Why do we need an HR business strategy?   Many times we get asked, “Why do we need an HR business strategy?” The reason is that HR can be transformed from a hassle-ridden financial sinkhole into a major data-driven contributor to your executive level decisions.   The benefits of having an HR business strategy can be: Executives can view and understand the business’ internal trends. Allows the company to estimate the effect of strategic policy changes. Illustrates the return on the company’s investment in the benefit package strategy. Allows management to create a logical link between employee performance and the factors that drive that performance. Accurate, relevant and actionable reports. Allows businesses to take their history to model future potential business decisions and the impact of factors outside of the company’s control.   Data-driven reporting in these areas can equip your senior staff with the power to understand the impact their dec ...

What is HR business intelligence?   The answer to, “What is HR business intelligence”, is that it’s a way to draw useful business information from HR areas to help with decision-making. Some popular areas of HR business intelligence provide:   Accurate, relevant and actionable reports. Allows businesses to take their history to model future potential business decisions and the impact of factors outside of the company’s control. Enables executives to view and understand the business’ internal trends. Allows the company to model the effect of benefit and policy changes. Allows management to create a logical link between employee performance and the factors that drive that performance. Insights like these can enable you to run your company with a much greater awareness of how one of your biggest expense areas (employees) will be impacted.   HR business intelligence can gain answers to many groups of business intelligence questions, like: If we doub ...

Why Is HR Important?   Sometimes the most basic questions about HR can lead to great conversations that help organizations flourish. One of the most basic in the Human Resources field is, “Why is HR important?” As a business owner, understanding that HR is one of the areas where you want to hire experts is a critical criterion for making your company stronger.   Why is HR important? – Support your management HR can provide training for management to help them work with the diverse set of employees on their teams. Knowing how they could best interact with a Baby Boomer looking for loyalty and stability, versus a Y Generation who may need daily praise, can make a big difference with retention rates and hitting goals. HR can help train managers prevent common mistakes that swell to legal nightmares. HR is a great resource for getting feedback from managers and identifying growing HR trends inside your own company.   Why is HR Important? - Legal Compliance Legislators on the state and nat ...

What are Strategic HR Services? When we get asked, “What are Strategic HR Services?”, we usually provide the following explanation. From our experience, strategic HR services try to save business owners from spending too much money and time on HR capabilities. The HR services should be focused on letting business owners grow the business, not logging excessive hours with HR issues. HR services should provide: Legal and Compliance Coverage to help avoid employee claims and to avoid fines. Employee Policy development, documentation and communication to let employees understand what they need to know. Benefits program development to create an appropriate set of benefits to retain employees and be in sync with the company’s corporate culture. Recruiting, Hiring and Terminations best practices to help personnel get through these stages quickly so the company can focus on growth. Employee coaching and counseling to help the company and employees keep the same expectations. Payroll ...

What is HR outsourcing?   As our team is contacted by business owners, we frequently get asked, “What is HR outsourcing anyway?” We love to hear this question because as we explain what HR outsourcing is, we get to share ways that the callers can let go of many time-intensive tasks and really get back to focusing on growing their business. We also lower their stress level by showing them how we’ll help keep them in line with the ever changing legal HR landscape. What is HR outsourcing? In our view, it’s the ability for your company to rely on professionals who can take care of:   Legal and Compliance - to help avoid employee claims and to avoid fines. Employee Policy - documentation and communication to let employees understand what they need to know. Benefits program development to create an appropriate set of benefits to retain employees and be in sync with the company’s corporate culture. HR outsources usually have relationships with benefit providers and can help secure fa ...

HR Company in Tampa Bay. Providing HR Outsource Services in Tampa and St. Petersburg   When you look for an HR Company in Tampa Bay, keep in mind that human resources outsourcing is now more than just cost reduction. With a combination of human resource processes and HR software, an HR company can improve workforce performance. When you enter into a human resources outsourcing agreement with Modern Business Associates (MBA), we act as a strategic back office. An HRO relationship offers clients human resources support in any of four targeted areas: HR Company Essentials: Employee Benefits Support Risk Control and Workers' Compensation Insurance Human Resources Consulting Business Insurance Management   In addition, payroll processing can also be a key area to outsource due to the complications with deductions, taxes and reporting regulations.   In an HRO arrangement, clients receive administration assistance, but unlike in a PEO arrangement, a co-employment ...

Best Payroll Services – What to look for   When looking for the best payroll services, there’s handful of things to look for first. When evaluating the best payroll services, keep the following list of requirements in mind. Take the ones that impact your situation the most.   Customer service is a big one. Knowing they will be responsive and fix problems that inevitably crop up should be a pressing factor in your search.   The best payroll services have capabilities like: Ability to distribute the paychecks after they have been created. Ability to file tax returns on all levels of government. W-2 and W-3 processing. Online tools Direct deposit options Employee-facing customer service capabilities Handling the variety of deductions and tax withholdings. Will they certify the payroll run? Reporting the way you need it. Bringing ideas to you about tax credit opportunities   Reliability must be a factor too. Does your interaction ...

Occupational Health concerns at a workplace, tips to avoiding workplace injuries.   Occupational health concerns at the workplace can cause un-needed stress on your workforce and expose you to liability. Your goal, as a business owner, should be to create a safe work environment for your employees. As part of your occupational health plan, you may also consider the health of your customers, suppliers, nearby communities who may be impacted by your business operations. Create a safety manual and include: Proper procedures for performing routine tasks that could be dangerous. (Employee feedback on this section is very beneficial to creating a good safety manual.) What to do in an emergency: fire, natural disaster, etc. Location of fire-exits and fire extinguishers. Have an insurance professional or attorney review your manual and policies. Lastly, make a point that safety meetings and inspections are important.   As inspiration, you might want to focus on two main benefits ...

Articles on Payroll Services   We offer a wealth of free articles on payroll services. What to look for. Mistakes to avoid when selecting a payroll service. How to prepare your staff for the transition to a payroll service. Tips for vetting payroll services before you commit.   Come see our extensive library of articles on Payroll Services.   Our HR outsourcing services track record has given us a great view into what kinds of questions need to be answered for a business owner to make a proper decision about their payroll service. Our articles on payroll services focus on helping you through those decisions.      Modern Business Associates is an HR company that focuses on payroll and HR outsourcing.  As a Professional Payroll and HR outsource organization, our clients rely on us to help them effectively deal with these kinds of topics.

Cons of hiring an intern   Internships can be either paid or unpaid, depending on the circumstances. Keep a sharp eye on the current guidelines to stay in compliance, especially when trying to create an unpaid intern program. It’s now very difficult to create a compliant unpaid internship program. Here are a few of the cons of hiring an intern: Hiring an intern takes time. The candidate search and the interviewing and screening process can take just as much work as a full-time employee hire. Plus, the intern usually only participates in the program for a few months, lowering the return on the hiring investment your team made. Hiring an intern is usually not free. A recent flurry of political focus has clearly established that federal and state regulators are worried that companies are abusing internship programs and using them for free labor. In general, for an unpaid internship to be lawful under the FLSA, the intern must be properly classified as a "trainee" rather than an "employee." I ...