Health Care HR Survey Results

As part of our involvement with the Society for Human Resource Management, we conducted the following survey for the Portage County chapter's March newsletter.

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Other Response from "What is your company dong to avoid rising health care costs?
Other: Wellness Options    harryw@cornwelltools.com
Nicotine testing, Wellness plan    aleggiero@rmh2.org
See below    crowe@mantaline.com
Added Wellness Program    diannas@cornwelltools.com


Comments:
We have an active Wellness program. Health assessments are done annually. Lunch & Learn sessions. Walking trail inside our building. Outside walks in good weather.    mmellinger@deltasystemsinc.com
We switched from being Self-insured to fully insured. We also increased deductibles    crowe@mantaline.com


Other responses to "If your company is offering programs to encourage better health, what are you offering?"
Other: Weigh-ins and lectures (1st year)


Comments:
Decreased "Wellness" rates for those who do not use nicotine.    aleggiero@rmh2.org


Responses to "If your company is changing the type of insurance that it provides, what is the change?"
Policy with higher deductibles for Emergency/Urgent    tturcotte@nbdint.com

Portage County HR Association Set for April Meeting

Dear Friends:
Please join us for our next Portage County Human Resource Association (PCHRA) meeting on Wednesday, April 21st at 11:30 A.M. at the Maplewood Career Center (Conference Room A) 7075 St. Rt. 88, Ravenna.
PCHRA is Portage County’s primary forum for networking among area human resource professionals. 
Our meeting agenda is as follows:

11:30A.M.        Networking/Registration

Noon            Chapter Business and Announcements
Lunch: $12.00 Members, $14.00 Non-Members and Guests

Speaker:    Judging a Book by Its Cover
    Vicki Prussak
    Wellness Coach

Sponsor:   
       
Please be sure to RSVP to Kelly Jurisch at kjurisch@partaonline.org (no phone calls please) no later than Monday morning April 19th.  Upon receipt of your reservation, you will receive a confirmation.  Reservations made but not kept must be billed.

As always, you are encouraged to attend all PCHRA meetings and to bring a guest who may benefit from the professional interaction and program.

PCHRA 2010 annual membership dues are $36.00.  Membership applications and membership renewal invoices are available at the meetings. PCHRA memberships are held per person not per organization.

Kelly Jurisch
President, PCHRA

Tip of the Month: Check Out Our Past Tips

We at Ryan Staffing are starting to see an increase in volume. The increase is coming from the growth of existing clients as well as new clients or those we haven’t heard from in quite some time.

As a result, we would encourage you to take advantage of the links to past “TIPS” provided on our sidebar. You may not have paid attention to them the first go round because you weren’t using temps and the info contained in them may be finally timely.

Or, you can believe that I was just too lazy to come up with a new “TIP” this month. Either works for me!

Here are some links to our past tips:

• Do Unto Others in the Temp World
• Tip of the Month: Business Necessitates in Background Checks Cover Temps Too
• What Payrolling Can Do For You
• Understanding Your Billing Rate
• Does Your Provider Have Transitional Work Programs?
  

Tim's Talking About Hiring Trends, Extra Costs and Our Unsubscribe Button

Looking Up?. . .Maybe

According to CareerBuilder.com 20 percent of employers plan to increase employment in 2010 up from 14% last year. And they report that 25 percent of employers polled rate employee morale as low.


Through its partnership with USA Today, CareerBuilder.com publishes regular reports on employment. The blog, called The Hiring Site. I recommend checking the site out.

Source: Q2 2010 U.S. Job Forecast

Costs Going Up
Are you feeling good about the passage of Health Care Reform? I’m not, but not for all the normal reasons.

You see, I’ve always been a pay as you go kind of guy. Be it the business or personally we’ve always self financed everything or did with out.

That’s why the enormous Federal debt being piled up by the Government only to be expanded by Health Care Reform is very troubling to me. Consider the following:

In 1966 Medicare cost $3 billion and was projected to cost $12 billion by 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $107 billion.

Then they want us to believe that we can save $500 billion over 10 years by cutting waste, fraud and abuse. This suggests that we’ve ignored all these problems in the past.

The President said the other day, reform will save $1.3 trillion. This can’t be true because the money saved on Medicare will be funding new spending.

Government run Health Care already exists in Massachusetts. That states insurance program has seen costs rise 42% or almost $600 billion. Insurance costs there are the highest in the nation.

Everyone except our Politicians seem to understand that you can’t live on borrowed money forever.

The question seems to be are we too late??


Click us Away
We received a very “stressed” e-mail last month from a reader urgently asking to be removed from our mailing list. The reader took great exception to the inclusion of what was termed “political commentary” as being inappropriate.

As a matter of interest our letter is not meant to be political in anyway. We do take positions against issues that are bad not only for our business but others as well. We plan to continue to speak out against such things as Health Care Reform, Card Check, Healthy Families, etc., because they are bad for business.

My point here is that nobody needs to get upset over our content. All you have to do is click the “unsubscribe” button and you’re gone forever. After all, that is what it’s there for.

Editor's Note: The Corner Stool blog has always been pro-comment. Any reader who does not agree with our opinions can post a comment on any of our stories. -- CR

Your temp help bill could go up $1.05 per hour due to Health Care Reform. . . .Good or Bad?

Perhaps because it will impact our longevity more than that of your place of business I have been eagerly seeking info on how Health Care Reform will impact the temp help industry.

The big question is will all temps have to be covered by an employer provided Health Care Package?

This is an important issue to those that utilize a contingent workforce strategy in manning their facility. As we all know, you are ultimately as the consumer of temp help going to have to pay the cost of Health Care for temps through higher bill rates, or stop using temp help all together.

Most temp help suppliers of clerical and light industrial personnel do not cover these workers under any Health Care Plan. While the employer mandate does not kick in until 2014 and it could change several times, over by then, we have seen one analysis of its impact on the industry.

Under current interpretations those of us in the staffing industry that do not provide coverage would face a monthly assessment of $167.00/month per full time temporary ($2000.00/year). The definition of full time is vague. One view is that it will mean any worker that averages 30 hours per week worked. The assessment would not apply to those working less than this in any given month. Hence, if you used a temp for only one week there would be no assessment.

Under this scenario the user of temp help would probably see an increase to their bill rate of about $1.05/hour plus sales tax. This might seem like a lot but when you put it in comparison to what you spend on your full time employees Health Care it could be a bargain.

This obviously is a best guess estimate of what the additional cost could be in 2014. At least it’s a start on how this new law will impact temp help users.

Stay tuned……


Call Us Old Fashioned But We still Like Some Face to Face Time

Technological advancements are the biggest changes the staffing industry has experienced in the past decade. iPhones, Webinars, PDAs, Blackberrys, Twitter.

Cell phone and e-mail have replaced land line phones, fax machines, classified ads and face to face business meetings.

Appliance Rebate Program Begins

The second major consumer stimulus program started last month for Ohioan.

It went from Cash for Clunkers to Money Wads for Washers. Would you prefer Resources for Refrigerators? How about Green Stuff for Gas Water Heaters?

Nothing has the same ring as the title for the energy-efficient car rebate program from last fall. And that's not the only difference between this program and the controversial car program.

First, there will be a cap on the number of rebates allotted. There will be 89,335 rebates will be issued for the state to accommodate the $10,469,000 budget.

Second, the state is running the program, not the federal government. Maybe this will help cut down on confusion. In Texas, car dealers told me they had problems reporting the clunker deals because the system overloaded. So hopefully a state run program will run smoother.

Third, the consumer, not the retailer, is responsible to reply for the rebate. Any one interested needs to go to the program's Web site, apply for the rebate and fill out the proof of recycling form.

So the program is more efficient, but more difficult. My guess is that less people will utilize this as opposed to the clunkers' program. 

 

Ryan Staffing Wishes You a Holy Easter and a Happy Spring!

The Way I See Health Care Reform

I just don’t see the proposed Health Care Reform package that is coming down the pike doing anyone much good. I tend to take the common sense approach when trying to fix large problems so here is what I think we need to do:

INCREASE SUPPLY – We need to increase the supply of available Healthcare. As an example, we need to create more doctors in this country by revising primitive training methods and providing financial incentives for those thinking about becoming a doctor. The same goes for everyone looking to enter the medical profession.

REDUCE DEMAND – To do this we have to provide incentives for people to use less healthcare. This might include wellness programs, providing free screening programs, tax incentives for those that don’t use the healthcare system as much etc. In short, reward good behavior instead of the other way around.

FOCUS ON ADMINISTRATION AND TECHNOLOGY – Have you ever tried to read hand written medical records? Or seen the amount of paper involved in maintaining your medical records?

Having been self insured for Workers Compensation for the past 11 years covering about 1500 claims here is what I know.

We have paid about fifty cents of every dollar spent on Workers Compensation claims on administrative expenses and not on actual medical expenses or indemnity costs.

Lots of room here to save money.

EVERYONE NEEDS TO PAY – Nothing is more important than having your health. In this county we expect/demand someone else pay for it. We’ll drop $30K on a new care before we’ll pay $100/mo. towards our health insurance premium.

Those that have employer paid healthcare in either the private or public sectors are perhaps the worst offenders though not of their own making.

Plain and simple, employer paid healthcare is untaxed wages to that employee. So not only does the employee have the benefit of “free” (or low cost) healthcare to draw from, they also don’t pay federal, state, local, FICA, Medicare etc income tax on the benefit. If your employer is paying $12,000/yr for your healthcare, at a 33% tax rate this is saving the employee $4,000/yr. in taxes. And every time your employer has to pay more in the ways of healthcare premiums the employee is in effect getting a tax free raise.

The net effect of this is that large pools of people are paying a tiny percentage of their total income for healthcare.

And we all know how human nature works when something is given out free!

TORT REFORM – Short and sweet, we need to get over the thinking that we are all going to live forever. The medical technology has us living longer that ever but there are no guarantees. Yes, mistakes are made.

But are thy honest mistakes or made out of greed. What about intent? Is anyone perfect? For the life of me I don’t see how any doctor would agree to have a personal injury attorney as a patient.

KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT – One only has to look at the track record of Social Security, Medicare, the Post Office, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and the National Debt to figure this one out.
And the logic that says that by adding 30 million uninsured to the pool will reduce premiums overall is seriously flawed. This approach is in place in Massachusetts and they now have the highest premiums in the country.

I’m done. . . . thanks for listening.

Tim's Talking About EEOC, WARN and Health Care Reform

Did You Know that...
Race discrimination and retaliation represented 72 percent of all workplace discrimination charges filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Users of temp services need to be aware of their co-employment responsibilities in these matters. For example, retaliation can become an issue if you end a temps assignment for complaining about harassment by a permanent employee.

Check out the EEOC’s FAQ page for more details on discrimination.

Warning About Warn...
WARN is the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act that was passed some time ago to require certain employers to give employees advanced written notice of mass layoffs and plant closings. It applies to employers with more than 100 employees.


In its infinite wisdom a bunch of Ohio legislators think we would be better off with our own law that applies to employers with 50 employees of more.

This is another fine example of what we do best in this state. We like to put a significantly greater burden on Ohio employers than other states just to make it a bit harder to get them to come to our state. Makes perfect sense, right?


We Have All Gotten Along Before...
Having lived in the Mahoning Valley for the past 33 years and Northeast Ohio for 50 or so you get use to the Democrats taking credit for every great social program that has come down the pike in the past 75 years. And the Republicans are always painted as the party that wanted to send Grandma and Grandpa off to the poor house in their old age.

You might be surprised to learn that in 1935 the Social Security Bill passed in the House by a vote of 372 to 33 and in the Senate by a 77-6 margin. Pretty amazing especially when you compare it to what’s going on today over Health Care.

Ready To Rock N’ Roll
This month’s grand prize winner of two tickets to the Moon Dog Carnation Ball at the “Q” on March 27, 2010 is Marge Melinger, HR Director at Delta in Streetsboro. DVD’s from the four groups performing were won by Jim Puskas of CFI Installation, Joyce Keslar of A Plus Powder Coaters, Chuck Leguillon of Ohio Brass and Robyn Hoffman-Janes of Thermo Manufacturing.

Not surprising the Beatles by far were the group of choice for us children of the 60’s. The most unusual pick was Napoleon XIV. . . anyone remember their hit “They’re coming to take me away”?

Tip of the Month: “Do Unto Others” in the temp world

How would you feel if your staffing service provided you a reliable hard working temp that you invested 30 days in training with good success? Sounds pretty good so far right?


Now that same staffing service gets a call from a different client that wants that same great temp that you’ve invested costly training time and effort. What does the staffing company do? It yanks the temp from you, places him at the second client and calls you to see if you want a replacement.

My guess is that if this has happened to you, it didn’t make you very happy. . . and rightfully so.

Taking this scenario a step further, let’s say the staffing service supplier has a policy against switching temps from one assignment to another. But then the “evil” client threatens to find another staffing supplier to contact the temp to be placed on their payroll. These situations happen every day in the temp world and cause pause for thought. What to do you ask?


The first thing you should do is ask your supplier about their policy of switching temps to other customers in mid-stream. You may want to present the circumstances described above and see what their answer would be. The policy should be that they under no circumstances do they switch active temps between clients without first obtaining the approval of the first client at the very least. Even better is a policy that they just won’t do it period.


Concerning the second client that takes matters into its own hands by finding a second supplier to do their dirty work you have to question the ethics of both the client and second supplier.


This exact situation presented itself to us recently. This is how we handled it.


We told the client requesting the switch (a long term client) that we have a policy against doing what they were asking us to do. We asked them to evaluate their feelings if the position were reversed. Their response was to find other service to “temp nap” our employee.


What it all come down to from our perspective is that even at the risk of losing a long term client you have to do the right thing. As with most decisions in life, the “do unto others” creed applies to most business decisions as well. It’s a matter of who you want to do business with and have long term relationships.

Portage County HR Assocation Set for St. Patty's Day Meeting

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