by Mike Yoder | General
http://youtu.be/utsRqAlTZck
Having an intimate understanding of all the nuances of recent healthcare reform isn’t necessary for most consumers. Leah Elms, Customer Service Representative at Servant HR, shares three key things every employee should know when it comes to healthcare reform.
For example, you and your family may be eligible for some important preventive services. These services can help you avoid illness and improve your health — at no additional cost to you. This not only benefits your health, but it also lowers your overall medical cost.
Find out what some of those services are, how they are different from diagnostic services and one more tip to get a better grasp on what healthcare reform means for you.
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by Mike Yoder | General, Outsourcing
In 1960, Hayley Boling’s grandfather Dr. Richard Boling had a staff of five working at his Elkhart ophthalmology practice. His son, Dr. Richard Boling II, joined him in 1986, which moved the practice forward to two doctors and about 10 staff members. Due primarily to a major push in 2004, Boling Vision Center now employs 60 staff members and six doctors. The healthcare practice includes two locations in Indiana and an ambulatory surgery center.
“He stuck a shingle on the side of the building and thought patients would come, and we have been fortunate that we have had regular business ever since,” says Hayley Boling of her grandfather.
Hayley joined the team in 2009 as CEO after earning her MBA from Taylor University. Her grandfather and father had built a successful business out of caring for eyes, and Hayley has strengthened that success as a leader within Boling Vision Center.
Hayley met Mike Yoder, Servant HR’s CEO, during a post-graduate business class at Taylor University in 2008. During this year, she was wrapping up her studies and carrying out a hands-on orientation to become the CEO of Boling Vision Center. Her father developed the process, which called for Hayley to spend a few months in every single position in the practice.
“I spent time working alongside people, to see the value of our people and their challenges. I was also pinpointing vulnerabilities and strengths,” Hayley says. “It was important to see different elements of the practice and build credibility with other people in the practice.”
With a list of HR challenges that included a growing staff, plans for future expansion and policies that needed improving, Hayley reached out to Mike to see if Servant HR could help. A business’s human resources strategy should complement and support its goals. Boling Vision Center had lofty ones, and Servant HR has served as its trusted partner during some big changes.
“Servant HR helped us completely restructure our organizational chart. This was a huge undertaking for us,” Hayley says. The new chart is based on skill-set value versus longevity. “People were inappropriately placed, and Servant HR helped me as a new leader to identify who needed to be repositioned. And if there wasn’t a position conducive to their skill set, Servant HR helped me dismiss those individuals appropriately. It was a tough situation, and it was good to have a legal perspective and a second set of eyes to support my decisions.”
Servant HR also helps Hayley navigate advances and changes in human resources and is just an email or phone call away if a sticky legal question arises. Hayley says the HR team helps Boling Vision Center stay as professional as possible and play it safe. But business risks aren’t something Hayley avoids when they are worth taking.
“In the next five years, we would like to have four locations. Our next step is moving toward the South Bend marketplace. And we are excited to partner with that community,” she says. Boling Vision is already the preferred ophthalmologist for Notre Dame, so they have luck on their side.
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by Mike Yoder | Employee Benefits, General
By Leah Elms, Customer Service Representative
Tis the season for vacations. Whether they’re going on a spring break or a summer getaway, your employees will be planning and asking for time off. While there are many documented benefits to taking that break from work, it poses a few challenges for managers, as well. Here are some key areas that will assist you in navigating the curves on the road of PTO administration.
Know Your Policy
You need to be familiar with your company’s current protocol for acquiring vacation time as well as the spending of that time. There are many puzzle pieces to your company’s plan: mandated time off, accrual rates and caps, carry-over or use-it-or-lose-it, state mandates to pay out unused time and termination considerations — to name a few. Clear documentation and presentation of those policies to your staff help to prevent snags from the beginning. Companies may choose a traditional method such as specified amount of days as vacation days, sick days, and personal days. Others may use a combined PTO system; in essence, this is one large bucket which allows employees to use their time as they see fit. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages for both employer and employee. Both methods can be powerful recruiting and retention tools. If you have questions on which type is the best fit for your company, Servant HR is here to help you consider your options.
Manage Your Policy
Be sure you have clear, well-articulated guidelines for PTO use in place. Can you imagine if all your employees decided to take off the same week? What a nightmare! You need to think through how much notice will allow you to adequately fill the schedule in their absence. Requiring employees to request the time off in advance, with the exception of an emergency, alleviates this problem. An understanding of what constitutes an emergency must also be expressed. Does car trouble qualify? What about an attitude-adjustment day? How ill does a family member have to be? There will be instances when two employees request the same days off and there needs to be consideration for seniority, previous days off or the reason for the request. Consistent managing and administration of your guidelines will play a key role in the overall satisfaction of your staff and their perception of your company’s plan.
Encourage Your Policy
Don’t let all these details scare you from encouraging your employees to take their well-deserved time off. Many studies show overworked employees are less productive and more prone to stress, exhaustion and illness. Clearly, both you and your co-workers benefit from a little rest and relaxation. Ensuring that it’s relaxing for all parties involved just takes some well-designed, managed policies.
So, take the time to evaluate your current plan. If it comes up lacking, the experts at Servant HR can assist you in implementing a policy that suits your company culture and then — go take a vacation!
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by Mike Yoder | Culture, General
Jayne Blazier is staff accountant at Servant HR, providing accounting and bookkeeping functions for us and our clients. She is also a mother of two grown children and has four grandchildren, ages 2-9. You might not know Jayne because her role typically takes place behind the scenes. One of her major responsibilities is making sure clients’ payroll taxes are paid on time and correctly. In this Q-&-A, we asked Jayne to come out from behind the curtain and tell us a little about herself.
Many people dread tax season. What’s your take on it and how do you approach it with a positive attitude?
Since I work for business clients opposed to individuals, my tax season is technically over by the end of January or beginning of February. But I understand the stress individuals feel around this time. It just happens two months sooner for me. My strategy is to prepare as much as possible ahead of time by double checking things and making sure we have done what we can to stay on task and get everything done on time.
If you could change one thing about tax season for Servant HR, what would it be?
I would have every state report taxes the same way. We file everything electronically, but every state has different ways that they want forms to be filed. To make one simple payment, a new process often presents itself. I would love to have some consistency.
What are your tax-season words to live by for business owners or HR managers?
Make sure you’re prepared and know what you’re doing. If you aren’t prepared and sure, the repercussions can be ugly.
What kinds of challenges do you enjoy at Servant HR?
One somewhat challenging thing is balancing bank statements without incident. This may sound corny, but every time I have a reconciliation issue, it is challenging and rewarding to find the answer. I’m a numbers person. I enjoy figuring out why something is off $10 or $1,000.
What do you enjoy most about working at Servant HR?
Even though I don’t personally interact with our clients as much as other members of our staff do, the closeness of our culture and team allows me to serve our clients. This is uncommon in many corporate settings. Our clients just know that their taxes, insurance invoices and 401k contributions are being taken care of. It’s out of sight, out of mind.
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by Mike Yoder | Culture, Employee Benefits, General
By Mike Yoder, CEO
Since 2008, Fishers and Hamilton County, Indiana, have accepted dozens of accolades for being exceptional. Among the list are the following:
- #1 Top 10 Cities for Families in U.S. – The Learning Channel (TLC)
- Healthiest County in Indiana – Community Health Network
- Top 100 Best Places to Live in America (#8 Ranking) – Money Magazine
- #11 Best Place to Move in the Country – Forbes
- Best Place to Raise a Family – Hamilton County (#1 Ranking) – Forbes
Jeff Leffew, our founder and president, chose to plant Servant HR’s roots in Fishers because this is where he lives and is raising his family. He wanted his business to be a part of this booming community on the edge of Indianapolis. We see this kind of attitude a lot in Hamilton County. Employers and employees want their work lives and their personal lives to complement one another. A strong work life in which you are happy, well compensated and appreciated, for example, will have an effect on the quality of your life outside of the office.
Many of the elements that go into making a business an exceptional place to work fall under the area of human resources. It is our job at Servant HR to help employers set themselves up to be a positive part of their employees’ lives. This kind of positivity can benefit families and even entire communities. Empowering employers to be a positive force in their communities is an exciting part of our work.
Becoming an exceptional place to work
Many of our 60 clients ask how can they can be “best in class.” They want to know how they can become an “employer of choice.” First, employers must care more for the positive impact of such efforts on employees than they do about receiving a fancy accolade. Business leaders must have a desire to create a culture of not only financial success but also a place of stability based on more consistent employment, longer tenures and low turnover. An exceptional business is one that builds a culture of relationships and loyalty.
When Servant HR is evaluating a company’s culture, we evaluate a lot of areas, including policies and procedures, benefits, management and employee training and talent development. These are the types of things that would indicate if a company is stable and growing. If we find that an area is weak, we help the employer develop that area through our HR Coaching and Counseling.
Health care and benefits’ role
A reasonably robust benefits package can help a company attract and retain the right kind of people for its culture, taking one giant leap forward to becoming a great place to work. As we can see from our federal government’s move into universal health care, the issue of benefits is a huge one, both locally and nationally. As a full-service benefits broker, Servant HR helps employers attract and retain employees, while being cognizant of how much more expensive health care has become. An approach to benefits should be holistic, using creativity to establish diverse benefits packages as well as more traditional health plans and 401k plans to support both short-term and long-term benefits.
One of the best ways to deal with the rising cost of health care is to help educate our clients on different options including consumer-driven health care offerings. Employees should understand the types of benefits they have, how to get preventive care when it is needed and how to participate in wellness programs if they are interested in them. For an increasing number of employers, health saving accounts are becoming an important part of their packages. This type of account helps employees make smart choices for their health and budgets.
Partnering with strong businesses
Fishers and the Indianapolis area is a great place to do business. One of the biggest advantages for Servant HR is that our focus is on small and medium-sized businesses that want to have the freedom to focus on revenue-generating activities and their core strengths. We can serve these businesses as their HR partners, helping them move toward becoming exceptional places to work. These types of businesses have found great success in Hamilton County. We like being where we live and where smaller businesses thrive. It’s a great fit for who we are at Servant HR.
If you have questions about the path to becoming an exceptional employer, please contact Servant HR at 317-585-1688 or email info@servanthr.com.
(Photo above by Jennifer Driscoll, courtesy of Town of Fishers.)
by Mike Yoder | Employee Benefits, General
By Mike Yoder, CEO of Servant HR
Many employers may overlook the necessity of workers’ compensation believing it does not pertain to them or their company. But consider these two rather bizarre claims:
• An employee was proving that he could carry an air compressor and strained his back.
• An employee tripped over a dog and injured herself while meeting with a customer in the customer’s home.
Yes, you may have guessed it, these claims were found in court to be compensable. At Servant HR, we receive frequent questions regarding workers’ comp, such as:
• Why am I required to have coverage?
• Why do I have to pay when no one ever gets hurt on the job?
• Why do particular employees cost so much, despite having reasonably “safe” jobs?
• Shouldn’t health insurance cover any injuries?
• Does workers’ comp really have to pay if it is clearly the fault of a negligible employee?
By definition, workers’ compensation is an alternate way for employees to recover costs for work-related injuries, rather than suing their employers. Workers’ compensation includes an “exclusive remedy” component, meaning if an employee gets hurt at work, his bills and typically his lost wages, are paid. However, exclusive remedy also ensures that the employee can’t file a lawsuit against the employer, in most situations. It’s an exchange of rights and benefits for both the employee and employer. The workers’ comp system provides employees with the security of knowing they can recover for work-related injuries without the complexity and uncertainty of a lawsuit.
Workers’ comp can be thought of as an insurance policy for your company. Just like home owners and life insurance, you are required to regularly pay, even if you never have to use it. The rates are determined from the statistics and probability of an accident or hazardous situation for a particular occupation.
If a claim is made by an employee, a workers’ compensation insurer generally reviews the case and verifies any issues. As the exclusive remedy, any injury happening in the workplace is generally covered, even if an employee is negligent. However, an employer may choose to dispute a claim, for example, if he believes an injury is not related to work or is being put-on. Regardless, it is generally in the best interest of the employer to get the employee back to work even on limited duty, rather than being paid lost wages from the policy.
For answers to your workers’ compensation questions or to find out more about how Servant HR can help with all of your HR needs, please contact us today.
