HR and Benefits CLE & CPE

Over the past years, radical changes have been continuously escalating in the pension investment and design landscape. With the continuous changes in the market and new pension legislation, defined benefit plan risk must be actively managed.

Various issues have continuously affected the executive compensation landscape and impacts of COVID-19 has also added to these concerns. Because some businesses were not well-prepared to withstand the pandemic’s fallouts, the immediate response left for them to alleviate cash flow difficulties is to implement several cost-cutting measures. However, they must also become aware of the different gray areas concerning these steps. Thus, being up to date with the current and emerging legal trends is essential.

The SECURE Act, an acronym for “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act” was signed into law on December 20, 2019, as part of a massive compromise government spending bill. The Act represents the most significant reform of the retirement system since the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

Classifying whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee is crucial for businesses. However, although most employers try to do it right, many of them still misunderstand the legal distinctions between the two. This typically results in worker misclassification, making employers at risk of enforcement actions and financial penalties.

The Department of Labor Regulations on disclosure of 401(k) plan fees and expenses are designed to provide transparency to participants in a user-friendly format, allowing for an apples-to-apples comparison of fees and expenses under a plan’s investment options that impact participant account balances, and a look under the hood on plan administration costs charged to participant accounts.  But greater disclosure can lead to greater scrutiny, and an essential duty for plan sponsors is monitoring fees and expenses that could reduce participant account balances, and timely addressing excesses.

The past years have seen changing tides on the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) litigation landscape. The number of lawsuits filed in federal courts, which chiefly stemmed from alleged violations on websites and mobile application accessibility, has continuously increased. As regulatory developments and court decisions are yet to unfold, the ADA litigation landscape remains uncertain. Thus, businesses and their counsel must keep themselves in the know of any emerging update in this field of law. They must also revisit their practices to ensure ADA compliance and dodge potential lawsuits.

Numerous policy changes and trends concerning wage and hour have made the landscape more complicated and challenging. Recently, the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the US Department of Labor (DOL) released six opinion letters which aimed to address a raft of issues under the Fair Labor and Standards Act (FLSA).

Group health plans are governed by a number of state and federal laws including, but not limited to, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), and Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA).

In response to the economic challenges brought by the COVID-19 crisis to the executive compensation landscape, significant enforcement actions from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and International Shareholders Services (ISS) concerning design, implementation, and disclosure are expected to bring complexities to businesses.

With today’s major economic recession faced by businesses due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, the Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) continues to be an attractive option for companies seeking to address the need for succession planning to sustain competitive advantage in the market and looking to provide their employees with an ownership interest through a retirement plan.

The ever-changing landscape of non-compete law continues to give rise to significant developments that companies need to be aware of. Recently, several new state laws have been adopted to limit non-compete agreements’ enforceability, thus, further complicating matters for employers. At the federal level, the Freedom to Compete Act has been introduced in the Senate to prohibit non-compete pacts for minimum wage earners. Moreover, with a pandemic in the backdrop, many other issues have also emerged.

Over the past years, employee arbitration agreements have been helpful in preventing employment-related lawsuits. If properly executed, arbitration clauses provide several benefits to both employers and employees. These benefits include the resolution of claims away from the public, the ability to select the arbitrator, and the faster process by which conflicts are resolved. Arbitration of claims is also significant in redirecting employment-related cases from overburdened courts.

Our HR and Benefits webinars offer a wealth of information about crucial issues today's professionals face. These Continuing Education (CE) courses are a reflection of the most recent regulatory developments in HR and benefits management at the state and federal levels.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are continuously taking initiatives to improve each agency’s law enforcement, specifically against employee misclassification. Guided by their standards, the DOL and the NLRB aggressively enforces the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) respectively to expand the scope of classifying joint employers while narrowing the scope of categorizing independent contractors.

The evolving business environment and the economic fluctuations prompted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continue to affect the implementation and design of executive compensation. In its recent move to tighten regulations, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released Staff Accounting Bulletin No. 120 which underscores a new and more aggressive focus on executive compensation issues.