Work-Time Calculations: Rules on Rounding Hours Q&A

“Rounding” is generally accepted under the FLSA, but only as long as the rounding practices “average out” and nonexempt employees are paid properly for hours worked. Find out how to implement this practice in your workplace.

Blending the World at Work and Brad Hams Approaches

By Mykkah Herner, PayScale.com

Last month, I read and reviewed Brad Hams’ Ownership Thinking, and promised to write more on his sense of having the right incentives. While I thought he has some useful suggestions, I found his incentive plan to be both too prescriptive and too detailed.

Ultimately, I find that World at Work, the experts in the compensation field, explain incentives best. So, rather than spend a lot of time on a plan that can use a little more cohesion and a little more variability, I’ll focus on World at Work’s explanation of incentive plans, and weave in some gems from Hams. World at Work focuses on three stages: pre-design, design, and implementation.

Need to Retain Talent? Learn from the Pros

By Tim Low, PayScale.com

You probably just know us from the Web, but there are, in fact, real live humans here at PayScale, and we're coming to a town near you.

Age is Wonderful for Wine, but Deadly for Data.

By Tripp Ritter, PayScale.com

Many compensation data providers offer well-constructed data products based on reliable data. . .that just happens to be months old. PayScale believes this aged data is not what today's decision-makers need, which is why we came up with a more timely way to collect and organize compensation data.

Is Three Percent the Right Merit Budget for Your Organization?

By Stacey Carroll, PayScale.com

I get the phone call a lot. It goes something like this, “Stacey, my CFO wants to know what the average increase other companies are giving this year so we can determine our merit budget. Can you tell me?”. I can. The short answer is from everything I’ve seen and read recently, most organizations are planning on giving anywhere between a two to three and a half percent increase in 2012. But, the better way to answer the question is: “Why is ‘what everyone else is doing’ our approach to compensation”? In reality, what your organization should pay as a merit increase for 2012 is going to depend on many factors – but here are just three.

Compensation Issues in California

By Beverly N. Dance, MBA, SPHR-CA, CCP, CEBS, dance@mba.berkeley.edu

I love my home state of California, but when it comes to pay and human resources issues, there is a reason California is the one and only of the 50 states that has its own separate certification exam above and beyond the national Professional Human Resources, PHR and Senior Professional Human Resources, SPHR. If you have employees in California or are considering bringing jobs to this state (PLEASE DO) here are a few new details you should know due to AB 469. (No need to mention to your employees that the legislation is called the Wage Theft Prevention Act of 2011.)