Payroll Blogs

In the current economy, many employees are losing their jobs from company-wide reductions in force.  While this topic is never pleasant, there are some basic paycheck rules companies should follow in Texas while navigating these issues.  These issues have arisen much more frequently with unemployment rising.

The national unemployment rate recently hit 9.5 percent, and an estimated 7.2 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007. Several states' unemployment funds are now insolvent and borrowing money from the federal government. President Obama recently acknowledged that unemployment is likely to get worse, hitting double digits, before it gets better.

What are paycards?  As an alternative to the costs and effort associated with the traditional paycheck, many American employers are discovering the value of paycards, that allow them to pay all employees - even those without bank accounts - electronically.  Paycards, a growing trend in payroll management, are electronic cards that look similar to an ATM or credit card and are loaded with an employee's earned wages each payday.  Because the earned wages are loaded onto the paycard electronically, employees have immediate access to their pay and do not have to jump through the hoops associated with cashing a traditional paycheck.

Suppose you're a plan sponsor that wants to increase 401(k) participation among your low income employees, what do you do? You know, of course, that employee financial education programs by themselves are not enough to influence a change in employee behavior. You might consider automatic enrollment about which I've written about before.

In January 2008, President Bush signed into law the first-ever amendments to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and on November 17, 2008, the Department of Labor (DOL) published its final rule on the implementation of these amendments.  The amendments went into effect on January 16, 2009.