 |
 | In This Issue |  | | | | Links | | | | | | | Greetings! | | | Welcome to our latest edition of View from the Ridge.
Spring is in the air, daylight savings time has arrived (3 weeks earlier than usual), last year’s incentive plans have been paid out, 2007 plans are designed and implemented, and annual 2007 labor law briefings seem to be everywhere!
This is an excellent time to do some spring cleaning... review what’s changing in our businesses, update HR policies, benefit plans, pay programs, and consider making those improvements to enhance plans and programs.
Our April newsletter contains three articles to help you with new fresh perspectives, updates and encourage a periodic review and check-up to ensure you’re doing the right things for the right reasons. As always, we encourage questions, comments and topics you’d like to see in future issues.
Check us out at www.CypressRidgeSolutions.com.
| | | | | | Minimum Wage
Effective 1/1/2007, the minimum wage was increased to $7.50 (in San Francisco, the minimum wage is now $9.14). All work that qualifies for overtime must be paid at $11.25/hour, and $15.00 double time. The minimum salary level for exempt employees is now $2,600/month.
Reminder: Travel pay set at minimum wage will require modification. Also, new posters must be displayed at each workplace
Computer Software Employees
The new hourly rate for exemption from overtime payment is $49.77/hr, $103,522/annually.
| | | | | | | Once the plan design is finished and the start of the fiscal year has come and gone, you can either get the rest of your job(s) done, or you can complete the following tasks to ensure the success of your sales or company incentive plans throughout the year.
- Plan Population
By this time, employees have been assigned to plans so it should be a relatively easy task to run report(s) of how many employees have been assigned to each plan. This can be most useful as a “housecleaning” task – purging unused or under-utilized plans. Plans that have no employees assigned to them can be deleted or suspended, reducing the number of plans that are administered or reported on. Plans that only have one or just a few employees can be flagged for current or future discussion with management about the absolute need for these plans. An audit can also be completed to ensure that the employees on each plan have the correct title for that plan – individual contributors should not be on the management plan, and systems engineers should not be on the account manager plan, and so on.
| | | | | | As an employer or individual purchaser of medical insurance, are you dealing with double digit premium increases and reduced benefits? Most of our clients are. Our clients often ask us if there is anything they can do to reduce their costs. Fortunately, there is. First, a few health plan usage statistics:
For every group of people, regardless of size, whether you have 5, 50, or 250 employees:
- 50-70% will not use their health plan, or use it so rarely it is insignificant (less than $150 in claims per year).
- A small percentage will seldom use the plan, except for a minor injury or other incidental treatment.
- 4-7% will utilize health care extensively for a chronic condition, an accident, a pregnancy, etc. This small percentage of employees will not impact the potential savings derived from switching from a low co-pay plan to a high deductible plan.
| | | | | Ellen is presenting The Art (and Science) of Sales Compensation Plan DesignApril 12th, 2007 at 8 AM at the Garden Hilton Inn in San Mateo. For more information, or if you would like to attend, please contact Ellen.
Cherryll is in the process of booking her Spring and Summer 2007 speaking engagements. For more information, please contact Cherryll. | |
|
 |
