Anchor Payroll Blog

Answer: There is! Here are a few things you can do to make the busy season run as smoothly and stress-free as possible:

Remove or reassign non-essential work duties: Before the busy season begins, ask employees to make a list of tasks that others could feasibly handle for them or that could be put on hold. Then work on reassigning those tasks or simply hold off on non-essential tasks until business slows down.

A staffing plan can help you determine the right number of people with the right set of skills to address your business needs. Staff planning is a systematic process that accounts for internal and external changes to help you meet your business objectives.

Employee turnover is expensive – more so than you might think. Some costs are more easily calculated than others. Easily measurable or not, they all hurt your bottom line. Fortunately, many of the costs of turnover can be measured, predicted or budgeted for.

A: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued guidance that employers may take employees’ temperatures during the COVID-19 pandemic because COVID-19 is spreading nationwide. Note that many people may have COVID-19 without a fever, so other safety precautions should not be scaled back just because employees “checked out” upon arrival to work. The CDC summarizes symptoms here. Employees’ body temperatures are considered medical information and must be kept confidential under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  

***Update: On September 14, DHS announced another 30-day extension of this temporary rule. The rule is now set to expire on November 19, 2020. 

The physical presence requirement of the Employment Eligibility Verification, Form I-9, requires that employers, or an authorized representative, physically examine, in the employee’s physical presence, the unexpired document(s) the employee presents from the Lists of Acceptable Documents to complete the Documents fields in Form I-9’s Section 2.

The prospect of corrective action or termination makes a lot of managers nervous. That’s understandable. For employees, being disciplined or losing their job can be anything from moderately embarrassing to financially devastating, but it’s rarely a happy occasion. For the employers, these actions always come with some risk, and there are plenty of legal danger zones an employer can end up in if corrective action isn’t done properly.

In response to a court ruling in early August that invalidated certain regulations by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) related to leave under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, the DOL has released revised regulations. The changes, or lack of changes, are outlined below. The revisions take effect when they are published in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for September 16.

The IRS recently added some clarification to the Treasury guidance issued on August 28th (read about the Treasury guidance here).

No one knows what the workplace is going to look like in three months. COVID-19 continues to spread. School reopening and attendance plans remain tenuous. Further action from Congress is uncertain. Official rules from the Department of Labor might even be struck down in court, further adding to the confusion about what employers are supposed to be doing.