An HR audit is not a performance review of the HR department. It is a structured examination of whether what your organization does matches what its policies, its records, and the law say it does. The gaps between those three things are where liability accumulates.
The value of running one yourself is simple: you get to choose the timing, the scope, and the pace of remediation. Every one of those choices is made for you when the audit is triggered by an agency notice or a ...
Texas stands apart from nearly every other state when it comes to workers' compensation: it's one of the few states where private employers can opt out of the workers' comp system entirely. But whether your organization is a subscriber or a non-subscriber, you still need to understand your obligations, your employees' rights, and the risks involved. Texas employers who carry coverage must comply with the Texas Department of Insurance, Division of Workers' Compensation (DWC) rules, while ...
The Form W-4 was rebuilt in 2020 and the change was more fundamental than most employees realize. Withholding allowances are gone. The mental model that governed the form for decades — "claim more allowances to take home more" — no longer describes anything on the page.
That leaves payroll and HR in an awkward position. Employees ask for help. You are not permitted to give tax advice. And the most common failure mode of the redesigned form — households with two ...
Misclassification liability compounds quietly. Every pay period a worker is treated as a contractor when they should be an employee, the employer accrues unpaid payroll taxes, unpaid overtime, denied benefits eligibility, and unpaid unemployment and workers' compensation contributions. None of it appears on a financial statement until a claim, an audit, or a benefits dispute surfaces it — usually years in.
This guide covers finding and
...Most overtime underpayments are not the result of an employer refusing to pay overtime. They come from multiplying the wrong number. An employer pays time-and-a-half faithfully — on the base hourly rate — while the employee also earned a production bonus, a shift differential, and a commission that all legally belong in the calculation.
The Fair Labor Standards Act does not say "1.5 times the hourly wage." It says 1.5 times the regular rate, and the ...
The single largest driver of workers' compensation cost is not the severity of injuries. It is the number of days employees spend away from work.
Indemnity claims — those involving lost time — cost dramatically more than medical-only claims, and they carry disproportionate weight in the experience modification factor that sets your premium for years. Beyond the arithmetic, the medical evidence is consistent: prolonged absence from work is associated with worse recovery ...
The EEO-1 Component 1 report is a demographic census of your workforce — headcount by job category, race and ethnicity, and sex — filed annually with the EEOC. It is not difficult, but it fails in predictable places: employers pick a snapshot period without thinking, map jobs to categories inconsistently year over year, and discover in the filing window that their HRIS does not capture the required race and ethnicity categories.
All three are solvable in October. None is ...
New York's workers' compensation system comes with some of the most demanding employer obligations in the country. From the New York Workers' Compensation Board's (WCB) strict reporting timelines to the state's mandatory coverage requirements — which extend even to domestic workers and most part-time employees — the margin for error is slim. Penalties for non-compliance in New York are severe, potentially including criminal charges for failure to maintain coverage. Whether you're ...
The Form I-9 is one page, takes ten minutes, and generates more employer penalties than almost any other routine HR document. Not because employers hire unauthorized workers — the overwhelming majority of penalties are for paperwork violations on forms completed for workers who were fully authorized.
Missing signatures. A date in the wrong box. Section 2 completed on day four. Forms retained six years past the destruction date. Each is trivial individually and ...
COBRA administration fails in predictable places. An employee's hours drop below the benefits threshold and nobody treats it as a qualifying event. A divorce is never reported. A termination notice goes out on day 31 instead of day 30. Each of these is a small clerical miss that can carry statutory penalties and — far more expensively — leave the employer holding the bag for claims that should have been the individual's responsibility.
This guide lays out every qualifying ...
The Americans with Disabilities Act does not require employers to say yes to every accommodation request. It requires something narrower and, in practice, harder: a good-faith, individualized conversation about whether an employee with a disability can perform the essential functions of the job, and what — if anything — would make that possible.
That conversation is the interactive process. Employers rarely lose ADA cases because they chose the wrong accommodation. They ...
Continuous FMLA leave is straightforward: the employee is out, you backfill the role, they return. Intermittent leave is where FMLA administration actually gets hard. The employee is at work — until suddenly they aren't, for two hours on a Tuesday, or every third Thursday, or for a week whenever a chronic condition flares. Your timekeeping system wasn't built for it, your managers resent it, and the regulations governing it are unforgiving of shortcuts.
This guide covers what ...
Minimum wage compliance used to be a single number. It is now a matrix: a federal floor that has not moved in over fifteen years, state rates that adjust annually by formula, city and county ordinances that adjust on their own schedules, and separate rates for tipped employees, small employers, and specific industries.
For a multi-state employer, the practical risk is not ignorance of the law — it is a payroll configuration that was right last January and drifted out of compliance ...
California's workers' compensation system is one of the most complex in the country. Between the state's unique medical provider networks, utilization review requirements, and stringent anti-fraud regulations, managing workers' comp claims in California demands specialized knowledge that general HR training simply doesn't provide. Whether you're an HR professional responsible for claims administration, a manager who needs to understand reporting obligations, or a safety officer looking to ...
Payroll is one of those functions where mistakes carry real consequences — from IRS penalties to disgruntled employees to compliance violations that trigger audits. If you're looking to earn a payroll certification or sharpen your skills, the program you choose matters. You need training that covers federal and state tax withholding, wage and hour laws, year-end reporting, and the ever-shifting regulatory landscape. Whether you're new to payroll or a seasoned professional seeking ...
1-770-410-1219
support@HRTrainingCenter.com
770-410-1219
