Answer the following questions:
IMPROVING PERFORMANCE: HR as a Profit Center
Controlling Sick Leave
Sick leave often gets out of control because employers don't measure it. In one survey, only 57% of em¬ployers formally tracked sick days for their exempt employees.' Three-fourths of the employers couldn't provide an estimate of what sick pay was costing them. Therefore, the employer should first have a system in place for monitoring sick leaves and for measuring their financial impact."
Effective HR practices can then help reduce absence problems.
When she became director of the United Kingdom's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the new director knew steps were needed to ad¬dress its absence rate.24 The rate had peaked at 14 days out per employee in 2005, at a cost of about $20 million per year (£10.3 million).
The new director organized a human resource absence initiative.25 The agency set a goal of reduc¬ing absences by 30% by 2010. Agency directors received absence-reduction goals, and their progress was tracked. The agency introduced new policies on special leave, rehabilitation support, and monitoring absentees. They made it easier for employees to swap work shifts, and introduced a guaranteed leave day policy.
By 2010, the sickness absence rate was down to 7.5 days per employee and productivity was up, for multi-year savings of about $48 million dollars (£24.4 million).
Q: A note on this agency in Wikipedia refers to "amazingly high" levels of sick leave among staff at the DVLA [around 2007], with employees having an average of three weeks a year sick leave."26 What sorts of inaction on the part of previous managers could help explain such poor attendance?
Benefits and Employee Leasing
Many businesses-particularly smaller ones-don't have the resources or employee base to support the cost
of many of the benefits we've discussed in this chapter. That's one big reason they turn to "employee leasing."
In brief, employee leasing firms (also called professional employer organizations or staff leasing firms) assume all or most of the employer's human resources chores. In doing so, they also become the employer of record for the employer's employees, by transferring them all to the employee leasing firm's payroll. The leasing firm thus becomes the employees' legal employer, and usually handles employee-related activities such as recruiting, hiring (with client firms' supervisors' approvals), and paying taxes (Social Security pay¬ments, unemployment insurance, and so on).
Insurance and benefits are usually the big attraction. Even group rates for life or health insurance can be quite high when only 20 or 30 employees are involved. That's where leasing comes in. Remember that the leasing firm is now the legal employer. The employees are thus part of a larger insurable group, along with other employers' former employees. The small business owner may get insurance it couldn't otherwise afford.
As in dealing with all vendors, the employer should have a detailed negotiated agreement with the employee leasing firm. Define what the services will be; include priorities, responsibilities, and warranties.' 54 Understand that if the leasing firm merges into another firm, the new parent may require you to change your systems once the contract period expires.'"
1. What is unemployment insurance? Is an organization
2. Explain how ERISA protects employees' pension required to pay unemployment benefits to all dismissed rights employees? Explain how you would go about minimiz¬
3. Describe the main retirement benefits.
4. What are the main provisions of the FMLA?