The proposed rule describes revisions to the Walking-Working Surfaces and Personal Protective Equipment standards to help prevent an estimated annual 20 workplace fatalities and more than 3,500 injuries serious enough to cause people to miss work.  According to OSHA, the current walking-working surfaces regulations allow employers to provide outdated and dangerous fall protection equipment such as lanyards and body belts that can result in workers suffering greater injury from falls. Construction and maritime workers already receive safer, more effective fall protection devices such as self-retracting lanyards and ladder safety and rope descent systems, which these proposed revisions would also require for general industry workers. The current walking-working surfaces standards also do not allow OSHA to fine employers who let workers climb certain ladders without fall protection. Under the revised standards, this restriction would be lifted in virtually all industries, allowing OSHA inspectors to fine employers that jeopardize their workers’ safety and lives by climbing these ladders without proper fall protection.

Comments on the proposed rule can be submitted through regulations.gov.  To view the proposed rule in the Federal Register, please click here.  To view the press release, please click here.

New Form W-11, Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act Employee Affidavit, is now posted on IRS.gov, along with answers to frequently-asked questionsabout the payroll tax exemption and the related new hire retention credit. The new law requires that employers get a statement from each eligible new hire, certifying under penalties of perjury, that he or she was unemployed during the 60 days before beginning work or, alternatively, worked fewer than a total of 40 hours for anyone during the 60-day period. Employers can use Form W-11 to meet this requirement.
For more information on the HIRE Act affidavit and exemption, including a Draft Form 941 revised for employers to use beginning with the second calendar quarter of 2010, please click here.

The boundaries between personal and professional have become increasingly blurred due to the growing prevalence of internet-based social media, including Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter. While social media outlets may be excellent platforms for employees to network and promote their employer’s business, a myriad of problems may result from an employee’s improper or unlawful use of a company’s name, reputation or confidential information while using such social media.

If an employee uses an employer’s name or a company e-mail address to communicate with or otherwise use social media, a third-party may be led to believe that the employee is speaking or writing on behalf of the company. A third-party may think that the employee is acting in an official capacity with authority to bind the employer, or that certain views espoused by the employee are also the views of the company.

For this reason and others, the FTC has implemented rules effective Dec. 1, 2009, regulating the use of testimonials in advertising. Under these rules an employer may be held responsible for employee maintained blogs or other employee postings about the employer’s products and services. In an effort to avoid these problems, a social media policy may direct employees in such situations to use a disclaimer explicitly stating that his or her views are not those of the employer.

Read about additional factors that should be considered when implementing a social media policy — such as employment duty conflicts, confidentiality, intellectual property, performance feedback, workplace privacy and the employer’s right to monitor — by subscribing to the HR, Benefits & Payroll News, a free monthly news bulletin that features industry news, trends and best practices for HR and payroll professionals.

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Ok, maybe that was a little over the top. The end of the year is a generally busy time for payroll professionals. Year end payrolls, quarterlies,  and benefits maintenance are just some of the things that have to be done before you can celebrate on New Year’s Eve. To help with year-end tasks, we’ve created a couple of wizards in Ascentis Payroll that guide you through a lot of the routine tasks. There are some tasks that need to be done outside of payroll, so we’ve created this handy list below to check before you run your last payroll of the year:

• Verify SSNs. There may be IRS penalties for mismatched names/SSNs so avoid the tax man by going through your employee SSNs.
• Got employees who recently changed their filing status? Make sure they’ve filled out a new W-4 (not necessary if you have Ascentis Self-Service!).
• Verify employee addresses so W-2s go where they are supposed to.
• Offering new benefits? Make sure deductions are setup for new offerings.
• Got tax exempt employees? Make sure to get their W-4s in by February 15th so they can continue their exempt status through 2010.
• Employees getting the Advanced Earned Income Credit (AEIC) for 2009 need to complete a new W-5 before the first payroll in 2010 in order to continue receiving AEIC.

There are other reconciliations (e.g. wage & tax, GL, Bank) that need to be performed as well. If you have any questions about year end with Ascentis Payroll, give your CSR a call today!

The short answer is “probably not”. The long answer would be “No, but…”. Lets discuss the “but” here.

Employees only see OE as being a short period during the year. For HR, its obviously a much longer process. From selecting the benefits package to making sure employees get their cards from the carrier, OE is a long and often times painful process. But (here’s where we start), some pains can be removed through the selection of a good HRIS.  Here are some things a HRIS (like ours…/shameless plug) can do to ease the OE pain:

• Automatically determine eligibility so you don’t have to
• Display plan information (like deductibles, co-pay), provider directories, and plan documents electronically so you can save paper and avoid questions (who needs interpersonal interaction when you’ve got Facebook?)
• Send enrollment data directly to the carrier to avoid double data entry and costly enrollment errors
• Strong reports to easily remit a carrier invoice to your own records

Are there certain pain points that you struggle with during OE?