, which requires employers to get a written plan in place so that they can claim the tax credit next year.

“I see many tax professionals wait until January to brush up on the tax laws and credits before tax season starts. Nobody wants to leave tax savings on the table for their clients, but this is a topic tax professionals should be talking to and informing their clients of before tax season,” Brown adds.

The ugly: The family leave credit is short-lived

Further complicating things, this tax credit is only available for the 2018 and 2019 tax years.

That’s right — your employer could go through the hassle of getting a paid leave plan in place (even though the IRS itself isn’t sure yet how it works) only to be able to claim the credit for a scant two years.

Finally, to put the cherry on top, the maximum credit your employer could possibly get for paying you while you’re on leave is 25% of the amount it paid to you.

The minimum credit is 12.5% of your leave pay, if your employer pays you 50% of your regular pay while you’re on leave. The credit amount increases by a quarter of a point for each percentage point above 50% of the regular wages your employer pays you while you’re on leave. In addition to the 25% cap, other limitations may apply.

Here’s an example of how the family leave credit could work for an employer. Say your employer pays you a total of $6,000 while you’re on leave, and that’s half your normal wage. Provided you and your employer meet all other eligibility requirements, your employer could get a credit for 12.5% of that amount — or $750.

“The short-term tax credit gain does not appear to be an impetus for some employers to work through the strategies necessary to develop a new policy,” says Bobbi Kloss, director of human capital management services for Benefit Advisors Network, a nationwide employee benefits firm. “Right now, it appears to be ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ in regard to employers being tempted to take this tax credit.”

Bottom line

The new family and medical leave credit has pros and cons — for both employers and employees. On one hand, an employer who already has or will soon have a paid leave policy in place could see a tax benefit thanks to the new credit. And employers who were considering offering paid leave might see the new credit as added incentive to offer their employees this valuable benefit.

But if your employer doesn’t yet offer paid leave, could you ask it to now that there’s a possible tax credit for doing so?

“It would be a big ask of an employer to determine if it should restructure their policy and budget at the time of a leave request,” says Kloss. “With all the considerations, to implement any policy for an employer cannot happen overnight.”

Instead, Brown suggests using this as an opportunity to start a discussion with your employer before you need to take leave.

“Employees having some knowledge of tax laws and credits that could benefit them is a great way to start the dialogue with their employers,” Brown says. “If their employer doesn’t offer paid leave, it could simply be because they do not know about it or just never thought about it.”

“My advice is to ask questions, be open with your employer,” he says, “and never be afraid to speak up for benefits that are important to you and your individual situation.”