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High-deductible health plans are increasingly become commonplace and more and more employees are investing in health savings accounts as a result. As employees take on greater financial burden for their healthcare expenses, HSAs will become a critical component of an overall healthcare strategy, says John Park, chief strategy officer for Alegeus. “Because consumers do not […]

Employee counts are used to determine what laws, rules, fees, and penalties apply to a health plan and/or the employer sponsor. But the methods for counting employees are as varied as the laws that affect them. This creates confusion and frustration among employers and can significantly hinder their compliance efforts. To make sense out of […]

The Department of Labor announced the details of its new rule on overtime pay, which has increased the salary threshold for employees eligible from $23,660 to $47,476. There will be no change in the duties test to determine whether employees earning more than the salary threshold must be classified as exempt from overtime; however, the […]

After much anticipation, the U.S. Department of Labor unveiled sweeping changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime rules this week. These regulations — which haven’t been updated in over a decade — are estimated to make nearly 4.2 million current workers eligible for overtime pay. The new rules double the minimum salary required […]

A new employer guide to the Family and Medical Leave Act outlines companies’ obligation under the statute, but still leaves many unanswered questions, says FMLA attorney Jeff Nowak, a partner in the Chicago office of FranczekRadelet. “For the most part, the guide simply restates what we already know from the regulations, without tackling the difficult […]

Health savings accounts emerged from two potentially conflicting goals–to keep health care costs down and to give consumers control over their health care choices. HSAs continue to be popular ten years later. Estimates are that over 13 million HSAs existed as of the end of 2014, with over $24 billion in assets. And those numbers […]

The Obama administration made final a long anticipated change to overtime pay that will entitle millions of additional American workers to overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. The minimum salary at which a worker can be exempted from time and a half wages for every overtime hour he works will more than double, […]

Six years after its passage, the Affordable Care Act remains a hot-button issue. Congress has voted more than 60 times to undo, defund or revamp it. On the campaign trail, presidential candidates’ positions on the law range from vowing to repeal and replace it to promising to build on and improve it. Meanwhile, most employers […]

On May 18, 2016, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez announced the publication of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Final Rule updating the regulations governing overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The updated rule will automatically extend overtime pay protections to 4.2 million new employees within the first year […]

Every industry has been affected by the changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act, but hospitality and retail employers are dealing with arguably the biggest challenge when it comes to compliance. That’s because both rely largely on labor-intensive work. They’re volatile industries with heavy turnover. And many employees work varying hours from week to […]