Jim Thomason's "The Business of People"

One of the little-talked-about benefits of the Affordable Care Act's Insurance Marketplace is that people who lose their health coverage during the year become eligible to sign-up.  The same COBRA qualifying events that make you eligible to elect COBRA also make you eligible for mid-year sign ups on state or federal Exchanges.  Employers can charge you 102% of the full premium for your existing coverage, and generally employees pay about 1/3 to 1/2 of the full premium.  COBRA premiums, then, are sure to be anywhere from double to triple what you normally pay. Exchange coverage will be 100% of the full premium.  The coverage pool is also larger than most employers.  Chances are your premiums will be the same or less than COBRA coverage.  However depending upon your income you could be eligible for a subsidy which could make the coverage less expensive.  Another advantage is that if you did not elect a certain coverage as an employee you cannot elect ...

Interviews are possibly the most important thing a manager will do.  Hiring the right people, and keeping the wrong fit out, is one cornerstone of good performance for the whole team.  A poor contributor, or poor attitude, or both will drag down a whole team.  All-stars properly motivated left the whole group. Bad interview technique can also lead to legal exposure if questions drift into non-job-related subjects. I have found that this happens far more out of ignorance and lack of planning than prejudice. With this in mind here is how to construct interview questions that will keep you legal and focused on the search for great people. Plan your interview questions into two groups: 1. Task-based 2. Probing for Past Performance and Attitudes Task-Based Questions You want to know if the candidate can perform the essential functions of the job.  To do that you want to marry the duties of the job with the prepositional phrases from Behavioral Interviewing. ...

Part of my first-year's learning in Senior Living has been discovering that some communities, even with small workforces, have special benefits for their management teams.  This will become problematic and potentially cause employers to pay penalties once the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented.  Since most plans are based upon the calendar year and have renewed for 2014 now is the time to plan and communicate a discontinuation of those plan options. The regulations have not yet been written and so implementation is delayed: this gives employers time to eliminate those plans for 2015. Section 2716 of the Affordable Care Act prohibits discrimination based upon salary in the provision of benefits under a pre-tax benefits plan. In layman's terms, your highly compensated management cannot receive better benefits than the rest of your employees and your plan still enjoy pre-tax status.  For the definition of "highly compensated employee" the government could have ...

The withering criticism of the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") has led many to believe that it is a disaster, that it will never work, etc...  If you only watch conservative television or listen to conservative talk radio and politicians then you might be convinced of this "fact".  Best to hang on for a moment. One of the criticisms is that "nobody is signing up" as often-reported on Fox News which is omnipresent in the YMCA where I work out.  Early in the enrollment process there were daily reports of "single digit" enrollments in some states.  This was due to the HHS software being as bad at reporting as it was at enrolling. The software bugs are being fixed and enrollments are happening, and this week no more conservative voice than The Washington Post reports that HHS may actually meet their first enrollment goal of 7 million enrollees for 2014.  If that target is attained, given the large amount of negative publicity, the daily rants ...