VANNOY:

Hello, thanks for joining us today for this informative session on human resources, legislative changes, and economic trends. Our presenter today is Drake Roth of Asure HR Services. Following this presentation, he’ll be taking questions, so please type yours into the questions window on your screen. Here we go. Take it away. Drake.

ROTH:

Hi, good morning everyone. My name is Drake Roth. I’m a solutions consultant with Asure Consulting. I sit, you know, with around 20 to 30 certified HR professionals. I am steeped in this subject matter if you would allow that. And today I’m gonna talk about our ebook key changes and trends that will impact your HR strategy in 2020. Now, before I get started, I just want to make it clear that myself as an individual and as sure as a company, are not for or against any of the changes or laws that we’re gonna be talking about today. I’m just here to help set you up for success and give you some ways that you can approach the reality of changing regulations in the us. So, let’s get started.

So, first big change of 2020. One of the first ones to come through are the new W four forms. Now, the reason for these new forms is actually pretty simple. The goal was just to simplify the W four in terms of filling it out, and also make it a lot easier for employees to determine their, you know, their withholdings for taxes. So the important thing to know right now is that if you already have employees who have filled out a W four, they don’t need to fill out a new one. New employees obviously will need to fill out the new form, but there is an opportunity here to you know, give older employees a chance to fill out this new W four form. And the reason would be this a new w the new W four makes those withholdings easier to calculate, which means it could affect the take home for employees, which could be a great way to, you know, help employees take home a little bit more from their paycheck without a substantial increase in cost for you.

You know, you as a small business owner, you as an employer, or you just looking to help look for ways to help, you know, boost your retention. So again, current employees don’t need to fill out this, the new W four form, but there is an opportunity there to help demonstrate some value to employees and improve, you know, your compensation or your retention efforts. Up next, this is a big one. There are new break time, new legislation passing for nursing mothers under F F L S A. What this means immediately is that any employer with over 50 employees is going to have to provide you know, a secluded private area that is not a bathroom for new mothers to express milk as frequently as possible.

So these these breaks are, you know, are gonna be numerous the day expectant mothers need to express milk pretty frequently during the day. So this can introduce you know, a specific burden onto you as an employer. Also, I forgot to mention, if you have under 50 employees, it’s still recommended that you provide this space. However, there can be some exemptions if this space would, you know, you know, give you an undue burden in terms of resources or, or, you know real estate or whatever that may be. There are a lot of resources out there. There’s a group called Pregnant at Work that highlights, you know, all the different ways that you can accommodate employees who are new mothers or help deal with some of the accommodations that you need to provide. And this is going to be a pressing issue.

If you look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics they’re projected that, you know, over the next few years, especially starting at 2020, the the participation of women in the labor force is going to be climbing and might even climb past, you know, 45 and be reaching, you know, 50% or higher. So, you know, allocations for new mothers is going to become more and more important. And as you can see in the upper right hand corner of this slide again, this source is from pregnant at work. 63% of court cases ended with mothers out of the job. That’s a real shame that these sort of, you know, necessary accommodations that are starting need to be applied are ending up with people losing their jobs and, you know, causing employers need to start going through that process of interviewing and hiring and all the costs associated with that. So, follow up with sources such as pregnant at work to understand the accommodations. And you know, there’s a lot of ready-made guides out there that’ll help you, you know, navigate these new laws.

Tangentially related is paid family and medical leave. You know, we’re I’m up in Washington. Anyone on the West Coast is very familiar with these laws. What these laws you know, provide for employees is that when there is a qualifying event at home and family, someone you take care of, a dependent you’re allowed to take paid time off to address those, you know, private needs. So what that means is that there’s gonna be a whole new level of qualifying leave of, you know, you know, knowing all the things that can qualify a person for leave. And even in this, like the state of California, those laws can change depending on what city you’re in. So there’s a lot of regulatory, you know, hurdles to jump through to make sure that you you know, are okaying the proper types of leave and providing employees with you know, the benefits allocated to them.

By law, there is a federal level bill that has been introduced that could, you know, introduce this nationally. So it’s important to, for you as a small business, for you wanting to look forward and grow for you, not wanting to get sued to pay attention and to your current leave process. How you process those leaves, how you retain records, how you qualify employees for leave. And also make sure that you’re communicating that process correctly to your employees. That will reduce and minimize a significant amount of the risk. Also, similarly, similarly related is fair work week. These new schedule change laws, you know, predictive scheduling, fair work week, last minute schedule change laws they’re all kind of the same thing. What these do is provide you know, certain scheduling requirements for different small businesses in terms of you know, you need to have scheduling set out two weeks in advance, a certain amount of time in advance.

There are certain periods where you’re not allowed to make any changes, and there are certain compensation requirements for employees that you keep on call. Now again, this is, this is another, you know, that can, what can be looked at as a significant burden for scheduling. But what this does provide is a good opportunity to invest in a, you know, a smarter timekeeping solution and getting a better look at exactly what your overheads are for labor and, and staff. And gives you a great time to start actually honing in on those costs rather than just letting them run rampant and never collecting data on how to look at it. Up next is salary history bans. Now, salary history bans have been a very simple way for employers to look at, you know, what sort of compensation offer that they’re going to provide through employees during the recruiting process and interviewing process.

There are a significant amount of states and jurisdictions that have outlawed salary history questions. You cannot base, you know, compensation decisions on those, on those salary histories provided from employees. The other issue is, is that a lot of those salary histories are anecdotal. It’s, it’s, you know, based on the individual, it’s not necessarily representative of what could be normal in your industry or even, you know, area of living in terms of cost of living. There have even been some federal level bills such as paycheck Fairness Act that might introduce salary history bans at a federal level. In order to adapt to this, it’s, it’s going to be crucial to, you know, make sure that you’re basing your compensation offers in a more robust data set. So, looking at, you know, salary benchmarks from E R I or any sort of, you know, federal database of salary benchmarks is going to be very important in determining, you know, what your compensation offers are.

And cuz those are directly going to roll into how you retain and recruit new employees. So again, salary history bans are, you know, trending outwards federal level bill is being introduced. So it’s important to start looking about what data you’re using to present, you know, compensation offers to new employees. This is a big one. Overtime threshold changes. So in 2020 this year the, the, the threshold for overtime has changed by almost over $10,000. What this means is just about every single payroll across the US is going to have some employees whose status, status for overtime exemption is going to be changing. This introduces a really, really significant chance for gigantic risk or compliance gaps to open up for different employers. So the first thing to do in addressing these new overtime threshold changes is to take a look at your entire workforce, double check, you know, where all your employees are at in terms of their salary and hours to see where they’re falling in terms of exempt or non-exempt.

And for those employees who have a status change, it is important to be looking at how you’re going to communicate that exemption change to them. Some employees might not understand why their exemption is changing. It’s also important to begin training and communicating to managers in terms of staffing hours and timekeeping, and make sure that those expectations are rolling down to employees. Again, this has been a significant change this year for the threshold, for the threshold numbers. It’s important to remember that there’s going to be significant change in almost every payroll across the us and you need to be communicating those changes to employees and also making sure that you’re not letting that compliance gap grow too large.

Up next, the employer balancing test. This one can be a little confusing if you, you know, are not steeped in HR subject matter. So a little bit of background on this cuz it is a little bit interesting. I’m sure everyone’s familiar with some of the trouble that Boeing has been in in the past year. This trouble with Boeing didn’t start in this past year. It also started in 2017, which is where this employer balancing test came from. The National Labor Relations Board fielded a suit between Boeing and one of their engineer unions about certain policies that Boeing kept for their employees. That infringed upon Section seven and Section eight rights in the National Labor Relations Act. Just a brief overview, these Section seven and section eight rights are basically the rights for employees to communicate and organize in the workplace. So it can be a very touchy subject for a lot of people.

These policies that Boeing kept were policies, you know, seemingly simple policies such as, you know, employees cannot share personal information. Employees, you know, the, the spirit and intent of these policies were to help Boeing protect trade secrets or, or whatever the case may be. But what the issue was is that, you know, employees can’t, can’t speak or, or exercise those section seven and section eight rights if there’s a blanket ban banning certain types of communication. So to put it simply, the Employer Balancing Act, and this, this advice column was distributed by the National Labor Relations Board a few weeks ago, basically asked employers to take a look at all of their policies and separate their policies into three separate categories. The three categories are this category number one, are policies that are lawful to uphold. They don’t infringe on section seven, eight rights.

They can’t be interpreted to infringe on those rights. So you’re safe to put them in category two are rights that could be interpreted to infringe upon those rights. And category three are policies that definitely infringe upon those rights. So what this means, you know, broadly, is that if you have policies that are very, very generally worded, maybe you pulled them from a template or, or a sample form somewhere the other and haven’t been vetted or looked at you know, closely by anyone, let alone someone who you know, may be representing your HR and employment attorney. It’s important to take a double, a double to double check all of those policies and make sure that they’re not while being you know, on the surface compliant, they’re not, you know, they’re not in a place where they could be interpreted as infringing on those rights.

You can see along the bottom a lot of, there’s a lot of tricky things that can bring you from category one to category two or category three. And again, it’s really important to begin taking a look at all of your policies to make sure that you are not going to receive an audit from the National Labor Relations Board. Next is workplace Immigration Laws. Like I said, I’m in Seattle I’m in, you know, Amazon Central. You know, in terms of immigration, labor, H one B visas this is a big deal in the tech world and not just the tech world, but you know, the rest of you know, every market segment that you can think of. So what’s important to know is that H one B visas and the accompanying H four visas that would be for family members or for spouses, the requirements the costs associated with those.

And, you know, the specific rules of the, you know, the lotteries for the allotment of those visas are going to be changing. What this means is that there’s going to be, you know, maybe some more costs. There’s going to be some, some some struggles to acquire, acquire the, you know, adequate labor that you’re going to need for the performance of your business. Now the H one B visas, all of that is probably going to get more strict as time goes on. This is a very this is a very politically sensitive issue. It’s going to be tough to see, you know, very, very significant change one way or the other as we move forward. So what this provides an opportunity for is a, you should be looking at how you, you know, record your I nines, how are you taking your I nine in?

How are you, you know, ensuring an employee is eligible for work in the us. And also similarly is you should be looking at in terms of your needs for labor how you can start you know, growing or training domestic labor that you may need. There’s a workforce that while not while not be meeting the specific talent requirements that you may have as a business, it will be important moving forward to start looking about at how you’re growing that talent that you already have, rather than relying on, you know, an expensive and uncertain process in terms of acquiring you know, those different visas or immigrant labor, the secure Act this is, this can be enticing for a lot of small business owners moving forward. Basically the Secure Act provides certain tax allowances and certain rule changes in terms of retirement planning for small businesses in order to provide employees safe Harbor 401ks.

So this means that it’s, it potentially can be a significant benefit or at least less burdensome to apply these retirement planning services and accounts for employees, whether they be full-time or even part-time after, you know, a certain amount of years employed. This act has, you know, over the next three years is going to grow. There’s a timeline posted to look at how this is going to grow from 2020 to 2023, and your options as an employer are going to increase as time goes on in terms of what the Secure Act allows. It’s really important that you speak to a financial advisor to make sure that you are not leaving advantages for yourself or your employees on the table. Like I mentioned, offering retirement plans for employees can help you boost retention. And also offering these plans can give you very significant tax credits and breaks once you go through the necessary paperwork to, you know, include these acts as part of your business’ benefits.

So again, it’s crucial that you speak to a financial advisor and make sure you’re not leaving advantages on the table. Also, it’s important to make sure that as part of your onboarding or recruitment process, you’re communicating all of these changes, what’s available to employees and making sure employees know how to, you know, apply for these benefits. It’s a twofold operation here. Related to that is the the updates to the IRS updates for cybersecurity for Payroll forum. So W two s and 10 99 s over the next few years are going to move to being almost done entirely digitally. You can find a timeline on the IRS website of what that’s going to look like, what that digitization process is going to look like. There’s two things with this. One is that it’s going to be easier for the IRS to uncover inaccuracies in that sort of reporting, because it’s all going to be digitized, it’s all going to be automated. On the other hand, it’s also could potentially be easier for you as an employer to look about how you’re distributing and collecting these W two s and 10 99 s. Like I said, the timeline is on the IRS website. You can find it as we move into 2023. All of these forms will become digital and be digitally distributed and collected. So it’s going to be important to make sure that you’re moving in step with that to make the process as easy as possible.

So, I’ve gone through a couple of the trends this year, and I understand that it’s a lot of information. The important thing to know is that depending on how you tackle all of these things, it holistically can make the process a little bit easier for you or provide some op opportunities to find a return where you may not have been finding it before. But now that I’ve moved out of some of the the regulations that are changing this year, I wanna speak a little bit to some of the HR trends that we are seeing as a human resources, you know, as a group of human resources professionals. So the first one I don’t think this is a big surprise to anybody, but the gig economy is becoming, you know, more and more prevalent in today’s workforce. A lot of people are, you know, working full-time and part-time alongside, you know, doing this freelancing gig economy work.

This this has this, this provides a unique opportunity of course with freelancers, and I’m sure I, you know, I’m sure I don’t need to tell a lot of people who are listening in today, but I’m sure a lot of you take advantage of 10 99 workers or freelance workers. But as more and more people start participating in the gig economy, the the battle for talent and retaining, you know, good contractors is become, is going to become more and more difficult as more people enter that workforce. So it’s going to be really important, keeping, you know, lockstep with the IRS at digitizing your process and looking at how you’re communicating and, you know, setting up the process for filling out these 10 90 nines and distributing them. You need to be looking at how you’re going to go about doing that to make it as easy or as simple as possible so that you can fulfill your needs for labor.

There are also certain, you know certain things that you can take into consideration, like how you’re communicating any sort of benefits that may be provided to 10 99 employees and also what those benefits are. A very simple example could be if I was a company like Uber where I hired contractors to use their own cars, I could provide benefits that maybe would help them, you know, take care or maintain the status of that car, or that you know, that that asset that they’re that asset that they’re covering for me rather than me paying for it. So, again, as the gig economy starts, continues to grow it’s important to look at how simple you’re making that 10 99 process, how your, what your relationship is with those contractors. And also really begin start looking at what kind of benefits you may be supplying to those contractors if you want to continue growing that relationship.

Trend number two, world population of millennials or just generational workforces. I’m a millennial myself, so this is a topic that I see day to day. This is one that gets brought up to me a lot, for better or for worse. The important thing to see here. And, and also, you know, the, the main talking point when people start talking about millennials entering the workforce or Generation Z entering the workforce is that, you know, the only constant is going to be changed. Different groups, different generations entering the workforce are going to bring sweeping changes in what that, what that specific workforce finds important the work ethic you know, the working, you know, what the working norms are for those different generations. The important thing to note here is that while those changes are always going to be happening, you also need to make sure that your recruiting and your hiring practices are not discriminatory in terms of age or any of those other things that these incoming generations might find important.

There is a federal level law protecting workers over 40 from age discrimination. However you know, with these new generations entering the workforce, people are going to be more and more aware of the different types of discrimination that can happen, and it’s going to be easier and easier to slip into a non-compliant process or a process that can get you into trouble with different type types of entities that handle labor forces. So again, take a look at how you’re recruiting, take a look at the language you use about recruiting and make sure that it’s not cannot be interpreted discriminator. Now, I know Interpretat interpret interpretated is you know, it can be a little confusing, but again, if you take a good honest look at all of your processes and really pay attention to the language you’re using a you might find some talent pools that you may not have had access to before. And also you’re gonna protect yourself from that, you know, that compliance risk or that compliance gap.

The third is outsourcing. So I realize it’s a little ironic me being in a human capital re or outsourcing firm to speak to you about how important outsourcing is. But it, it genuinely, truly is. If we look at, again, the gig economy out the outsourcing of individuals, it’s becoming increasingly more common for firms to outsource to vendors, to outsource to other companies who also may be using, you know, outsourcing services to provide those services. The, the, while, if we can look at this entire presentation here, again, we know all these HR changes, all these changes, all these rules that are changing, it can be challenging for an employer or a small business to keep up with all this. And the same thing is true in a lot of industries. There’s a lot of change, there’s a lot of differing workflows.

There’s a lot of efficiency questions that can be asked. So it’s becoming more and more enticing to look at how you can utilize outsourcing to achieve some of these goals you have. As we move forward, it’s gonna become more and more important to recognize exactly what your needs are for labor, for, for, you know, just what your material needs are in terms of getting what work you have done and understanding that landscape so that you can utilize outsourcing firms to, you know, the val to the, to maximize your value and make sure that you’re entering into, you know, productive and valuable relationships with these outsourcing firms. Like I said, a great way be looking at this was, it would be instead of you know, hiring in house for an HR manager and all the costs and, and everything you know, that come along with that, maybe looking at an outsourcing firm who can handle a lot of that administrative burden for you. There is a return that you can see with, with, you know, these outsourcing trends where you can start finding departments in your business such as HR that may, you may have looked at as just cost drivers, and you can start seeing, you know, a return or some sort of revenue growth through those, through appropriate use of outsourcing services and knowledge in the industry.

So, like I said, my name is Drake. I work with Asure Consulting. We’re a part of the Asure Software family. We provide human resources services to businesses all over the us. If you have any questions about anything we talked about today I understand it was a ton of information and it’s a lot to digest, especially, you know, in the 20 to 30 minutes we have together this morning. If you have any questions, I really, really encourage you to go onto our website, Asure software.com. Reach out to us to get a rep. You know, very likely that when you reach out to us, I will be the one talking to you. I will be the one helping you, you know, recognize what your needs are or just helping you get an idea of what the landscape looks like in terms of human resources, outsourcing and handling all these regulatory changes that are coming down the pipeline. So, thank you so much for listening to me today. Again, I understand it was a lot of information. There’s a lot of stuff coming through, and even from now until, you know, moving into this decade more things are going to continue to change. So it’s important for me to help you understand how to set yourselves up for success in dealing with all these changes. So thank you everyone. I’ll now open it up to some questions.

VANNOY:

Thanks, Drake. There, there are a few questions. The first is, what resources are available to make sure that I’m compliant where I need to be?

ROTH:

That’s a great question. So there are a lot of resources out there. There’s the SHR RM websites side of Human Resources management. There are plenty of state websites that, you know, contain the exact info that you will need to make sure you’re compliant. Now with that being said, with there being a lot of resources, that also introduces a problem. There is a lot of information out there, a lot of dos and don’ts, a lot of people telling you to do this, not that. And it can be very confusing to navigate those waters. That’s before you even start reading, you know, certain websites or certain government bodies websites with information where they’re using acronyms terms you know, referring to, you know, case law that you may not be familiar with. So there’s a lot of requisite knowledge, you know, a requisite knowledge base that you need to build up before you can really begin to effectively start you know, and enacting and enacting upon these changes you know, enacting certain types of strategy.

There’s a huge body of knowledge to build up. So while you can access all of these government resources, shrm you know, government websites, city websites and, and read up a little bit, it’s really important that you look at this as, you know, a long term relationship with the material rather than something that you’re necessarily going to be get in and get out learning all the way. So again, if you’re looking for resources, I would recommend reading up on the She RM website. I re would recommend sticking to, you know, your ju your local jurisdiction, your city, your state, or the federal level websites that outline these laws. And just be aware that if you seek out information from other places they may be trying to obfuscate that information a little bit to you because it’s in their interest too.

VANNOY:

All right, here’s another question that came in off the scroll. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And this one is related to sexual harassment, and it is, can you address the federal requirements for sexual harassment training for 2020?

ROTH:

So at a federal level, there, there are, there are some rules, and that’s starting to become less, less crucial. Not at the federal level, but at the state level because every state is starting to introduce some legislation for training requirements, and they vary from state to state. You know, New York has a, a specific sexual harassment training law. California has a different one with different requirements depending on how many employees you have. So it’s important to familiar familiarize yourself with both of those, you know, with the laws at both of those levels. But ultimately, you know, you’re gonna need to provide some sort of training at a certain point, whether it’s, you know, mandated by the governmental body or if it’s just something to help you manage some of your risk. So again, I would look at your state level laws and make sure that, you know, get a good idea of what the requirements are for your state, and then seek out, you know, individuals who can perform those trainings for you to that level. But again, it’s going, there’s, you know, while there may be a federal level law and that federal level law may change, state level laws are starting to be introduced that may be more complicated or have different requirements than the federal level laws. So it’s important to make sure that you’re staying compliant to both and generally go for the one that’s that’s requiring a little bit more, because that’s going to, you know, cover you for risk and help you be more compliant in the future.

VANNOY:

All right. Thanks, Aaron. There’s one more at <laugh>. You echoed this one, it’s, there is or this is a lot of information. Is there someone I can talk to to see what applies to me specifically?

ROTH:

So again, there’s, there’s a lot of information out there and I, and I’m sure everyone has, has seen a little bit of it or interacted with a little bit of it. What I would recommend having, you know, been in this industry the past few years and, and seen a lot of different ways to go about staying compliant and staying abreast of information is, it’s really helpful to find someone who has an in interest in partnering with you and, and working with you as a trusted advisor. Whether that be, you know, a consultant, whether that be an employee you know, as long as they have those proper certifications and that breadth of knowledge, they can, they can work in that capacity with you. What can be hard and what can be hard and what can make your life very difficult is when you are, you have a very reactive look at human resources.

You’re slow to adapt to laws. You know, you don’t know that laws are changing until after the fact. And that usually leads people into, you know, it, you know, rushing headfirst into litigation, into losing, you know, significant parts of their workforce, which is a huge burden in terms of retention and just cost in terms of hiring. Or they end up on the phone with an employment attorney who’s going to, you know, rack up those billable hours and it’s going to get very expensive. So I would really encourage everyone today to really take a hard look at what you’re investing in, in terms of human resources, and also make sure that whatever solution you pick is going to be pro, you know, appropriately proactive for you to stay ahead of this just constantly changing body of laws and regulations all throughout the us.

VANNOY:

Thanks. That’s that’s it. I did want you to let you guys know that we will be sending you a recording of this. There’s, again, there was a ton of information and you may want to to review it yourself or share with colleagues. So feel free to do so. Should be in your email boxes tomorrow. Thank you Drake. And also thank you for everyone for attending today and hope hope you find this helpful. Take care.