July 2024 Newsletter
Warren Cook
Creating small businesses success through effective Strategic HR & Business Advisory Solutions.
DOL FLSA FINAL Rule Effective NOW!
On April 24, 2024, the Department of Labor published the final approved rule changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act.? These changes impact every business and are cause for review and analysis impacting several areas of strategic planning, compensation, compliance and more.
For many organizations, their human resource professionals or legal counsel have been monitoring the proposed rule changes and hopefully have made recommendations on ensuring they maintain compliance and apply strategic thinking to the impact on their business and workforce.
Communication strategy, compensation practices and changes, payroll processing and time recordkeeping amongst other changes may be required to comply with the FLSA final rule.? Considering the public nature of this rule change, employees will quickly become aware of their rights and develop expectations you, as their employer, need to both know about and implement.
At the last rule change, many small business owners, unaware of the complexity of the FLSA topic and risk and liability non-compliance creates for them, chased the salary threshold and simply gave employees pay increases.? Over time this can negatively impact internal equity, market competitiveness, profitability, performance levels, and much more.? There are strategies, short and long term, that should be considered and explored that are right for your business and culture.
Most notable are the staggered changes to the standard salary level required to be met even before the duties or salary basis tests when conducting a job analysis and review of the position.
Compliance considerations – Ignoring these changes, or perhaps you were not even aware, can lead to non-compliance with the DOL FLSA.? This means you will be exposed to risk and liability of legal action for failed compensation practices due to misclassification.? Misclassification is an area of focus for the DOL and when you misclassify, you will often not have the appropriate records to defend your actions or adequately comply with the FLSA compensation requirements.
A major risk is the workforce itself.
Once they suspect you misclassified them, you may be exposed to back pay, fines, penalties, bad publicity and more.? A communication strategy for the workforce is critical.
Insight: Do not delay, engage your current human resource professional to ensure you are in compliance and establish strategies to make and communicate the transition to the workforce.? If you do not have the expertise in house, this is where DemystifyHR can support your current and continued success in meeting regulatory obligations while enhancing your compensation practices and human resource communication strategy.
The skills and wisdom in human capital management practices can be absent in small to mid-sized organizations seeking to maintain compliance while achieving desired business and organizational success.? When faced with goals such as these it may be time to establish a relationship with a Strategic HR Advisor of DemystifyHR to develop, implement, and manage an effective compensation and communication strategy to achieve regulatory compliance with the change FLSA standards. ?To learn more and have a discussion about your employment practices contact Warren Cook at DemystifyHR by scheduling a free discovery call today.
People Leadership & Accountability
When you analyze the challenges of your workforce in meeting expectations, achieving goals, or promulgating the culture you desire as a business leader or owner, do you ask yourself if the problem is effective execution of accountability by your existing people leaders or even yourself?
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Developing a vision, mission, and core values for your organization is challenging enough.? Implementing and maintaining the desired culture, the actions and behavioral norms of the workforce is more difficult.? Small business owners regularly share with me their challenges and obstacles in achieving their goals and the ultimate deficiency identified is a complete lack of accountability modeled by leadership or executed by people leaders across the organization.
When performance expectations are not being met, engagement is less than desirable, trust and respect are lacking, and communicate is less than transparent, it is time for a change and the implementation of programs and solutions to achieve your goals.
Provide your people leaders the tools, resources and support for success.
Insight: Establishing core competencies and leadership competencies for your workforce is an effective step in defining expectations from your employees.? Providing comprehensive and ongoing refresher training to people leaders while reinforcing the expectations through modeled behavior leads to enhanced and effective accountability.
This doesn’t happen overnight, and you cannot “tell” your workforce or people leaders to “be more accountable” as the behavior is developed through your culture, engagement, and communication practices.? Consistency across all people leaders is also crucial.
At DemystifyHR we have decades of experience working with larger Fortune 50 and small business organizations identifying the challenges and gaps in internal people leadership competence.? We then develop a customized strategic roadmap for the development and implementation of training, mentoring, processes, policies, and programs to address and correct the lack of accountability in the workforce.? To get started today in raising the bar in your organization and developing accountability to achieve success schedule a discovery call today.
Compliance Corner – Don’t Let this Happen to YOU!
Below are recent examples of enforcement action against businesses by the EEOC and DOL for discrimination and wage and hour violations.? It doesn’t take much to miss the mark and expose your business to risk.
Insight: Risk management of your employment practices can simply be an oversight due to not knowing what you don’t know.? Small business owners in our experience have a focused area of expertise that rarely expand into every area of a business, which is why the most successful small business owners surround themselves with strategic partners such as Lawyers, CPA’s, Human Resource and Business Advisors.
The cost to prevent these risks is far less expensive than allowing it to happen.
However, you certainly want to avoid the risk and liability your organization might have exposure to by reviewing current practices and taking steps to mitigate any gaps or opportunities for your business.? DemystifyHR has the depth of small business and human resources expertise to conduct a comprehensive Risk Assessment of your Employment Practices to develop a strategic roadmap to achieve your goals and minimize your risk and liability.? Call or email today to schedule a free consultation: 800.589.5303 or [email protected].