Employment Trends & Challenges for the Year Ahead

A new year means new employment laws, trends, and challenges. Here are some of the important trends we are following as we enter 2024. General Trends Uncertainty With the volatile political climate heading into the 2024 presidential race, inconsistent predictions for the economy, and escalating incidents of violence, employees are facing new challenges at and […]

EMPLOYEE GIFTS

Question: With rising costs, I want to give my employees a gift card to reward them for their hard work. What should I consider? Answer:  Acknowledging an employee’s contribution to the company is almost always a good thing. Making the effort to recognize an employee’s hard work helps to reinforce their commitment to the company. When […]

NON-EXEMPT HOLIDAY PAY

Question: Do I have to pay non-exempt employees for a holiday if we are closed? Or a special rate If they work? Answer: Probably not. There is no federal law to pay non-exempt employees for holidays if they do not work or to pay a premium rate if they do work. Massachusetts and Rhode Island […]

2023 Workplace Trends to Watch

2023 Workplace Trends to Watch

From return-to-office, which was Glassdoor’s Word of the Year, to quiet quitting, 2022 introduced us to several new labor market concepts. It’s still too early to predict what terms will define our workplaces in 2023, but here are a few labor market trends to look for as the year progresses. #1-Where Are Your Employees? – […]

Understanding Total Comp & Total Cash Comp

Understanding Total Comp & Total Cash Comp

As strong demand for qualified workers continues to be a challenge for employers in 2023, compensation remains at the forefront for businesses trying to retain and recruit talent. Having a better understanding of compensation can ensure you spend your dollars wisely and are able to communicate the true value of your employees’ compensation with clarity. […]

Compensation Planning Basics

Compensation Planning Basics

Understanding compensation is critical to staying competitive in today’s volatile labor market.  Real wage growth is a concept that is particularly important. Real wages/income is calculated by dividing the current wage by 1 plus the current inflation rate.  For an employee currently making $40,000, the individual’s real income is reduced to $36,866 when the current […]

What Do All Those Comp Terms Mean Anyway?!?

Welcome to Compensation 101 where we define and give examples for those boring compensation terms we throw around all the time.  You’ve heard a lot of them recently and probably experienced some of them, too, as we navigate through a volatile, often unexplainable, labor market. Let’s begin with the basics! Compensation Strategy Developing and implementing […]

What Do You Need to Pay a Non-Exempt Employee?

A recent story reported that Delta Airlines will begin paying flight attendants half-time for boarding duties, a change from the industry-standard of only paying once the doors close. Delta is implementing this change to stave off a push to unionize their flight attendants. However, it raised a critical question for many people – are there […]

Compensating Your Sales Force

By now your sales force is through the first quarter of 2022.  For a lot of organizations, 2020 was a terrible sales year and 2021 brought record sales.  So what will happen in 2022?  Affinity HR Group doesn’t have any crystal balls, but we do have some ideas about how to be best prepared to […]

How to Survive the 2021 Labor Shortages

I’m writing this the morning of August 6, and the monthly jobs report from the USDOL has just been issued.  Last month’s report was somewhat underwhelming, so this one has been eagerly awaited.  It has lots of good news: The economy added over 943,000 jobs in July, well ahead of economic forecasts.  The biggest gains […]