Neurodiversity in the Workforce

The twenty-first century has brought a groundswell of multi-cultural diversity to the workforce. For the most part, society has judged that to be a positive thing and employers often seek to achieve it, but what about neurodiversity? Are we equally willing to embrace these differences?

What Exactly is 'Neurodiversity' Anyway?

The term was first coined by Harvey Blume in 1998 for an article he wrote in The Atlantic about geeks and nerds. The neuro- part of the word refers to how the brain is wired. People with neurological conditions like hyperactivity, attention deficit, and high-functioning autism all have brains wired a little differently than what is typical. It has nothing to do with intelligence. It is about how they process the information their brain receives. Neruodiversity accepts atypical wiring of the brain as beneficial.

Many examples exist where someone whose brain is wired a little differently has succeeded in life—the absent minded professor, the hyper-active used car salesman, and those who have channeled attention deficits into lively jobs where they thrive as journalists, restaurateurs, or soldiers. Asperger's Syndrome can be an asset when working with the predictability and logic of computer technology.

The Wave of Things to Come?

Blume says that neurodiversity is "not only timely but quite possibly irresistible." Employers who take a fresh and objective view of the hiring process recognize that many people with tons of talent and intellect aren't very good at selling themselves during the job interview. These are people whose neurological wiring is a little different than the conformist team players and the socially adept in-crowd. They are the individuals who solve problems outside the boxes and see things that others may miss.

It is not always easy to integrate someone who thinks or acts a "little funny" into a stable and staid working environment. Change merely for the sake of change is a rash decision. Employers should still be mindful of hiring people with good and honorable character, but a neurologically diverse roster of employees can give a business more flexibility, open up new prospects, and accommodate a wider range of challenges than a cookie-cutter crew.

How To Improve Your Payroll Accounting

You have a business to run. Do you really wish to spend your workday caught up in the minutiae of ever-changing payroll tax laws and forms that have numbers and letters for titles instead of real names? No.

You have a business to run. Is it really wise or affordable to disconnect from that aspect of your business and have your payroll completely outsourced? Maybe not.

Between these two extremes is the alternative of using a payroll service with flexible options. A payroll service will take the data on the hours your employees worked, their pay rates, and other payroll-related information and use your numbers to generate the paychecks, payroll reports, and payroll tax filings for you.

Having a good payroll accounting system helps keep both your employees and the government happy, and it can keep you from pulling your hair out. Employees get paid correctly and on time. The government gets its cut correctly, on time, and filed with the proper form. You get a service that helps shoulder the load and frees up more of your time.

Some payroll accounting services will handle just the payroll taxes and filings for you, while you remain hands-on and pay your employees. If you want your payroll service provider to pay your employees, they offer both paper paycheck and direct deposit options. A full-service payroll accounting provider can manage retirement accounts, workmen's compensation, and specialty services for employees who receive much of their income in the form of tips.

The payroll service may use software on your own computer, or you may select to enter data online. Either way, the data has to be entered only once for both paychecks and taxes. The outcomes always match since they both started with the same numbers.

Keeping your data secure is always a priority with a good payroll accounting service. They will also generate accurate, understandable reports that make it easy to see exactly what your labor costs are and to share this information with your accountant. Choosing to use a payroll service is often the simplest way to improve your payroll accounting.

Outsourcing Your Payroll: a no-brainer

Few things demoralize your work force faster and more severely than for employees to find that their paychecks aren't there on time and in full. Managing the payroll can be a tough task with high consequences if you get it wrong. With the added complications of personnel changes, changing tax regulations, and unforeseeable delays, stress becomes a daily companion.

Over a fourth of all businesses have found that the cure for these headaches was as simple as making the decision to outsource their payroll. Outsourcing makes good sense for many reasons.

Saves on Software Costs
No purchase, installation, support, or maintenance of elaborate payroll software is needed, and the payroll company is responsible for the updates. Payroll companies can interface with your existing office accounting system.

Adapts to Personnel Changes
Growing companies can add new employees seamlessly. For downsizing ones, the payroll company handles the layoffs, unemployment insurance, and severance pay. This scalability is especially valuable for companies that hire seasonal help.

Frees Up More Time
Payroll outsourcing allows you to concentrate on your product or service. In the average business, payroll typically consumes one employee workday each pay period. That's eight to ten hours that could be better spent on enhancing productivity.

Improves Efficiency of Timekeeping
Employees can log their hours directly into the payroll company's data base electronically, eliminating the need for timecards and reducing the chance of human error. Managers retain the ability to approve or adjust the data, as needed.

Accommodates Special Circumstances
One-time bonuses, variable commissions, fines and other irregular payments can all be handled by payroll companies.

Allows Flexibility in Form of Payments
You have the option of distributing paper paychecks or of having deposits made directly into your employees' bank accounts.

Shifts Regulatory Compliance Tasks
If you haven't decided to hire an outside payroll company yet, consider this: Payroll services take on the responsibility of covering shifting tax regulations and mandatory withholdings at the local, state and federal levels. They also manage contributions to health and retirement plans. Hiring an outside payroll company is a good business decision for this one reason alone. But there is yet an additional level of protection in outsourcing payroll. The payroll company, not you, will pay the fines if they are not in compliance with the rules and regulations

Some business decisions are easy. The decision to outsource your payroll is one of them.

Updating the Description of a Job Description

Do you recall some of the early writing lessons you had in grade school? Remember the assignment where you were supposed to describe a dog? The finished sentence went something like, "The dog was big and black." The reader still did not know if, upon meeting the dog, he should prepare to have his face slurped in exuberant friendliness, or if he would be more likely to lose a chunk of his ankle.

Many job descriptions haven't evolved much beyond a third-grade creative writing project. They still read like an inventory of attributes and say very little about what to expect as an outcome. Most job descriptions are duty lists that have been divorced from the esprit of the work.

As "The Staffing Advisor" at wordpress.com laments, "The most accurate part of many job descriptions is 'other duties as assigned.'"

As a remedy, some HR professionals are taking a new look at old job descriptions. They're asking if this old staple of business needs to be retooled to keep up with the times. They suggest that business ought to shift the old paradigm of determining the talent needs by the number of jobs to a new one that is more focused on the output of the work.

It may seem a subtly of language to move from "what should the employee do" to "what should the employee accomplish," but the effect can be profound. It shifts the focus from the drudgery of the work to the achievement of the goal. It redirects the attention away from a list of tasks to a description of performance expectations.

This new orientation will necessarily alter some of the traditional approaches to hiring. Different questions will be asked, and different qualities will be looked for.

Goals and expectations change over time, as do markets and technologies. The new breed of job descriptions will have to be more fluid and adaptable than in the past. For many jobs, an employee's natural talent will become just as important as his honed and practiced skills.

Effective hiring managers consider not only where a company is today, but where a successful employee will help to take the firm in a year's time. In the past, ill-fitting job descriptions confined this forward-looking approach to hiring upper management. But focusing on results is a principle that is not just for the big guys anymore.

Providing Health Insurance Coverage

Question:
What do most Americans consider more important than managing debt or building their retirement fund?

Answer:
Having health insurance! The intensified media coverage of the past year has boosted health care to the number two spot on a list of financial planning issues, according to the 2009 National Consumer Survey on Personal Finance recently published by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards.

The top five concerns are: (1) managing retirement income, (2) providing health insurance coverage, (3) managing/reducing current debt, (4) building a retirement fund and (5) building an emergency fund.

Clearly, having health coverage for oneself and one's family is an important issue for many Americans at all levels of income and education, no matter where they may live or what their gender or ethnicity is. But the report does not indicate what kind of health insurance people want. In fact, many seem willing to trust their employers or others to make that decision for them.

When planning your financial future, it is important that your decisions do not oppose each other. This is an issue where your goals need to work together so that funding one area won't inadvertently cause increased debt in another.

Regulations on Rounding Employee Hours

Question:
Is it permissible to round off the minutes worked and pay employees in 5-, 10-, or 15-minute increments? Are there any special rules to observe when rounding off the minutes that an employee works?

Answer:
Yes, you can do that. The gist of the rule is that rounding off time has to be done in a fair manner. In other words, you cannot always round a worker's time down to favor the employer. To paraphrase an old saying, what rounds up, must round down.

The official policy is found in § 785.48(b) of the Fair Labor Standards Act under the heading of "Hours Worked Regulations" and is quoted below:

(b) ''Rounding'' practices. It has been found that in some industries, particularly where time clocks are used, there has been the practice for many years of recording the employees' starting time and stopping time to the nearest 5 minutes, or to the nearest one-tenth or quarter of an hour. Presumably, this arrangement averages out so that the employees are fully compensated for all the time they actually work. For enforcement purposes this practice of computing working time will be accepted, provided that it is used in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate the employees properly for all the time they have actually worked.

It may be read in its entirety here: http://www.osha.gov/pls/upub/wageindex.download?p_file=F30725/WH1312.pdf

Preventative Health Benefits Sees an Increase

Due to current economic conditions, many companies are shutting their doors, downsizing, and businesses are looking for ways to save money. Employee benefit programs, such as health insurance, paid vacation time, and bonuses is just one area that has received a lot of scrutiny. According to the 2009 Employee Benefits Survey released by SHRM indicated that 60% of human resource specialists who responded to the survey indicated that the current economic downturn has impacted their employers' benefits offerings. However, despite all the efforts to cut corners, there is one particular benefits area that has seen significant efforts to augment current offerings--preventive health and wellness.

Offering preventive health and wellness benefits is a method in which employers reward employees for taking measures to prevent chronic diseases and illnesses by reimbursing a specified dollar amount monthly or yearly. Examples of preventive health measures include acupuncture, health club memberships, chiropractic care, and mental health counseling. Engaging in this practice will not only improve employee health thereby reducing absenteeism but it will also lower the cost of healthcare for everyone involved.

The SHRM survey supports this trend:

* Within the next 12 months, 10% of respondents indicated that they are going to implement health and lifestyle coaching.

* 5% of respondents are going to begin offering wellness resources, information, and weight loss programs.

* 7% of respondents who currently have employees with chronic health conditions plan to launch preventive programs targeted at these employees.

* Finally, 10% of respondents have indicated that they are going to implement rewards or bonuses for acheiving or completing certain health and wellness goals. Based on the 2009 Employee Benefits Survey along with the need for employers to save money while still offering employee benefits, it is evident that preventive health and wellness benefits are the wave of the future.