How To Sign Colorado Travel Agency Agreement

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good afternoon everyone thank you for joining us today and watching this video i am diana murray with asap accounting and payroll and i am happy to present a quick video on some of the upcoming changes as it relates to employment law definitely looking back on regulations that passed even in 2019 and 2020 but looking ahead to 2021 and what's coming down for employers to be in compliance with i'm really excited to be joined with michael santo of bechdel santo and severn as our employment law attorney and guest speaker for today and he will be touching on these topics very specifically so without further ado i'm going to turn it over to you michael thanks so much thanks so much for the nice introduction uh certainly appreciate the opportunity to talk with everybody today um i i would note that those of you who are like hey i've seen him speak before and he usually wears a tie or isn't the attorney why he's in a suit frankly with everything that needs to be accomplished in the next 20 on 29 days we're just going straight uh casual tired at this point so um i'm gonna have time to cut my hair frankly so a number of changes have come up we're gonna focus on some the big ones today um and certainly those that are coming up for the new year so let's get started uh you may see this first slide a 2019-2020 legislation what what do you we're in 2020 michael are you worried about 2019 well we're gonna get to the equal pay act in a little bit and the equal pay did come in or was least excuse me passed in may of 2019 signed in june of 2019 by the governor so that's why we may be hearkening back to all those times ago colorado's new sick leave law which is a law which um technically isn't in place until january 1 2021 but don't let anyone convince you of that it is in place now and we are under obligations to comply with it it is known as healthy families and workplaces it starts as i said on january 1 2021 for those with 16 or more employees other employees can start on january 1 2022. initially i mean it was during a very it was passed during a very short legislative session and um it was passed certainly in response to everything that's been going on since who knows how long um but at least since spring if not maybe into 2019 with respect to corona virus code and what the state legislature realized is perhaps uh they did not they the employers did not have a lot of sick leave out there or employees to use um uh during the such times and of course you may say well why in the state of colorado worried well they're worried because what happened is everyone started applying for unemployment benefits and the state of colorado was probably not aware that so many millions certainly hundreds of thousands um sorry tens of thousands i forget the final number in the state uh we're going to apply and that's one of the reasons why this came in so it is a leave that provides uh for employees to have leave for really as identified here their own mental or physical illness as you'll see these are very broad reasons caring for a sick family member then they're entitled to leave care for that family member an employee's a victim of domestic violence harassment or sexual abuse or need to assist family members who are victims of that and you may say well what is a domestic violence leave doing in a sick way well what they did is they actually put healthy families into basically the domestic violence leaves section and just put it all in so we are now under that as well um and where an instance where a public health official has ordered the closure business what must we provide well this is the this is the key part of this work it's a little tricky we are provide we are required to provide as employers six those with 16 or more right january 1 those with 15 or less january 1 2022 we are required to provide um one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worth so employees must accrue one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worth up to you can set the maximum this weird to say but you can set the maximum at a minimum amount of 48 hours by that i mean you can set the maximum at 48 hours that they can accrue you can accept it at 84 480 840 whatever you want but it can't be any lower than 48 you can't do 32 or 30. and the law permits uh the employee to roll over up to 48 hours um really that second sentence perhaps should have been in another bullet but really all that saying is you don't have to do it on an accrual system you can do it on a here's 48 hours employee here you go one of the things to keep in mind throughout as we go through all of this because it's one of the things a lot of employers have really hooked on to in reading this is that the law permits you to and i'm going to use a technical legal term here push your policies together or double dip your pal paid leaves with what is with this requirement with what you're already giving so for example if you already give employees if you allow them to accrue one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours work well great or maybe a higher amount great you've met the requirement of the accrual but that doesn't end the requirements because you have to make sure as part of that that you're giving the employee every right that the law provides so for example your pto policy may not have those things we discussed previously leaves for sick leave or all that or domestic violence but you have to change your so you have to change your policy to make sure that's covered additionally you may say well we have a waiting time we give pto we give vacations but we don't give it until they've been with us for 90 days or one year or whatever under healthy families the name of the law you employees have to start accruing on their first day of employment or they have to start building up their one hours for every 30 hours of work so in and you may say well we don't give vacation leave to part-time or casual or temporary or prn or per diem or whatever you have to under healthy families every employee gets this lead so before a lot of employers i think when they when i say you can push these two together they think sweet we've already got it covered keep in mind there's a whole bunch of things you may have to change for example you're a cruel amount for example when they can accrue how they can use it when they can use it all that may change under healthy families in addition as we'll see in a second second healthy families requires individual or requires employers to provide employees notice of retaliation rights how they can sue the organization how they can file a claim against the organization most of us don't have that identification policies that's something we may have in an fmla policy but not in a vacation policy um so for that reason keep in mind before you just think i've already given enough there's a lot more your policy has to identify another example of it is what do you do when the employee terminates do you make the employee you give the employee the entire amount which would now include things they've accrued for healthy families because healthy families doesn't require you to pay that amount upon termination but if you map drop it into your pto well then you have to give that upon termination so keep in mind before you just think oh i already gave oh i'm just gonna i've got a paid lead it's got to meet all these requirements oh what else oh we can require the employee to use the paid sick leave in hourly increments you can even do smaller increments if you'd like this is a big change in the statute um or they change for many of our day-to-day which is a lot of us have a policy that says hey employee if you're sick we're going to make you get a medical certification well the law now is if it's for a league under healthy families and frankly i can't imagine an employee missing for an illness or injury or anything that isn't covered by healthy families but i guess it's possible we cannot ask for the certification employ until the employee uses four or more days i think that's an interesting number uh four or more days because when you cap the leave at 48 hours and the employee has to miss three days before you can even require it well that's 36 of the 48. uh it's so it it's not doesn't give us a lot of time to get that certification or if the employee takes it you know there two days here an hour here they may never get that four or more days work days consecutive to even allow the organization to get a certification so be very careful requesting that certification prior to that time period as i mentioned you don't have to pay out unused sick leave upon termination um the act oh uh the act also so those are there's two components to healthy families there's one component which is in essence the sick leave component which is the one hour accrued for every 30 hours worked there's a second component to healthy families and that is the dump drop of 80 hours into someone's bank if they don't have that much time if a public health emergency is declared so if the governor declares a public health emergency if your county your city declares a public health emergency we as employers have to drop in 80 hours of leave into the employees bucket this works a lot like remember colorado help from may of 2020 when we had those four days but if the employee we had to give four days for leave but if the employee didn't have four days we had to drop it in if the employee did have four days we could say you already got it this works that same way if they've got 80 hours well then we don't have to worry about it but if they don't well then we have to one of the weird uh things about healthy families is while you can cap 48 hours they'll leave the 48 hours you're still only required to provide the employees that they can use the lead for 48 hours a year let me give you an example of that which is let's say my organization which actually is under 16 employees but let's pretend for purposes of this example that my employer is going to start my organization is going to start complying with healthy families on january 1. takes me about five six months to accrue my 48 hours and at that time something happens and i need to use all 48 hours so i usually leave up by august one i have exhausted all my 48 hours and use all my 48 and i start to accrue on august 1. i crew an hour here and i'm there and come november i got let's say 10 hours in the bank 15 hours in the bank i come back to the organization and i say hey i want to use those accrued hours an organization can say no yet nine you don't get to use those because you already use 48 hours so keep that in mind as a provision of the cap but you also got the issue with the 80 hours if there's a public health emergency so it's really that's one of the weird things i mean i certainly understand and cognizant you know i'm just a small organization we only have seven employees so just suddenly giving everybody 48 hours is a is quite a financial burden um but when you combine the policies with pto it can make it really wonky another legal term particularly we're trying to keep track of the 48 under the sick keep track of the 80 if there's a public health emergency keep track of when they use it for vacation it just it can be done but it's a very difficult policy to kind of make sure it works with all your other policies with respect to this 80 hours of if there's a public health emergency keep in mind well one of the provisions says that even after the public emergency is over the employee can use those hours for up to four weeks after the public emergency end so if the governor declares a public emergency for all of january 2021 it goes away february 1 2021. that employee could still your employee could still use that 80 for the reasons identified for the entire month of february even though the leave and i'm sorry even though the emergency notice and even though the public health emergency ended on january 31st 2021 so keep that in mind it's an additional four weeks beyond the leave what other reasons for the leave under this recognized many of these self-isolating due to positive diagnosis suffering from pre-existing conditions that would make employees more susceptible to serious harm a lot of the questions we've been having as this year has played out where the public health official or the employer have deemed it to be unsafe that's an expansion of the current leaves available because it allows us to um declare something unsafe and get it for that reason just a whole bunch of other leads leaves available should there be a public health emergency declared one other thing under the 80 hours remember we have two reasons for leave under healthy families one the one for 30 and one the 80 hours bucket drop this we can request medical certification this one for 30 we can request medical certification um after four more days the emergency leave over here the 80 hours we cannot request certification so from that standpoint there's little we can do as an organization and we can ask the employee why they're missing but we can't ask for any certification because of it one big thing that's cl one big thing that i read the act to say is that we have to provide employees with notice and so in doing that the place i've been putting that recommending it is in the employee handbook um and display the poster from the division um there's the link right there so if anybody wants the poster you can certainly go get it and they've talked about updating the poster as well the notice um has to specify the amount to which the employees are entitled they also have to identify you know the basis for lead that in your policy so here's that one of those switches i mentioned most of our vacation and ptos don't have a retaliation provision but this one does you have to notify the employer employees that the organization could not retaliate against the employee for requesting or using paid sick leave and that the employee has a right to file a complaint or bring a civil action if the paid sick leave is denied now if you merge those two together the question becomes well does that mean they now get to sue you for violation of the vacation league i will find that out won't we so that is the big requirement under healthy families it's two leaves only one is due for a republican murder is one's due to a public emergency so we don't have to worry about that one until there actually is a public emergency the other one is the one for 30. make sure that all employees have accru are accruing under it newer long-term part-time full-time cal whatever employees they may be they are accruing not independent contractors have to be employees but everybody who's an employee gets to accrue that's that's really what the law went into great detail about about healthy family it's what all the publications went into healthy family the next thing which i'm going to go over kind of quickly because we only have it for 29 days and so those of you who may be watching this video after the 29 days you may say well why did he do all that because it's no longer applicable but one of the minor i one of the major provisions which didn't take up a lot of room under healthy families is the the requirement that we are all currently covered by the family first coronavirus response act which is the ad the federal government put in place back in april which provides an employee 80 hours of leave if the employee is missing one of five reasons some of you may say no i think it's six well it's five under the law it's six under the regulations unfortunately i memorized it when it was five so i'm sticking with five um but they're the same reasons there's not a new reason in the regulations um in the law and you can see how the conversation went under healthy families which is you know that the legislature's representatives were sitting around talking and they they said well this is great we're giving everybody leave january one perfect and someone probably went well hold it what's happening until january one and someone probably said well we should just make everybody comply with ffcra and everybody went what a great idea and that's what they did so every employer is covered now i know some of you with more than 500 employees or less than 50 employees who don't have the financial w erewithal which is most of us but under 15 to offer this leave or those who are in the healthcare industry i hear from them all both all the time like well hold it we're exempted under ffcra you are healthcare in industry you are employer with less than 50 employees and you are employer with more than 500 english you are completely exempted sorry as they say when you're a mom you call it a bad time um so uh when you um when you have so you got those um those three employers were specifically exempted or three types of budget specifically exempted from healthy families and you remain exempted from healthy families but you also are covered by i'm sorry you're you remain you remain exempted from family first corona virus response act you are covered by healthy families ignore that last month so you are covered by healthy families and workplaces if you have 16 or more employees starting in january 1 less than that january 1 2022 but as of right now we're all covered by family first corona virus response act and we're covered by that because healthy families said organizations no matter what size have to comply with the family first corona virus response act that means everyone who thought they were off the hook you were not off the hook so this went into effect july 16th of 2020 so if you haven't been doing that and for example you've been making your employees use pto for reasons that are covered by family first coronavirus response act you should probably look in going back into re-crediting the pto and calling it under uh family first corona virus response act because the healthy families did say that every colorado employer had to comply with family first coronavirus response act from july 16th 2020 through december 31st 20 government and you're listening to this you're off the hook what are the five reasons why i'm going to go through these really quickly as i mentioned it's up to 80 hours it's prorated for those who are part-time if an employee this number reason number one if an employee is subject to a federal state or local quarantine or is told by a health care provider that they should self-quarantine they get 80 hours of leave a lot of these um at 100 capped at 511 per day don't ask me where they came up with that and 50 100 and 5 110 total if they are subject to a quarantine they have to get that lead or if they are should be or they're told they should quarantine so for example you get a note from your employee's doctor hey your employee's wife just tested positive for covid we think the employee should quarantine the employee hasn't shown symptoms and the employee hasn't tested positive yet but we still think the employee should quarantine that employee eligible for leave under the healthy families requirement to comply with families first um yeah i go in here into what quarantine orders stay at home which is our order from back in april uh definitely met the quarantine order uh unless you're critical business safer at home probably did not meet the quarantine order which is um and of course your county town city or other locale name sorry um yeah the the leave can be used only if the employee subject to the quarantine order um is prevented from working or um or would have been able to work had not been for the order so for example if you have a retail store and the cashier is told they have to quarantine because you're shut down the whole store but and they're that person is subject to a quarantine order they may not be eligible for this leave because they aren't going to work anyways so keep in mind that they have to be able to work that covered most of these things okay that's reason number one as i say these are only in effect for 29 more days so i'm kind of going to go through them quickly if the employee is experiencing um covid symptoms so they're experiencing coded symptoms and they're seeking a medical diagnosis they have to meet both have symptoms experience the uh getting them diagnosis if they're just symptoms well we'll talk about that uh in a little bit uh or if you you know if they're getting a test but they don't have symptoms again if they don't have symptoms they have to have symptoms and seeking a medical diagnosis if they are then they would get the leave here so for example if i start experiencing symptoms on monday i go to get tests on monday on friday i find out i'm negative but i still have symptoms i wouldn't fall under this because i'm not seeking a medical diagnosis anymore now maybe as part of my notice and i was told by my physician you should stay home and quarantine even though you're negative now i'm under number one but in the interim i'm not under number two because i've gotten my medical diagnosis something to keep in mind there number three if you have an employee who's caring for another who has been told to stay home or is um or is seeking treatment or medical certification and is experiencing symptoms so number three is if the employee is taking care of a family member who is under number one or number two those are mine number four is the child care issue if you have an employee who's missing because they need to take care of their child due to the fact that that child's school is closed or the child's daycare is closed you would get leave it's a lower amount you see it's only at the two thirds two thousand dollars total but it is still for the media uh by far the one that drew that has drawn the well that is a good argument is number five number five is similar health condition and it states it states on the slide it is a little streamline of the entire statement but it if the employee is experiencing any others substantially similar condition as specified by the secretary of health and human services and the addition is in conjunction with the department of labor which they've identified those two secretary of health department of labor has said is just like covet when you read this at least i've never seen any pronouncement i've never seen the secretary of health get up and say here's what we think in working with the department of labor are symptoms similar to coving i haven't seen that pronouncement i haven't seen the secretary of health issue anything that says specifically that so a lot of people are a pioneer well then we don't have to worry about number five and that's a pretty good argument my only concern is that if you go to the health and human services website click on the covid page about this far down if you can see me in the video on the left hand side there is a little link that says covet symptoms and it takes you to the cdc website i don't know how those got up there was it based upon the secretary of health and human services working with the department of labor i certainly didn't see anything to that so it's become this issue as to is that leave really available to employees since the secretary has at least my knowledge and many knowledge has not worked with department of labor so interesting thing to keep in mind there for those who are watching this before the end of december 2020 i have a feeling you're gonna get a lot of requests for employees the last x number of days here say oh shoot i'm about to run out of leave i should use my lead and there's very little requirements we or very little um rights we have as employer to demand certification under the ffcra we don't have the ability to tell the employee go get a certification because when the federal government set up the ffcra they wanted physicians focusing on taking care of people not writing prescriptions not right certifications so it specifically exists you know we don't have that requirement uh or we don't have that right to demand that the individual get a certification now you can make sure you can tell the individual you have to tell me which of these five reasons you're going out for because frankly that's the only way we can pay but you can't condition lead on that um and we talk here about how the five things uh under the lead employers are until 80 hours part-time employees get an average of six months or less yes that is the three components of healthy families which is healthy families one one-hour crude for every 30 hours worked healthy families two which is a drop the hours if there's a public health emergency and three healthy families requires us to comply with the ffcra which came out in april um colorado proposition 118 i'm i'm not going to cover this much uh because frankly i've been joking with folks this just got past um all of about what now a month ago um and by the way i won a lot of lunch bets on this with people who told me it wasn't going to pass and i always said i think it's going to pass because if you're asked if most people are asked the question of do you want more paid leave who says no to that or even if you're asked hey do you want more paid leave it'll cost you about a thousand dollars or so for the paid leave during the year but if you pay that you'll get 12 weeks of partial paid leave who says no to that well 60 of colorado and said yes to that so we have colorado proposition 118 which is paid fmla we are not taking this is not applicable for a number of years we don't have to take premiums under until january 2023 nobody gets to leave under it until january 2024 so we got tons of time to either be smarter than or win the lotto i'm banking on number two so i'm playing a lot of like crazy because this just looks like a lot of work when it comes up but you can see it's basically going to work like the fmla but it's going to it's going to be paid just as a little side light i i at least what i've seen is the colorado has said don't worry well where did this come from it came from the fact that our legislature tried for two years to get this passed wasn't able to so they just turned it over to the voters they claim that by they the department colorado says um don't worry we have the money to pay for this it will not go up over one percent uh premiums from employers and employees as long as no more than about three to three and a half percent of the employees use the lead so great as long as no more than three employees three percent of the employees use the lead we will still have money i'm also taking bets on whether or not more than three percent of employees use this lead when it's being drawn from all of most of our paychecks just a thought but we'll beat um so that's proposition 118 the last uh one of the last big changes i think i have it well we'll see uh don't forget that the equal pay act kicks into effect january 1 2021. doesn't seem like everything is yes it does um january 1 2021 equal pay act becomes effective by far the number one question i'm getting on the act these days is any chance the governor pushes this off because we're dealing with coving sure i guess it's a possibility i haven't seen anything on that i you know it's been passed since may of 2019 i don't think the governor is going to give us all a reprieve so i think it's coming in january 1 2021. for the most part that shouldn't be too much for employers because at its core um the law requires what's been required since 1964 um that we employers cannot discriminate on the basis of sex for compensation that remains the law the real key with this is how to handle day-to-day issues as we say here basically everybody's covered when we talk about wages we're talking about all benefits so bonuses every other compensation is going to be looked at when we compare what other requirements we can't pay an employer one sex a wage rate less than the rate pay to apply the different sex sex um is defined also sexual orientation as well so keep that in mind when you're looking through all these things for substantially similar work regardless of job title based upon composite skill and effort and responsibility where does the analysis start from job descriptions subscriptions job description your job descriptions have to be dead on spot on accurate no questions asked you know just simply saying well the reason why you can't compare michael and alicia's wages is because alicia does all these different things and michael does all these different things that's not what their job description shows so you want your job description to evidence what the actual position is performing the big change in this law is that it limits our defenses as organizations we used to be able to say well the reason why michael and malaysia at least differently is because of this reason that reason we could pick whatever reason worked now we're limited to six it's not one of the six it don't matter so alicia negotiated better than michael when she came in that's why she gets paid more that's not one of the six it's got to be in one of the six and i reckon you're one or more of the states you can use with all six reasons so i recommend employers put in their job description which of the factors they are using here are the factors we're going to go through quickly because most of you heard me talk on this maybe seniority system merit system system that measures earnings by quantity or quality of production geographic location you got employees in durango employees in denver you can pay them differently based upon geographic but you want to make sure your job description identifies geography um education training or experience this tends to matter most when people are coming into the job not when they've been there a while and then finally travel if travel is a necessary part of the work so those are your six if it's not one of the six well it's gotta be you've got to focus on those six reasons as being the reason for the pay differences the big change in the law what well that each factor is applied reasonably so for example you can't say well travel matters if travel really doesn't matter you can't say geography matters if what you're comparing is people on the second floor versus the people on the first floor that's not a geographic distinction you maybe could say well the people on the first floor uh perform different duties than the people on the second floor that's fine because they're in a different job description apples and oranges that each factor is counts for the entire wage difference so it's got to be the entire wave difference um keep in mind that this law doesn't in my opinion and there may be another group that disagrees with me does not require calculation does not require x amount of percentages and x amount of this and standard deviations that and regressions analysis it requires explanation in my opinion so for example if alicia makes thirty dollars an hour and i make twenty dollars an hour and the organization says well alicia's been with the organization longer she's had she went to notre dame that's a better school than michigan state no it's not um uh because i went to michigan if she if we say hey alicia has to travel more because she's more in denver so she's going back and forth more than michael if we say hey denver's got a better different cost of living than grand junction so that's why we pay alicia moore that's an explanation do we have to come down to the penny and say this is exactly why the differences are i don't read the laws requiring that um of course we will see cases coming up but initially that's not the way i read it don't use prior wage history don't have it in your applications don't have it in interviews don't even mention it you got to get supervisors prepped for this it's very important so for example if someone is asked well michael how much do you want in this job that you're applying for well in my current job i make twenty dollars an hour that's a problem because now we've just heard what michael got in this previous job so you want to be ready to say things like whoa we don't need to know how you're coming up with the number for what you want to earn we just need we just want to know what you want don't ask applicants how much vacation leave do you get over at xyz inc does it matter what are the health benefits like in your current employer can't use them keep those questions out of the interview and if someone's try starts you bring it up you want to make sure you shut that down because you can't use it and it is all over the place in the law um so what do we need to do well we need to start thinking about maybe creating a security system a merit system systems that measures quantity of quantity of production geographic distinctions each of those things they're not really at all defined under the law but i see that as an opportunity for us to be a little aggressive on this okay yes can't we win over this it went there's a bunch of times it was mentioned in the law about don't use past information and don't of course discharge or discipline someone who wants it the other big thing is posting um that organizations have to post all opportunities for promotion to all current employees on the same calendar day and prior to making decisions my watch is telling me stan stan you're not gonna make your stand goal um uh so you have to post all positions in addition internally you don't have to post externally um but hold that thought for a second you have to post the compensation rate or range whatever you're going to do general description of benefits we give vacation we give insurance and all those kind of things you have to post that for all positions um and if you post externally you don't have to post externally but if you do post externally you have to have that same information in there so if you use craigslist if you use glassdoor or glass ceiling or whatever the glasses are um you have to post those as well to make sure that's in there with three exceptions and frankly i am so disappointed i didn't realize the first exception because i would have been making fun of this for pretty much the last year and a half which is there is an exception if you have an employee currently performing the position that you're thinking of getting real so for example if you think if bechtel santo and severn is thinking of getting rid of me and some days i would welcome that not sure i really love what i do um if they're thinking of getting rid of me it would seem a little odd if on our poster board back there it says hey we're hiring for a partner i'd be like uh we are are one of our partners going somewhere so if you're hiring for an administrative assistant because you're going to be pushing your current one out the door you don't have to post that position because of the confidentiality of it these regs just came out about 10 days ago so make sure you check the other one is for a temporary position and the other one is the third one is if you have a promotion ascension in mind with respect to that individual that will take less than a year you don't need to post that next job so for example you hire for a direct support professional hire the person without a cpr and you tell that person hey we'll move you into a dsp ii direct support professional to position when you get your cert cpr certification but you have to get it within the next year if the employee e then gets that cpr you don't need to post before you move that person into the dsp ii it's in the ranks frankly um i did i can't i want to do a full talk on all the holes created by the regs because there's a lot of things but i'm not going to spend on that just make sure you take a look because there are three pretty big exceptions uh which will make it interesting um one of the things we're required to do is keep track of job descriptions we have to have job descriptions we have to have the wage history for each employee for more than two years oh it's not actually two slides it's a couple more but there's two years to actual limitations and all those kind of things and then diana may ask hey michael do you recommend organizations take a look at their pay practices not only do i recommend that it is in essence mandated by the law and that is unless the employee well if the employee sues and let's say they approve ten thousand dollars of damages because they didn't get paid as much as someone in a different sex they get ten thousand plus they may get an additional ten thousand which we call what we refer to as liquidated damages unless the employer can show they active in good faith how does an employer show that they acted in good faith well they do a comprehensive wage audit of its workforce its workforce group who keeps looking at external um i'm not going to mention the group but who keeps looking at external employers you do not have to look at external work employers you do not have to look at a wage analysis for the state you don't have to say wow our administrative assistants are paid less than others in other organizations doesn't matter that's irrelevant the only thing that matters is how are they paid compared to those within your organization you don't have to compare to other organizations um and so but you do have to do that and how do you do that well you basically get let's say you got five administrative assistants you want to list them all list their gender list their pay list the factors that you're going to use to make compensation seniority merit who knows what else and then you want to analyze whether how people are paid with respect to that so that's where the analysis comes you should get you're supposed to do it once every two years i recommend once every year and i recommend you definitely do it before january 1 2021 so you know if you have any potential liability problems so make sure you're doing that analysis of your entire workforce you may say well i've got you know our workforce is all male or all the are all all of our flux capacitor repair people are all male or all of this position are all female no reason to do it yeah i think there still is um before i mean you may not have liability situations now or concerns but there may be internal pay equity problems you want to make sure you address additionally if you do end up hiring someone from a different gender or a different sexual orientation than the current group you're going to want to make sure that those are those wages are all set up before the new person starts so i recommend going through your entire workforce right now i had a question come up the other day where someone says hey our vice president of human resources is way out of whack we're going to have to make a big change and i said based on what they said the law and i said well what are you basing it on they said well one they're paid substantially less than everybody else in the area i said that doesn't matter it may matter to the hr director and maybe you want to be nice to the hr director and pay them as much of other places but the law doesn't require that and they said well number two their vice president and the hr vice president of hr makes less than all the other vice presidents of marketing or finance of other places and they said but why are you comparing vice presidents of different positions vice president of finance does different different things than vice president of hr vice president of marketing that's an apples and apples to oranges comparison you only really need to address the individual's positions now if it turns out the vice president of hr does the same thing as the vice president of marketing because that's what the job description shows that would be a concern but in the interim don't forget you don't have to comply with you're not looking externally and you're really only considering position by position by position you want to be careful in doing these analysis i've seen a lot of organizations create grades we got a flux capacitor one and a flux capacitor two and one flux capacitor three well what do they do well they pretty much all do the same thing okay that's not good because then we really do need to compare all those positions so you wanna make sure that it is addressed that way um well i've got some sample language here that you can use for your employee handbook on the epa issue just something to consider final two small little points and then that thing has got some questions um there are two new posters out that you've gotta gotta gotta have to have to have to post i've been putting them in employee handbooks you don't have to you can put it into your poster board but these are two the second one we've seen before the first one is a new one really just came out a couple weeks ago and it concerns misclassification of employees as independent contractors and employees rights to file unemployment benefits that's in this poster on the screen make sure you're posting it or including it in your handbook it's a requirement now to post that and of course comps poster 36 that is 37 is soon to be released uh but right now it's 36 that has to be signed off i would put it in your employee handbook um as well yes so those are the big new requirements you got the healthy families and workplaces which creates the three leaves during the next um sorry one leave now um reinforces the one lead now to the end of the year that creates two new leads january one then you've got uh equal pay act uh and then you go that's number two actually uh then you've got the uh then you've got the uh the issues with the posters that just came out so make sure you're you're hitting all those thank you michael i do have one question um and it's kind of a practical question as it relates to getting in compliance but how what are what would you recommend as kind of the process of kind of getting an employee leveling out the field i guess so if you have someone who you've been you know whether it be you're claiming them as uh non-exempt and they need to be exempt or that they're non-exempt and they now or they're exempt and now need to be non-exempt what or whether they're have a wage disparity what do you recommend is like a practical way for people to um approach that document and kind of develop a path forward that's a really good question like okay we've just realized we pay alice way more than we should because bob wakes me makes way less and they they do the same job and we haven't been able to explain what the pay difference is so we've gotta we and we don't have the money to raise bob um so we're going to meet them in the middle yes we're going to just move alice down what do we do you want to the key is really document it doesn't have to be in any certain particular fashion it may just be as simple as an email um i would have i would certainly recommend having a conversation with the individual explaining the change i don't think you know you need to go into detail in terms of like well here's what the equal payoff analysis says i don't think that needs to happen uh but you definitely want to get an employee an understanding of hey due to some changing laws we need to make changes now is that comps which went into effect march 2020 and concerned exec sorry exemption issues is that you know don't forget oh by the way 2021 don't forget that i was just looking at my sticky because i got one on the board 2021 the salary base this test goes up to 40 000 500 under the set under the um if you want something to be exact you have to be paid at least 40 500 then it's going to go up next year too so every year for about four years maybe now they need to be changed to non-exempt because you're not going to pay that i would have i would recommend having a conversation but then just simply following up with an email it doesn't have to be hey michael as we talked about this is me typing hey michael as we talked about move you from a salary amount of 38 000 down to 19 000 a year i would focus when you move someone from exempt to non-exempt about hey there now you've got the chance to perhaps earn overtime so you may end up actually earning more but i can't classify you is as exempt because you don't meet that salary threshold so make sure you're you want to i think to die of christian you want to have that discussion with the person but you then just follow them with an email you are as an organization allowed to move your employees wages that still remains your right so from that standpoint um don't hesitate to do that thanks michael that's really helpful well you've done a great job at kind of covering all the topics here and we really appreciate your time and support yeah good job