Anchor Payroll Blog

Most HR professionals would agree that turnover is a source of stress. Losing an employee can feel like losing an investment, and replacing that person has its own costs—advertising, onboarding, training, and coverage to name a few. But we also know that turnover is a manageable cost of doing business, and sometimes even welcome. In short, turnover is a metric to take seriously, but also realistically.

Think of all the employee-related relationship problems you’ve observed and experienced. Whether you considered them as trivial annoyances or business-killers, such problems often result from three factors: poor knowledge, poor communication, and poor recognition. By recognizing these factors and understanding how to avoid them, you can dramatically improve your employee relations.

New employee orientation and job-specific training serve important purposes.  Coaching, however, is a critical key that is set aside unfortunately all too often.  A business owner may think that spending the time to coach is too difficult, but it is his or her leadership that helps create a great team of inspired, productive, and loyal employees.

Most everyone knows what the “hustle” is. It’s been a part of work culture since the early 19th century, when the word was first used to mean “gumption” or “hard work.” Depending on the context, hustle may be a virtue, the antithesis of laziness, or a necessity, the extra effort one must perform to overcome bad luck, oppression, or structural barriers. 

Answer: Employees on military leave are due the same rights and benefits (when not determined by seniority) as nonmilitary employees who take any comparable form of leave. Comparable is not well defined, but generally, you should look to other leaves of a similar duration. For instance, if you’d generally pay someone for one to five days of jury service leave, or up to a week of bereavement leave, you’d want to also pay for a military leave of that approximate duration. If you provide longer paid leaves, e.g., a four- to eight-week family wellness leave, then you should consider paying for a military leave of that approximate duration as well. If you aren’t sure whether the other leaves you offer are comparable and you are considering not paying for a military leave, we recommend speaking with an attorney.

Breastfeeding employees who are returning to work usually know how much extra work pumping is going to be. They’ve thought about the bulky pump and its multiple attachments, how they can bring it into and out of the workplace inconspicuously, whether they’ll have time and a private spot to express milk, and where they’ll be able to store the equipment and their milk.

For 30 years, HR professionals have been working with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), a federal law enacted to protect employees’ jobs and medical insurance when they need to take unpaid time away from work for certain family and medical reasons. 

The last few years have proved challenging for employers trying to fill positions. Low unemployment, among other factors, made the job market much more friendly to jobseekers than to employers keen to hire them. In this highly competitive environment, some organizations upgraded their compensation packages or experimented with other attractive perks, hoping to stand out as the best. Others re-examined their recruitment and hiring processes or sought help from consultants or vendors. Struggling employers may have been tempted to look for a “magic bullet,” that one thing sure to get them more candidates.

While federal employment law changes are generally few and far between, the budget bill that was just passed by Congress and signed by the President includes two sections that provide new protections for pregnant and lactating employees and applicants.