PEO services are invaluable for small businesses. A professional employer organization allows you to focus more on running your company and less on the minute details that only serve to take up room in your daily schedule.

On average, membership in a PEO makes it 50 percent less likely that a small business will fail. The owner is more focused, the employees are happier and business just gets better.

Improve Your Benefits Package

The first way PEO services can transform your business is by widening the scope of the benefits package your company offers. By pooling the partnered employees, PEOs are able to score a better rate on health, dental and vision.

From 401(k) plans to life insurance options to flexible spending accounts, membership in a PEO allows you to offer more to your employees for the same or less than you already pay.

Compliant HR Training and Manuals for Employees

Think of your PEO as your outsourced human resources department. They take care of the training that your employees need but that you don’t have time to manage. They will produce and provide the company manual and answer all employee questions throughout the training process.

Much Less Time Spent on Paperwork

Payroll processing alone can eat up a large chunk of your day and your week. And you have to dedicate this time to payroll every pay period. Wouldn’t it be nice to have this task off your list of things to do?

Claims Are Handled with Ease

You probably don’t know the first step of processing a discrimination or a worker’s compensation claim, but PEO services do. You can rest assured that your employees’ concerns and injuries will be addressed in a timely, lawful manner.

Managed Recruitment and Hiring

PEO services even can recruit new employees for you. You may not know how to properly and legally word the ad’s job description, but you can trust your PEO to do it perfectly. You can off-load as much responsibility as you’d like them to take on during the hiring process — they can run the interview and report back to you on matching candidates.

Tax Time Is Less of a Headache

It’s a full-time job to stay on top of ever-changing tax laws. Ensure you are on track for withholding and make sure all immigration paperwork is filed correctly when you trust a PEO to take on this task.

Set Up an Employee Review Process

Your employees will love that you’re now depending on PEO services for many reasons, but one of the top ones will probably be that they get regular, detailed reviews. Your employees want to know that if they work hard and improve, they will be recognized and rewarded. With the help of your PEO, you can set up a review process that your employees will appreciate.

Trust WTA, Inc., for comprehensive PEO services to fit the needs of your small business, and see a big difference right away.

You may overlook the importance of employee benefits, but your workers do not.

The key to keeping your best talent in-house and preventing high turnover rates is the package you offer in terms of health insurance, work-life balance and retirement funding.

What employee benefits do you offer, and do they measure up to what your employees expect?

If the following categories aren’t included in your employee benefits package, it might be time to reevaluate your offerings:

Health Insurance

It’s definitely the most expensive part of any employee benefits package, but it’s also the most vital to your workers’ wellness and their willingness to commit to your company long-term.

Your health care package cost is determined by many factors, including the number of employees you have, but by working with a professional employer organization and taking advantage of small business tax breaks, you can lower costs and still provide the comprehensive benefits your workers need.

Dental and Vision

The cost of dental and vision insurance varies depending on whether you offer fully funded or partially funded plans. Typically, many health insurance companies offer these packages as well.

Life and Disability Insurance

What if you could offer your employees an automatic $10,000 life insurance policy? Both short-term and long-term disability insurance is another major perk. Employees want to know that they and their loved ones will be cared for in the event of an accident or disaster, and you can help provide them with that assurance.

Paid Leave

Paid leave is one of the cheapest benefits to add to any compensation package. Most employees will expect one to two weeks, but they love the opportunity to earn more the longer they stay and thrive in their positions. In addition, paid maternity/paternity leave is an attractive benefit.

Work-Life Initiatives

Whether you offer employees a subsidized gym membership or the ability to telecommute one day a week, focusing on improving their quality of life and assisting them in achieving a healthy work-life balance will only help your company succeed.

Retirement Accounts

An employee-sponsored retirement plan like a 401(k) also can help to retain employees, especially if you match contributions up to a certain percentage. Employers take care of the administration while allowing employees to build a financial foundation for their future retirement.

Building or Updating Your Benefits Package

Your most dependable resources for compiling an updated, attractive benefits package are your current employees. Ask their opinions on the employee benefits they would be most likely to use and which they would like best. It’s pointless to spend resources on benefits that your staff doesn’t need or want.

Call today and explain what you and your company are looking for. You can construct a substantial, appealing employee benefits package for less than you might think with the help of WTA, Inc.

A company’s human resource services department is responsible for so many important tasks, from tax filing to legal compliance to training and employee skill development.

Small, medium and even large businesses see many benefits in outsourcing in order to cut costs and streamline their business functions. This leaves them time and energy to focus on their specialties while leaving complex human resource tasks to trained professionals.

Here are six reasons you should consider outsourcing as well:

1. Save Money

A human resources department can consume a large portion of a company’s budget. As your
business grows, you have to hire additional team members to meet the needs of your
company. But the larger your business, the more money you can save by outsourcing.

2. Stay in Compliance

Employment law changes and evolves over time. If your human resources department is
overwhelmed, they may not have the time to devote to compliance research. When you
outsource work to specialists in this area, you lower your risk of lawsuit.

3. Handle Workload Increases

A sudden increase in work can easily overwhelm a small department, but outsourcing some
of these responsibilities can ensure your in-house employees stay abreast of your company’s
expansion.

It takes time and money to replace a lost employee, but if you outsource your human
resource services, maintaining that staff will not be your headache anymore.

4. Access Professional Training

Instead of spending time and energy developing training programs for your employees, let
outsourced human resource services manage this task. Employee development will be made a
priority, and all progress will be tracked and reported, decreasing the amount of training and
number of administrative tasks company leaders would normally have to manage.

5. Ensure Business Operations Are Focused

Whether you plan on outsourcing many tasks or just a few of the more complex
responsibilities, streamlining business operations frees you and your employees to work on
improving workplace efficiency. When no one is bogged down with paperwork, the focus
shifts, and you and your team can work together toward productive goals.

6. Utilize Superior Skill Sets and the Latest Technology

No human resources staff member is an expert in all things. A collective outsourced team can
provide services that a small in-house department cannot, such as specialized, top-tier
recruiting.

Also, outsourcing to a dedicated human resources provider ensures your company can take
advantage of the industry’s latest tools and technology.

WTA, Inc. can help you grow your business — find out today how outsourced human resource
services can help improve your company’s bottom line.

Compliance with employment law starts with the hiring process. From posting a job to
conducting interviews to selecting candidates, it’s important to stay conscious of both state and
federal regulations so you can avoid violations and fines.

The hiring process can go smoothly, as long as you observe the following five guidelines as you
put together the advertisement and the interview questions in order to stay in compliance.

1. Check Your Job Description for ADA Compliance

Your job listing cannot be discriminatory. To stay in compliance with the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA), the phrases included in the job listing must be chosen carefully. For
example, instead of “walk around” the office, opt for “move around.” Instead of using the
words “talk” or “hear,” choose “communicate.”

Physical conditions are considered disabilities, but so are chronic illnesses like AIDS and
cancer, along with mental disorders like schizophrenia. To stay in compliance, employers are
required to treat any job applicant with a disability the same as all other candidates.

2. Avoid All Mention of Race, Ethnicity and Citizenship Status

During the interview, never ask about an applicant’s ethnic origins or comment on their name
or appearance. Even asking about their language proficiency can be construed as
discriminatory.

You are allowed to ask them to complete Form I-9, which verifies the identity and eligibility
of a worker to be hired in the U.S., but requesting any additional documentation is
prohibited.

3. Never Mention a Woman’s Pregnancy

Employers are not allowed to deny a position to a woman based on her pregnancy or a
condition related to her pregnancy, as this is gender-based discrimination.

You may be hoping to hire an employee who plans on staying with the company for the long
term, but you cannot ask specific questions about a candidate’s current or future pregnancies.
You can ask general questions about her future plans to gauge her commitment level, but stay
away from all inquiries into her personal life.

4. Don’t Talk About Age

Employers are not allowed to make assumptions about a person’s capabilities based on their
age. You cannot ask how old candidates are, and you cannot ask questions that may be
misconstrued as an age-related inquiry, such as asking about their retirement plans or what
year they graduated.

5. Ignore all Social Connections

All social groups or clubs, including political party memberships or religious affiliations,
must not be mentioned in the interview in order to stay in compliance. Even if you are simply
trying to be friendly and make conversation, any questions that veer outside of the main topic
can be viewed as discriminatory, good intentions or not.

Only ask questions that relate to the individual’s ability to meet the duties and responsibilities
of the position and you will stay in compliance with both local and federal law.

If you need assistance with hiring and want to ensure your organization stays in full compliance
with all state and federal laws and regulations, trust WTA to manage this process, add new hires to your team and help assure your company’s success.

What Is Unemployment Insurance?

When the U.S. implemented the Social Security Act of 1935 during the Great Depression, it was decided as a country that people who lost work to no fault of their own would receive some economic relief. Unemployment insurance laws are currently governed and controlled by individual states. Some states already offered it. Wisconsin was the first state, in 1932, but Utah had unemployment insurance laws before 1935 as well. So did California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Washington state. People within the U.S. at the time were deeply conscious of a need to help others, because the entire country was struggling with the economy. The 1935 Act was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt; the U.S. Supreme Court decided it was constitutional in 1937.

Today, unemployment insurance protection is still a very meaningful program for both employers and employees alike, especially in times of economic recession — the Great Recession immediately comes to mind — as well as mergers and reductions in force. Its main function is to provide temporary income protection. However, it is not meant as a way to support anyone who isn’t willing to work. If an employee quits a job voluntarily and without good cause, is fired for misconduct, or refuses to apply for or accept suitable work, that person may be disqualified from receiving benefits.

Key Terminology

This is not to say that a person can’t quit. People can quit for a good cause, or they can quit for a reason that is “not contrary to equity and good conscience,” and still get unemployment benefits. One example of a good cause is defined as being asked to do something that is either illegal or unsuitable. Equity and good conscience is defined as a situation where the person claiming unemployment was acting in a “logical, sensible, or practical” way by quitting. The reason for quitting might not be enough to be considered a good cause, but if it would be “unreasonably harsh” or unfair to deny benefits, and the former employee is still interested in working somewhere else, then that employee might very well be entitled to unemployment benefits.

The idea behind finding out why someone left a job before making a decision about unemployment benefits is to prevent people from getting benefits when they quit just because they didn’t want to work at a specific company anymore.

There are other protections for the employer as well. In Utah, someone who wants to apply for unemployment benefits has to have worked recently for at least a year, and the work has to be recent; for example, the year has to be within four of the last five calendar quarters. In other words, people can’t get a job for just a short time and then expect to qualify for unemployment benefits on that basis.

Who Pays For Unemployment Insurance?

Contrary to what most people think, unemployment insurance is not paid for, or provided by, the federal or state government. Instead, indiUnemployment Insurance vidual employers pay it on the basis of the company’s experience rating (EMOD), which is determined by the number of unemployment claims paid by the state on behalf of a particular employer during a given period of time. In some ways it is like other insurance. If a company has higher unemployment claims, it pays a higher tax rate. To facilitate the program, the government uses Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA) & State Unemployment Tax Act (SUTA).

What to do about fraud

Although unemployment is a vital benefit for employers and employees alike, fraudulent claims have a negative effect on employers and the country as a whole. Suppose an employee is fraudulently collecting unemployment. Perhaps the employee actually quit voluntarily, or was fired for cause, even though the employer could not provide proof of misconduct. An employee who fraudulently collects unemployment increases an employer’s SUTA rate unnecessarily, increases the country’s unemployment rate and uses government resources that should have been allocated somewhere else.

Preventing unemployment fraud is one excellent reason why companies should have a progressive discipline plan in place; the plan protects the employer, doesn’t waste government resources, and stabilizes the program for its intended purpose, which is helping workers who need it. It can also reduce an employer’s legal liability, because following the program, when done right, establishes that a former employee was treated fairly. Even in a state that has at-will employment, wrongful termination is still something every employer ought to avoid. Please review our article about progressive discipline for more information.

Processing claims

Another important factor in unemployment claims is properly managing and processing the claims. The more information you have as an employer, in terms of tracking written warnings, keeping accurate time cards and proactively responding to claims, the more easily you can manage your SUTA rate and ensure that it is accurate. The state will conduct unemployment audits to ensure employees haven’t been working for you and also receiving insurance benefits simultaneously. These audits have a simple format where the employer reports the number of hours worked by the employees. If an employer is too busy to maintain time records, then the employer can’t give those records to the state, and problems develop. Without accurate, timely records, it’s all too possible for an employee to be paid insurance benefits and wages at the same time.

In conclusion, unemployment insurance is a beneficial program for employers and employees when it is used correctly because it provides a welcome safety net. But with the effects of the recession still apparent in today’s business world, it’s more important than ever to be prepared to defend your business by implementing a progressive discipline policy for your workforce and by contesting fraudulent claims.

If you would like to find out what your turnover rate is, and gain a better understand of how unemployment is affecting your company, please contact the WTA HR Department.

Mistakenly classifying an employee as an independent contractor can result in significant fines and penalties.
There are 20 factors used by the IRS to determine whether you have enough control over a worker
to be an employer. Though these rules are intended only as a guide — the IRS says the importance of each
factor depends on the individual circumstances — they should be helpful in determining whether you wield
enough control to show an employer-employee relationship. If you answer “Yes” to all of the first four
questions, you’re probably dealing with an independent contractor; “Yes” to any of questions 5 through 20
means your worker is probably an employee.

The U.S. Supreme court upheld Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act (more commonly known as Obamacare) on June 28, 2012 in a 5-4 decision. Many businesspeople hoped the Supreme Court would strike down Obamacare, turning it from an urgent problem into a nonissue. That hope is now gone.

If you are a small business owner with more than 50 employees and you haven’t decided what you are going to do about Obamacare, now is the time to fi gure out your strategy.

What Obama Care Means Today

Some aspects of Obamacare are good. Nobody likes it when insurance companies refuse to insure someone because of a preexisting condition or put lifetime policy caps in place. Getting a checkup without a copay, and being able to cover a child up to the age of 26, are also benefi ts. These aspects of the law are unlikely to go away.

In addition, the new laws force insurance companies to be more transparent than has been required previously: they have to explain why premiums are going up, and they can be barred from participating in the state exchanges if states find that they are raising premiums arbitrarily. Additionally, insurance companies can’t have too high an overhead. If they spend less than 80 percent of the premiums on actually providing medical care, they will now have to refund that money.

At the same time, some states are cooperating and some states are exploring perceived wiggle room to see just where they can get away with business as usual. It’s anyone’s guess what the final law is going to look like.

The big problem is the cost. You already know that U.S. healthcare is expensive. The motivation behind healthcare reform is the promise of lower premiums down the road as the U.S. healthcare system becomes more efficient. Unfortunately, we are a long way from that point.

• Many experts are worried that short-term costs will increase and that those costs will be passed on to consumers who can ill afford them

• The Congressional Budget Offi ce estimates that government spending on health care will increase from the current rate, which is 17 percent of the gross domestic product, up to 25 percent in 2037.

• State Medicaid costs are going to increase. States will be required to cover everyone who makes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. That means millions of working families are going to be eligible, not just those who are officially defined as poor. Although federal funding will pay for this expansion until 2017, states will have to start taking over after that point. States will also have to pay more for doctors and more for medical facilities because they will have to deal with many more patients than before.

• By 2014, states will have to set up Small Business Health Options Programs, or exchanges, where small businesses can create purchasing pools. A larger pool of people, obviously, has an advantage over a smaller group when it comes to buying insurance. The size of the businesses that can join will vary from state to state. A small business is definitely not more than 100 employees, but states can also limit the pool size to companies that have no more than 50 employees through the end of 2016. If a company outgrows the size limits, it will be grandfathered in. The advantage of bargaining for insurance as part of a larger pool should cause premiums to decrease.

• Taxes are going to go up for those who are wealthy. In January 2013, there will be a Medicare surcharge of 0.9 percent for individuals who earn more than $200,000 per year; for families, the magic number is $250,000. There is also a 3.8 percent tax, aimed at wealthy citizens, that will tax “unearned income.”

Getting good professional advice – in the form of an insurance agent – is key when it comes to deciding how to navigate the changes to come. The best strategy for you is going to depend, to some extent, on whether you already offer insurance to your employees. Below, some important points to consider and discuss.

The Tax Credit

If you have a small enough business, Obamacare still might not affect you negatively. For example, very small businesses won’t be penalized if they don’t provide insurance, and the federal government has been offering a tax credit to the very smallest businesses. As you would expect, smaller businesses are eligible for bigger tax credits.

Many companies that qualify for this tax credit benefi t have not taken advantage of it, even though it has been available since 2010. They say the benefi t isn’t big enough What ObamaCare for the amount of work required to get it. Some 170,300 companies received the tax credit in 2010, although somewhere between 1.4 million and 4 million companies were actually eligible. It will be interesting to see whether interest from companies increases over time, or if the federal government will sweeten the deal to increase participation.

Skipping Insurance

McKinsey & Co. estimated in June 2011 that 30 percent of employers are going to get rid of their employee health plans after 2014. In addition, the survey found that some 85 percent of employees would prefer to keep the job and lose the insurance than switch jobs in order to get insurance.

You have to admit, choosing not to provide insurance is both bold and simple: All you have to do is pay the penalty. If you can afford it and your employees are unlikely to go elsewhere, then the bottom-line truth — at least in terms of plain dollars — may be that paying fines might be cheaper than paying for insurance. If you couple that approach by paying your employees the money that was previously going for insurance, they’ll see a wage increase, too. Isn’t that a win-win for everyone?

Not completely. Employees still have to get insurance. If they don’t, they face a fine, too, and it will get bigger as time goes by: in 2014, it is a modest $95 or 1 percent of their income. In 2015, it is $325 or 2 percent of their income. And there’s a big difference between what pre-tax and post-tax dollars can buy. When you buy insurance on a company level, being able to use pre-tax dollars effectively creates a nice discount for your employees.

What happens if employees, faced with reality instead of an abstract decision, decide they really are better off changing jobs? You can’t control what other companies are going to do, but if you don’t offer insurance, and your employees can get it somewhere else, are you really sure they won’t take the opportunity?

Not buying insurance for your employees is like playing chicken. It may be a gutsy approach, but being gutsy is not the same thing as being wise. You don’t know what is going to happen in the future, but deliberately offering a deal that is second-best means you may well lose your best employees to better opportunities.

Going Out of Business

Another alternative is to let the business go. If you don’t have a small business, no one can force you to buy insurance for your employees. However, this is a short-term and short-sighted decision. Owning your own business has always been one of the best ways to build wealth. Unless you want to retire anyway, a better alternative would be to fi gure out how to stay in business and take care of your employees at the same time.

How Insurance Companies Are Responding

According to a Bloomberg Government Analysis, insurance companies have been keeping a close eye on all these changes, and it shows in their business strategy. Since Obamacare was passed into law, private insurance companies have become increasingly involved in public health insurance programs. This is despite Republican predictions from Rick Santorum and Michele Bachman that government would take over the insurance industry. The truth is that the insurance industry is still thriving. Coverage is stable, there hasn’t been any substantial acceleration with respect to cost growth, and profi ts are stable.

Increasingly, insurance companies are putting their money into managed-care programs for Medicare and Medicaid, with revenue from these programs accounting for more than 40 percent of what they make. At the same time, commercial business revenue is now less than half. The Bloomberg analysis was based on the financial filings for the five largest publicly traded companies and one nonprofi t: Aetna, Blue Cross-Blue Shield (the nonprofi t), Cigna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint. These six insurance companies cover one out of every three people who have insurance.

Clearly, these companies expect Obamacare to be fully implemented, and they are preparing their business plans accordingly. They were not waiting for the Supreme Court to vote; they’ve been busy for years with new plans.

Insurance companies cater to their customers just like any other business. Since Obamacare will require that you look for insurance solutions, insurance companies will be eager to provide them.

Change is unsettling. However, the moreknowledge that you are able to acquire, the better your decisions will be.

It used to be that most people died soon after retirement at 65. Those days are gone, and they aren’t likely to come back anytime soon. As a responsible business owner, it’s important to understand the benefits and risks behind hiring someone older.

You already know the risks. In September 2006, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) released the results from an email survey about hiring older workers that was sent to HR professionals.

Some HR professionals did report disadvantages:
• Older employees might bet set in their ways and sometimes are not as adept at new technology as their younger counterparts. They may need additional training, and they may lack flexibility.
• They might be old enough to have one or more chronic diseases, which makes them more expensive when it comes to medical care and insurance.
• They prefer flexible hours, but not all businesses can give them this benefit.

An older employee may have very real physical limitations that require accommodation. If the employee is on Medicare, there are earning limitations. You can also be sure that older employees are probably not going to stay with your business for thirty years, although they may well stay for ten or twenty. Older employees do value relationships more; there are benefits to this, but it is also true that relationships can affect efficiency and productivity. An although younger employees may not have the perspective yet to appreciate what older employees offer, that’s a disadvantage for the younger employee, not the older one.

Interestingly enough, though, HR managers were positive about hiring older people. Some 71 percent of those surveyed thought older workers had invaluable career experience, but only 49 percent thought older workers didn’t adequately keep up with technology, and only 36 percent thought health-care costs were an issue. These are not overwhelming statistics. The remaining percentages citing disadvantages were even lower; in fact, 24 percent said they didn’t see any disadvantages at all to hiring older workers.

The top reasons for hiring older employees were as follows:
• Older employees have invaluable work experience, including diverse thoughts and approaches.
• They are usually able (and willing) to mentor younger, less-experienced employees.
• They can take on part-time or seasonal work. In fact, they often prefer it.
• They are reliable and have a strong work ethic.
• Older employees have a serious commitment to work, and they are loyal.
• Many times, they already have established, long-term networks of clients and contacts

Of those surveyed in 2006, 100 percent thought hiring older people had advantages. Although these HR professionals were careful to note that it is wrong to stereotype any employee by age, they also said that older employees can make excellent team players and are often more patient than younger employees.

In fact, it is possible that some of the negative responses had more to do with bias than with reality. An article that appeared on Entrepreneur.com about hiring older employees echoed the results of the SHRM survey. It listed some reasons why it might be smart to hire older employees:

• Young employees can be careless. Older workers, who are dedicated to doing the best possible job, are often the ones who find and correct mistakes. That kind of person can potentially save your business a great deal of money along the way. For example, a 75-year-old clerical worker noticed that a mailing effort worth more than $50,000 had a one-digit mistake in the zip codes. The mailing house and the marketing manager both missed this error; the 75-year-old did not. How many mistakes of that magnitude can your company afford to eat?

• Punctuality, honesty, and an insistence on doing things right even if it means staying late are old-fashioned virtues … and older employees often have them
in full measure. They take pride in what they do, and they can be extremely hard working.

• Training has as much to do with a willingness to listen and change direction as it does with having good hearing. Someone who is older may actually be easier to train than someone who is younger, because older employees are less likely to need repeated reminders. Once they’ve got something, they don’t usually just ignore it. Younger employees — impatient, ambitious, and not really team players yet — may do just that. Youth does not mean compliance. Sometimes
it means rebellion.

• Older employees are often have strong organizational skills. This is significant, because businesses lose about a million hours of work each year because of disorganization within the workplace.

• Most older people have developed communication skills and tact. They aren’t seeing workplace politics for the first time, and they often know exactly how to deal with it.

• They aren’t shy about sharing what they know, they tend to know a great deal, and they have the maturity to put it all into perspective. Sometimes younger employees are intimidated by the mere fact of being within an organization. Every company needs people who will speak up when it counts, but sometimes that’s easier to do for older employees than it is for younger ones. It’s like a 50-year-old taking a class from a 30-year-old professor. The dynamic is totally different than it would be for someone who is 18 years old and on campus for the first time. The older student will still be respectful, but will also have the confidence that comes from life experience.

• Their salary and benefits may be less expensive than those for someone who is younger. If they own their own home and have insurance from some other source, or even a pension from another company,they can focus more on what they want to do and less on just covering their living costs. Older employees may not be there for the money as much as they are for the satisfaction and involvement of still being productive and valued. If they have debts, they are very motivated to make sure they take home that all-important paycheck.

• It sets a good example. Employees are smart enough to know when a company respects all its employees, regardless of age, and older employees are often excellent models who are more than happy to mentor and train. And it is just smart business to teach the lesson that your business values diversity, including the diversity that comes from age. At some point, most employees will get older themselves. It’s good for them to know they work for a company that values them regardless of age.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to hire older workers is this one. You need them. The truth is, there are more jobs than there are people to fill them.

• Even when the economy is bad, 20 to 30 million jobs still have to be filled. But you don’t see many large families anymore in the U.S. Those who do have large families are often from other countries and may not have the same strength when it comes to education as those who are older.

• Most companies haven’t thought far enough into the future. They have been so busy cutting costs and exporting jobs offshore in order to stay in business that they’ve neglected training new talent. As Colin Powell observed in his book It Worked for Me, the military pays a great deal of attention to mentoring future leaders because they don’t hire from outside. Yes, the U.S. is very large, and outsourcing work has been a popular strategy for many companies … but far too often, the profits erode and the work comes back home again. That places business owners in the same situation as the military: you need to mentor, too.

An older employee is someone who has verifiable history. That’s a tremendous advantage, but they are also often more motivated than their younger counterparts. One expert said their motivation score is higher (at 78.4 percent) than the 71.2 percent for someone between the ages of 18 and 29.

Research has shown that, far from being a burden, older employees actually miss fewer days than younger ones. According to SHRM, their turnover rate is less than the one for younger ones, too. That matters, considering that turnover costs are about a third of an employee’s annual salary. And many of them are healthier than the last generation. Many older employees are obviously still healthy and vital.

It’s important to hire the right person for the job, but the right person might well be someone older. If that’s the case for your own business, then you should give older potential employees serious consideration. It’ll keep you on the right side of the law — always a good idea — and if you select the right people, they will make your company stronger and better.

And isn’t that the thing that really counts?

BULLYING AFFECTS YOUR BOTTOM LINE

Most people who are targeted by bullies try to deal with the problem for almost two years before leaving the job. According to Harrison Psychological Associates, the cost to employers of that two-year period adds up to $180 million, in part because bullying makes productivity go down. Bullying is also a huge time waster. It’s hard to work if someone is actively and continually attacking you, after all, and it’s also hard to do what you’re supposed to if much of your time is spent tormenting someone else.

WHO’S THE BULLY?

Most bullies are poor managers who think that the best way to manage is through intimidation and fear. According to one recent study, those managers who were surveyed thought that the following factors played a contributing role to bullying at work:

• Lack of managerial skill (66%)

• Personality (57%) • Authoritarian management style (56%)

• Inaction when bullying occurs (37%)

• Too much work, work that the employee is not qualified to do, and unrealistic standards or deadlines (27%)

An insecure manager without adequate training who thinks being a good boss means being arbitrary, demanding, and unpleasant is a prime candidate for becoming the local bully and making life miserable throughout your office.

WHO’S THE TARGET?

When you’re younger, those who are perceived as different or weak are targets for bullies. Adult bullies in the workplace, however, have a different agenda: they still target perceived threats, but it’s the threat of excellence instead of the threat of diversity.

Someone who is productive, intelligent, honest, capable, and well-liked can make a bully look bad by comparison. This is especially true if the bully is a manager, and the target is someone who brings real ability to the company. As a result, the bully wants to control or get rid of the target instead of doing some constructive mentoring instead. Which employee do you want to keep and reward? The bright, personable, productive target, or the intimidating manager who thinks bullying is either a good way to manage or an effective self-preservation technique?

WHAT INACTION GETS YOU

Bullying is not just a schoolyard problem. This is a big enough issue that it presents a key problem for your company to solve. Yes, you can neglect it; that’s what many companies do. They don’t interfere, or sometimes they even criticize the bully’s target for not being more productive or for not doing a better job of handling the bully’s attacks.

Unfortunately, however, bullying is usually not something that can be stopped effectively by the target; an employee does not have the necessary clout, especially if the bully is at a higher organizational level. The Workplace Bullying & Trauma Institute says the percentage of those who will choose to solve the problem by leaving the company is at 70%.

Leaving an abusive job might be a great solution for your employee, but guess who’s on the losing side of the deal? You are. Not only have you lost a valuable person, you’ve also got all the costs of finding someone new and training that person to fill the hole. Worse, you haven’t solved the problem that caused the bully’s target to leave, so you may see the whole cycle start over again. And then there are the legal risks. Bullying represents a rich field of opportunity for lawyers.

Of course, the main reason people let bullies get away with bad behavior is not because they like or approve of the behavior. It is difficult and unpleasant at the best of times to tell people they need to change. In How to Deal with Workplace Bullies Bullying and the Risk of Legal Action the case of talking to a known bully, you already know the bully can be awful to deal with; the entire conversation could blow up in your face. It’s no wonder, then, that so many companies avoid a blowup by never even starting the conversation.

EFFECTIVE MEASURES

The single most important thing you can do as the owner of a company is to make sure you do something to solve the problem instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. You have to hold bullies accountable for their conduct. Ignoring bullying behavior, or even rewarding it, sends a chilling and repressive message throughout your company’s culture. It also increases your liability from a legal point of view. When it comes to bullying , courts expect you to have both a policy against it and a clear path for resolving problems.

Get your managers some good training . They need to have a healthy model for managing employees that doesn’t involve bullying. They also need to be able to evaluate the social environment at work so they can specifically challenge negative and harmful behaviors such as bullying. In particular, they need to understand the situation well enough so that they don’t inadvertently give the target a poor performance review. After all, the problem behind inadequate productivity is not the person being bullied, it’s the person who created an impossible work environment.

Educate employees about bullying so it’s clear what is, and is not, acceptable behavior at your company. Write an anti-harassment policy, and make sure that someone who is being attacked can go as high within the company as necessary in order to solve the problem. If an employee’s manager is the source of the problem, you can’t reasonably expect that the same manager is going to be willing to fix things for that employee. Encourage people to talk to management when bullying occurs, and be willing to let the person who has been targeted transfer into another area of the company if that would effectively solve the situation. It’s better to have an employee change jobs than leave the company completely.

Sometimes businesses hire people whose performance doesn’t live up to the initial expectations. Sometimes the problem isn’t so much about performance as it is behavior. Either way, you already know you can hurt your business if you hire the wrong employee, but you will hurt it even more if you don’t put a comprehensive, consistent procedure in place to use when employees present problems. You might even be able to redirect problem employees so they can be assets instead of liabilities.

One of the best procedures is something called progressive discipline. It starts with training. You can only expect employees to live up to your expectations when you have given them a clear understanding of what you require of them as employees. The usual way to do this is through job descriptions and employee handbooks.

Once employees understand your expectations, the progressive discipline generally consists of the following steps:

• An oral warning: The oral warning is more complicated than it might seem. For example, a manager can only reasonably give an employee an oral warning after the employee has been trained and then counseled about the specific problem. If you haven’t trained the employee adequately, you don’t have grounds for complaining about noncompliance. The first goal is to find out whether an employee understands what you want to see in terms of behavior and performance. If the first conversation is not enough to correct the problem, though, then the supervisor needs to have a second conversation. Document any conversations you have about the problem in one memo or more, and place the documentation in the employee’s file.

• The written warning: If the problem still exists after the oral warning, then it is time for a written warning. A written warning consists of two parts: a written discussion about why the employee’s behavior or performance is a problem, and a list of one or more potential consequences if the problem is not corrected within a certain amount of time. Depending on how valuable the employee is, a manager might choose to provide multiple written warnings. For example, perhaps it has been a while since the last warning, you think you were not clear enough, or you are pretty certain the employee misunderstood you.

• Suspension or demotion: Sometimes you don’t have to apply the worst possible penalty that is available to you. Perhaps suspending an employee temporarily, or moving the employee into a lower-level job, would be enough. If you do decide to suspend someone, it’s a good idea to have a standard way of proceeding with that as well. For example, you might want to start with a one-day suspension and work up to a five-day suspension, if necessary, over time.

• Termination of employment: If the time specified in the written warning has gone by and the employee’s behavior or performance are still a problem, or the employee just refuses to cooperate, then the best solution might be letting the employee go.

The key to being effective about progressive discipline is documentation. You need to keep detailed documents so it is clear that you have followed your own procedures and given the employee every chance to correct performance and behavior. Also, you should keep an eye on the amount of time that passes. Maybe someone has earned the right to move backward in the process as well as forward. On the other hand, you don’t want problem behavior to continue indefinitely. Letting a problem drag on too long makes you look ineffective — not the message you want to send your employees.

You might feel uncomfortable about the idea of disciplining employees, but the reality is that discipline has a vital role in the workplace:

• Everyone benefits when they know managers are going to follow a specific disciplinary procedure that is fair and is consistently applied to all employees.

• Discipline can correct performance and behavior so employees can comply with the standards and expectations you’ve set. Obviously, the best outcome is not firing someone. Doing that is expensive; it will cost you in lost productivity and higher SUTA payroll taxes. Not only that, firing someone can cause bad feeling, especially when the process is done poorly. Instead, the goal is helping all employees succeed in your specific business environment.

• Give employees a chance for self-defense. Sometimes you will find that an employee has a good case to make. You might be able to correct problems you didn’t even recognize you had.

• Discipline encourages all employees, not just the problem ones, to live up to the expectations set by the company for their behavior and ethics. Having a standard doesn’t just tell you when employee behavior is a failure; it also tells you when employee behavior is a success. Use that fact to your advantage.

• Discipline shows a good-faith effort on the part of your business to follow an impartial process when dealing with any employee problem so that if it does become necessary to terminate someone’s employment, it will be clear to everyone that the company was fair and gave the employee every chance to correct whatever problems existed.

You may be surprised to realize that your employees appreciate having a well-documented, fair process for working through employee problems in a timely way. Even though nobody wants to see another employee lose a job for what seems like arbitrary and unfair reasons, people also don’t want to see another employee getting away with obvious bad behavior. Making the effort to try and correct behavior, and firing someone only when necessary, will reassure your remaining employees that you aren’t weak or a fool. These are good points for them to understand about you.

To make your progressive discipline program succeed, you will need to do the following:

• Write a formal policy. It should be included in employee handbooks and in any documentation about how your company works that you will be giving to employees.

• Train your managers so they know how to implement the progressive discipline program.

• Spend the time and energy to make sure you document and follow up with problems. You might want to consider having someone be present as a witness or to take notes during any disciplinary procedure. Just don’t choose someone who is a peer of the employee being disciplined. You could also allow the employee to select someone to act as witness. The idea is to balance not embarrassing an employee with making sure that the process is open, fair and impartial.

• Recognize that a progressive discipline program can alter or suspend the rules of at-will employment until it becomes clear your best alternative is actually firing an employee. Being scrupulous about how you implement the plan, and demonstrating patience throughout the process, works to benefit you in the long term. That way, no one can accuse you of being arbitrary or not giving an employee enough of a chance.

The goal is to use the weakest effective action so that you don’t escalate any situation unnecessarily. That doesn’t mean going through the steps has to be rigid, though. There might be cases where it is appropriate to skip some of the steps. Suppose you find out an employee is stealing, fighting, or using or selling drugs or alcohol. In a case like that, you may have to just fire the employee immediately. However, even that can be explained ahead of time in your formal policy. People will understand. .