Offering benefits to your employees is important because it shows them you are invested in not only their overall health, but their future. A solid employee benefits package can help to attract and retain talent. Benefits can help you differentiate your business from competitors.

Depending on the type of organization and the job, employee benefits may be quite different. For example, government employee benefit packages for full-time employees look very different from the packages offered to part-time employees. Employee benefits packages are typically discussed during the final interview or at the time an offer is extended. The right benefits package can give you a distinct advantage in competitive recruiting situations.

Each state in the USA is different; however, there are some basic benefit laws all employers must follow. Required benefits include:

• Provide employees time off to vote, serve on a jury and perform military service
• Comply with all workers’ compensation requirements
• Pay state and federal unemployment taxes
• Contribute to state short-term disability programs in states where such programs exist
• Comply with the Federal Family and Medical Leave (FMLA)

Popular employee benefits include, but are not limited to:

• Health Insurance (medical, dental & vision)
• Telemedicine
• Pet Insurance
• Vacation
• Sick leave
• Retirement plan including company contribution/matching
• Wellbeing program that offers incentives for both individuals and families
• Profit sharing
• Transit benefit allowance
• Gym reimbursement
• Tuition or student loan contribution
• Salary increase
• Bonus
• Flexible working hours, including options to work from home
• Disability insurance
• And Much More.

In business, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to employee benefit initiatives and programs. Every organization and individual’s needs are different. By tailoring programs to engage employee interests and increasing awareness to drive program usage, organizations realize improved outcomes and increased business performance.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, commonly known as HIPAA, is a series of regulatory standards that outline the lawful use and disclosure of protected health information (PHI). HIPAA compliance is regulated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and enforced by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

The OCR’s role in maintaining HIPAA compliance comes in the form of routine guidance on new issues affecting health care and in investigating HIPAA violations.
Through a series of interlocking regulatory rules, HIPAA compliance is a living culture that health care organizations must implement into their business in order to protect the privacy, security, and integrity of protected health information.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 contains the following three major provisions:

• Portability
• Medicaid Integrity Program/Fraud and Abuse
• Administrative Simplification

The portability provisions provide available and renewable health coverage and remove the pre-existing condition clause, under defined guidelines, for individuals changing employers and health plans.

The Medicaid Integrity Program (MIP) guarantees that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has a funding source for integrity activities and expands its authority to hire anti-fraud contractors.

The administrative simplification provision implemented standard transaction and code sets, identifiers, security, and privacy rules across the healthcare industry.

Administrative Simplification Requirements of HIPAA
The major requirements of administrative simplification affect:

• Transactions and code sets - Establishes standards for electronic transactions and external medical data code sets
• dentifiers - Establishes a standard for a unique employer identifier and a standard for National Provider Identifiers (NPIs).
• Security - Specifies the administrative, technical, and physical requirements for covered entities to use in safeguarding protected health information.
• Privacy - Establishes a set of national standards for the protection of certain health information; addresses standards for the use and disclosure of individuals' health information (called "protected health information"); outlines standards for individuals' privacy rights, as well as individuals' rights to understand and control how their health information is used

The following entities are affected by the HIPAA administration simplification requirements:

• All health plans, including Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial plans
• Providers that transmit or store health information electronically
• Healthcare clearinghouse

A program intended to improve and promote health and fitness that's usually offered through the work place, although insurance plans can offer them directly to their enrollees. The program allows your employer or plan to offer you premium discounts, cash rewards, gym memberships, and other incentives to participate. Some examples of wellness programs include programs to help you stop smoking, diabetes management programs, weight loss programs, and preventative health screenings.

Wellness programs are more popular than ever. They started out as employee perks for large corporations; in fact, they used to be called corporate fitness programs. Today wellness programs are common among both medium and small-sized businesses. Wellness programs are now regularly part of a company benefits package.

When done correctly, wellness programs give employees incentives, tools, social support, privacy, and strategies to adopt and maintain healthy behaviors. Most worksites do a pretty good job of helping employees improve health behaviors.

The health outcomes of an organizations wellness program are many, including smoking cessation, weight loss and obesity prevention, diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol management, and personal health and safety practices like seat belt use, sleep hygiene, and stress management.

Organizational outcomes include lower absenteeism, higher job satisfaction and work productivity, higher employee retention, and lower health care costs. Wellness programs are designed to support and encourage a holistic approach to employee wellbeing by creating an organizational culture of health.

Offering a corporate wellness solution that extends beyond traditional wellness programs cultivates healthy habits among employee populations and improves health outcomes, all while increasing productivity, optimizing human resource investments and boosting employee engagement.

Human resources management must comply with all employment, health and safety and other relevant legislation applicable to the jurisdiction where the organization operates. This includes federal, state and local laws that pertain to various areas of HRsuch as recruitment, benefits, labor relations and termination.

The human resources (HR) function is at the center of most employers’ efforts to identify, hire and retain the people the organization needs to execute its strategy and achieve its goals. But the HR function is a key player within the organization’s compliance structure as well.

There are numerous laws and regulations governing the employment relationship that HR professionals must understand and navigate in order to help ensure their organizations avoid costly fines and other penalties, including the potential harm to the organization’s reputation.

Common examples of the types of laws regulating the employer-employee relationship include: the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes the minimum wage and rights to overtime pay for certain workers; federal civil rights laws, which prohibit employers from considering race, gender, age, or other “protected” status when making hiring and firing decisions or otherwise setting the terms and conditions of employment; the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA),which grants certain employees the right to take up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave each year in specific circumstances, as well as the right to be restored to the same or equivalent position upon returning from such leave; and the Uniform Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), which establishes certain rights and protections for employees who are called to active military duty.

In many organizations, the HR function also manages the various compensation and benefit programs, which are heavily regulated as well. For private-sector organizations this means complying with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act’s (ERISA) reporting, disclosure, and fiduciary requirements, among other things. This is a task made more difficult by frequent, significant changes to ERISA and other relevant laws. The new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is only the most recent example; it establishes more than two dozen new rules relating to employer-sponsored health benefits, including several that take effect beginning with the 2011 plan year.

Clearly, human resources (HR) compliance is essential for any organization to be successful in today’s legal environment. But achieving and maintaining compliance can be elusive goals for organizations that do not recognize the challenges and develop an effective strategy to meet them.

HR compliance should be treated as a process of defining both individual and group behaviors to ensure the organization’s applicable laws and policies are followed. The HR function must hire and retain individuals that are knowledgeable about HR specific laws and can create policies and procedures in relation to these laws. Just writing policies and procedures and placing them in a repository is not enough. Once established, they must be effectively communicated throughout the organization.

This is most likely to happen in cases where HR compliance has been integrated with the organization’s overall business strategy, and the organization’s leadership has taken steps to ensure all employees understand the importance of HR compliance. Here are five basic principles organizations should follow to help achieve these goals:

• Hiring the Right Talent – Hiring the right talent within the HR function’s area of responsibilities (compensation, employee benefits, legal requirements, talent management) is one of the most important issues for organizations today. The HR function must have the knowledge, skills and experience, or be able to access it through third-party relationships.
• Proper Education and Training – The talent in the HR function must be well versed in employment law and the regulatory/legal requirements that can affect an organization at anytime. These laws and requirements are changing all the time and its imperative for the HR function to stay apprised of the latest information available.
• Create an Employee Handbook and Update it Regularly – An organization’s Employee Handbook is one of its most important documents. The Employee Handbook is a communications tool that should clearly articulate the organization’s policies and procedures and how business should be conducted. It is a best practice to have legal counsel review the handbook and any new policies and procedures before distribution.
• Conducting Scheduled HR Compliance Audits – Many HR functions are typically understaffed and overworked. As noted, non-compliance can be the basis for financial and reputational risks for organizations. Conducting scheduled HR compliance audits should be a part of an organization’s overall strategy to avoid any legal liabilities.
• Conducting Scheduled HR Compliance Audits – Many HR functions are typically understaffed and overworked. As noted, non-compliance can be the basis for financial and reputational risks for organizations. Conducting scheduled HR compliance audits should be a part of an organization’s overall strategy to avoid any legal liabilities.

These steps will help the HR function take a large step to achieving its goal of maintaining HR compliance for the overall organization.

Human resources departments are faced with unique security challenges. While they are responsible for keeping confidential information about potential employees, internal staff and external clients, a big part of their job is circulating policies and inter-office communications that are meant to be seen by everyone. In addition, human resources departments are responsible for sharing employee’s private and personally identifiable information (PII) with external providers and agencies that include health plans, banks and the IRS. Managing who can see what is a daunting task and protecting against any possible threats requires a strategy flexible enough to destroy files automatically, if necessary, while also enabling secure sharing.

Data should be classified into categories before policy controls are defined to meet specific access and permission requirements. For human resources, data can typically be classified into two tiers. Tier one includes PII, intellectual property, executive compensation, board of director files, customer lists and financial data. This requires the highest level of protection, including automatic encryption and assignment to the strictest security protocols. Access to tier one must be limited to specific users and groups that have a distinct need to access this information.

Tier two information includes policy manuals, inter-office correspondence and pre-release public files. These have a more lenient access policy as they need to be circulated and viewed throughout the organization. This information can either be encrypted automatically and assigned security permissions that allow everyone inside the organization access or can be manually selected by human resources to be secured.

There are five main types of data that human resources handles. While not exhaustive, these examples, show just how granular security policies for HR have to be due to the broad use cases for each:

• Employee information - Any document containing employees’ PII is highly sensitive and falls into tier one. Access should be limited to human resources only. Federal and state laws require that this information be retained for a certain amount of time depending on its nature, but after that period, an automatic destruction policy is strongly encouraged. Examples of these records range from employee drug test results to credit reports to medical and benefits information.
• Client data - In addition to employee relations, human resources often handles client information, including external and internal financial information. Client contracts mandate confidentiality and can only be shared with authorized employees or, in some cases, third-party agencies, so this data receives tier one treatment. With advanced security settings, HR can safely share this information with the designated parties via email by specifying the number of devices and validity period for accessing protected attachments.
• Intellectual property - A company’s business is dependent on the products or services it sells, which all trace back to the intelligence used to design them. Intellectual property is a company’s “crown jewels,” and therefore is tier one information. If this information is compromised, so is the business. The human resources department can be the first line of defense for this data since it may be the first to find out an employee is leaving. They need to have policies in place for resulting access changes.
• Prospective talent - Resumes from qualified candidates are in tier one since they are considered part of a company’s intellectual property and often contain PII. Once received, resumes require automatic encryption when files are saved to the server. The security policy should define access controls for human resources personnel and select executives and managers.
• Policy manuals - Company rules and regulations for employees need to be accessible to the entire office. Thus, they fall into tier two. This class of information needs less protection, just requiring an employee discretionary policy and encryption.

In a role that requires protecting and sharing sensitive and valuable information, the human resources department has arguably one of the enterprise’s more challenging data-handling responsibilities. Technology can help streamline these tasks by establishing automatic security policies after the data is initially classified manually. Setting up a comprehensive policy will enable HR personnel to function normally, while also ensuring that the organization’s important data is secure.

It is important to be aware that all information held by an Employer related to an Employee must be stored, processed and maintained in accordance with the Data Protection Acts, 1988 and 2003. Furthermore, Organizations holding public information may be subject to the further requirements of the Freedom of Information Acts, 1997 and 2003.

Training new and existing employees can be a company’s biggest challenge, especially in a rapidly changing business environment. Training and developing of organizational teams could not be more important. But that’s not the case at many companies, where the struggle to convince leadership to invest in training and development is ongoing. Here are seven key steps you should consider to both build out and update an effective training and development program:

Benchmark Against The Competition
Before agreeing to support a new initiative, company leaders always want to know what the competition is doing and whether you’re doing more or less. This certainly holds true for training and development, that’s why it helps to network with professional colleagues to find out what others are doing. Start by reviewing what customers are saying about you and your competition; that will reveal information about customer satisfaction and preferences that may also support your request for new training and development. Training new employees is of the utmost importance, remember companies, like people, don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Survey Your Employees
The best source of information about organizational performance and needs are your current employees. They know a lot about what’s going on and what, if anything, should be changed. They’ll appreciate your interest and provide valuable feedback about what could be better or eliminated.

• Employees want to know what was expected of them, why it was needed, and how to do it.
• Employees want to be trained by experienced experts in their field.
• Employees want training that is interesting, relevant and fun.

Align Training With Management’s Operating Goals
Management always has operating goals: better performance, productivity, quality, or customer satisfaction, to name a few. Once you know the goals, you can design targeted programs to reach them. Additionally, look for others in your company who have needs that could be satisfied by training: Legal usually supports compliance training, marketing and sales might support training that promotes quality and consistency, and most departments will support supervisory skills training that promotes employee satisfaction.

Design onboarding procedures and new-hire training that ensures employees will be knowledgeable, and focused on standards and customer satisfaction. Partner with qualified individuals or organizations for specific (health and safety, wage and hour compliance, harassment and discrimination) compliance training. Supervisors should also, be trained on how to improve their communication and coaching skills, and on how best to train a multi-generational workforce.

Run It Like a Business
Every new business starts with a strategic plan. Make sure you draft a plan for your training effort that includes all the classic elements:

• Clearly state your purpose and proposed deliverables. Show that you understand the depth and breadth of what you’re proposing.
• Include a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis that will help identify the appropriate training.
• Construct a realistic budget. Include all expenses, and be conservative (better to under-promise and over-deliver).
• Include an analysis of the benefits to your organization so that everyone can better understand the return on their investment.
• Know the numbers. Work closely with your company’s financial team to include the appropriate information and how best to display it.
• Market your program as if it were for customers. Leverage your public relations, graphics and marketing departments to brand and promote your programs, and design surveys to get feedback from participants.
• Conduct pilot classes to make sure your plan works. Trial runs help identify shortcomings and allow you to refine and make the program as good as everyone expects and needs it to be.

Weave It Into Your Company’s Culture
Companies want happy employees, so consider a “life-long training” philosophy that focuses on employee satisfaction.

When making promotion decisions, give preference to employees who completed training and performed well. A promotion should be one of the rewards for their efforts. And it answers the employee’s question, “What’s in it for me?”

Celebrate achievements and successes. Let everyone in your organization know when someone completed training and what that means to their growth opportunities. Advertise your programs and participants in internal communications, display their pictures and stories, and talk about it at every employee gathering.Increase employee engagement by planning more opportunities for them to get involved.

Keep Innovating
There have been tremendous improvements in the content and delivery methods of training and development programs. In the past organizations used slide projectors, white boards and first- generation copies of handouts. As time and technology progressed, we evolved into PowerPoint presentations, graphic workbooks that were more attractive and useful, and digital editing as we all get more comfortable with technology, there’s a growing need to adopt the latest ideas.

Today there are apps, games, and easy-to-use video and editing tools that can be streamed to mobile devices. Continue to research the latest trends online, network with other organizations and training professionals, and revise your programs to take advantage of the latest best practices.

Measure Results
Successful organizations measure outcomes to make sure they continue to get the biggest bang for their buck. The best measures are the simplest to incorporate into your program so everyone knows what’s expected. Look for and measure behaviors on the job to determine if employees actually learned how to perform appropriately. This way, there will be no surprises for employees.

Professional training is the best way to keep organizational promises of quality and excellence to employees and clients. Create an environment that fosters professional satisfaction and encourages employee development, a crucial component to help ensure your organization has a true and sustainable competitive advantage. Discover new approaches and techniques for training employees and building organizational unity.