The Most Important Compliance Best Practices You Need to Know

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 is key piece of compensation legislation. Although FLSA has been around for a long time, it is the most frequently violated employment law. Employers misclassify employees as exempt or fail to calculate working time accurately. Misclassifications can result in severe back pay issues. Calculating overtime incorrectly can often result in overpayments or underpayments. Violations can not only hurt companies financially, but damage reputations as well.

An audit of Human Resource practices can reveal the department’s success or failure in performing and executing its roles, level of compliance with existing, applicable regulations,alignment of practices with organization’s strategies and goals and areas for improvement. This white paper examines current trends in HR auditing across the industry and details the five key areas that must be audited in order improve compliance with existing, applicable labor regulations.

Avoid EEOC enforcement actions and legal penalties by ensuring that the HR department has a robust process to handle workplace sexual harassment complaints.In FY 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received 7,571 claims of sexual harassment in the workplace. Of these, 977 or 10.9% were settled. The benefits paid out to claimants amounted to USD 43 million (these do not include the benefits obtained through litigation).The numbers alone show that workplace sexual harassment is a challenge that HR departments have to work hard to prevent and if complaints are made, need to be managed with tact and professionalism. This white paper details five best practices that HR departments can adopt in order to ensure they are compliant with the prevailing laws against sexual harassment in the workplace.

New York City employers beware: The New York City Council has once again acted to expand the nation’s broadest anti-discrimination law — this time to prohibit discrimination against New York City’s unemployed. The law will go into effect on June 11, 2013.

Agency Workers Regulations 2010 are a statutory instrument. The regulations are part of the UK labor law. They aim to combat discrimination against people who work for employment agencies. Towards this end they lay down that agency workers should be no less favorably treated in pay and working time than their full-time counterparts, who do the same work. The regulations came into force on 1 October 2011.

This article gives a brief overview and summary of requirements of these regulations.

Under OSHA regulations, employers have to recognize and catalog workplace hazards so that any workplace accidents and dangers to employee health and safety can be prevented.

This article describes the best practices to be followed in recognizing and cataloguing workplace hazards in compliance with OSHA's regulatory requirements.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) 1974 is a United States Federal law protecting the privacy of student education records. The regulations provide that all educational agencies and institutions which are funded by the U.S. department of education must allow access to students to their educational records, opportunity to have their records amended and exercise some control on the disclosure of the educational records. The law allows students applying to an educational institution permission to view recommendations made by others as a part of the application. As per FERPA, employees of educational institutes, if they are not students, will not be covered by the Act.

The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA) is a higher education reform bill. This legislation focuses on expanding college access and preparing minority students for competitive and innovative jobs. This came about in response to growing public concerns over ever-rising costs associated with higher education, particularly textbooks and supplemental course materials, and threats to academic quality.

Unemployment insurance tax liabilities have skyrocketed. As a result of the recession, employer-paid UI taxes in 2010 and for the next few years will be significantly higher than in previous years – for some employers tax liabilities have increased by more than 300%. No longer a “nuisance tax,” higher UI taxes are having a negative effect on labor costs, cash flow, and profitability. Higher UI taxes are altering hiring and retention decisions and affecting other talent management decisions. Higher UI taxes are increasing employers’ interest in effective UI cost control techniques. One technique to measure and allocate an organization’s UI taxes liabilities more effectively is internalized experience rating (IER).

Finding employee engagement low in your workplace? Consider building trust...Trust is said to be the cornerstone to successful relationships in the workplace and the cornerstone of successful leadership. Without it, relationships break down and people stop working collaboratively. Employee engagement decreases reflecting in your bottom line. This article explains the best practices how to establish and maintain trust in your workplace.

HR Resource compliance is becoming more and more relevant in today’s business scenario. Stringent regulations like the FLSA, OSHA, sexual harassment and anti-discrimination laws though are in force, companies should be wise enough to understand their responsibilities to be desired employers.

HR compliance entails that one understands the law and has designed policies in tune so that these laws are followed. To make it effective, it requires that these programs are threaded into the business strategies.

Developing an effective HR Compliance Program involves the following considerations:

• Educate yourself
• Get good advice
• Create an HR policy manual and regularly update it
• Train your managers
• Train your employees
• Open your ears
• Give Feedback
• Document your decisions

A cooperative effort from all levels of hierarchy will see the effort through in achieving HR compliance. Read on