As a child of the 70’s myself, and having been born and raised in California, I just couldn’t resist sharing the following employment law ruling in a case involving a California employee whose doctor recommended his use of marijuana to treat chronic pain. The employee filed a disability discrimination claim against his employer for firing him after testing positive for drug consumption. I have to admit I have mixed feelings on the case. I feel for the employee, and his painful condition, but I support the employer for enforcing a legitimate zero tolerance drug policy.

You’ve no doubt seen news reports of Americans seeking medical care abroad.  They’re either uninsured, underinsured, or simply trying to save money by having surgery in Latin America, Thailand, or India.  As you might have guessed this trend hasn’t gone unnoticed by corporate America seeking to save money on their health care or insurance carriers hoping to roll out a new product.

 

According to a recent report by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, 11% of surveyed employers cover medical tourism.  Those surveyed were Certified Employee Benefits Specialists and therefore part of large organizations.  However, don’t be surprised to see this trend extend beyond the very large companies to others seeking to find another way to control costs. 

 

A couple of other interesting findings from the survey included the increase in coverage (from 1999-2007) in other types of care that haven’t been considered mainstream.  Acupuncture coverage increased from 14% to 34%, massage therapy 8% to 13.5%, and nutrition therapy 5% to 12.8%.

 

As we start a new year it’s a good time to review workplace developments of 2007 and make sure that you’ve integrated applicable ones into your policies and practices. The information that follows highlights a few selected federal developments. Remember to check your state law as well. The states were very busy in 2007. In 2008 you can expect to continue to see a lot of activity on the federal and state levels that will significantly impact the workplace. Several possibilities are discussed below. In a slight modification of an old, trite saying: nothing is certain but death, taxes, and changes in HR law.

Is another form of mandatory employee leave on the horizon?  Beginning December 13, 2007 most New York employers must give employees who work 20 hours or more at least 3 hours of leave to donate blood within any 12 month period.  Illinois requires certain employers that let employees take time off to donate blood to use up to one hour of paid leave every 56 days.

Employers contemplating cutting back on medical benefits might want to mull this: A new survey shows that workers place an extremely high value on health care coverage.

In fact, according to a survey of 1,200 adults sponsored by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence, 84 percent of the respondents said that health insurance has become a “very important” characteristic when choosing a new job.

In fact, medical insurance outranked all other 14 benefits and offerings in the survey. Remarkably, pay ranked 10th on the survey—right below “being creative and intellectually stimulated.”

Another benefit—the corporate pension plan—ranked fourth, cited by 76 percent of respondents as being most important when evaluating a potential job.

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Reprinted from Workforce.com. Filed by Mark Bruno of Financial Week.

Cost increases for U.S. group health care plans continue to hold steady as more employers take steps to keep spending under control. Most often, employer healthcare spending controls results in higher employee out of pocket spending via higher copays and deductibles. Unfortunately it’s the small employers with under 200 employees that feel the rising premium affects the worse and as a result fewer and fewer are able to afford to offer employee healthcare benefits. Group health plan costs increased 6.1 percent this year to an average of $7,983 per employee, up from $7,523 last year, according to a survey of nearly 3,000 employers released last month by Mercer.

Remember Clark Griswold sweating out receiving his Christmas bonus check to cover the downpayment on a new swimming pool in National Lampoon's all time Holiday classic, Christmas Vacation? Nearly every time I watch that movie with other people, the question invariably gets asked, "Have you ever received a Christmas Bonus?" A conversation then follows where individuals offer up their best, or worst Christmas bonus stories. I have noticed a trend over the years that fewer and fewer people can say they currently receive any kind of specific holiday bonus. Most concede they and their spouses are invited to attend a company "holiday event" such as a lunch or dinner party and/or are presented with a nominal gift card or voucher for a Holiday turkey, ham or cheese roll. Holiday social events and nominal gifts are looked forward to, appreciated and acknowledged, but really not considered by the worker to be a "bonus" even though providing them is completely optional and costs the company thousands of dollars to provide.

In a continuation of yesterday's posting . . . here are tips 6 - 15 from the HRN white paper entitled "Congratulations! You're a Supervisor. Now What?". Tips 1-5 were posted 12/20. To view and download the complete white paper go to: http://www.hrnonline.com/promo/freeNewsletter.asp. Click on the "Current Whitepaper" link. You can also quickly sign up to receive free monthly HR industry white papers.

As a service to the HR community, HRN Management Group researches and publishes monthly HR industry white papers. These informative documents can be received, at no cost, around the middle of each month simply by subscribing on the HRN website (http://www.hrnonline.com/promo/freeNewsletter.asp). Typically we do not post white papers to our blog but this month's has relevance to a much wider audience than the professional HR community. The white paper is for both new, and perhaps not so new, supervisors and managers and offers 15 tips to help them better understand and be more effective in their supervisory role. Today's posting includes tips 1 through 5. Tomorrow for my regular HR Fact Friday posting, I will include tips 6 through 15.