Wild at Work Welcomes in a New Year

We at Wild at Work want to thank you for your continued support of our program. We are soon concluding another great year of savings and are looking forward to 2010. The new year will bring exciting additions to the program, including more options in our Ticket Store, to go along with our current valuable savings. We are also excited to announce some great ticket and vacation giveaways we are preparing for you and your employees.

As always, you can find all our offers and programs at www.wildatwork.com.

4 Ways to Start Fresh for 2010

Author: Michele O Donnell, M.S. Human Resources Management

With the dawn of a new year approaching it is time to start planning the organizations HumanResources priorities for the new year. This can be a daunting task and quite a large undertaking for many employers. Many Human Resources initiatives involve long time lines and careful planning is always advised. If you have identified your organization’s Human Resources needs or initiatives for 2010 make sure enough time is allotted for the planning, research, development, and implementation of those initiatives to allow for the smoothest implementation possible. A few good guidelines to follow are discussed briefly below.

Employee Handbook: Review your currentEmployee Handbook and ensure the included policies are still in line with your business practices and mission, and revise when necessary. It is also a good idea to update existing policies to reflect any federal and/or state employment regulations since your last update; for example the expanded Family and Medical Leave (FMLA) language regarding Military Family Leave entitlements. Remove any policies that are no longer applicable, if any. A few key areas to review are paid time off policies, leave of absence policies, non-discrimination policies, anti-harassment policies and attendance policies.

Employee File Review: Ensure current addresses are on file for W-2 purposes. File any outstanding paperwork, so you can begin the year fresh. Additionally, you should make sure the information contained in the file is up to date and accurate, such as job title, pay rate, attendance record, etc. You may consider purging employee files that you are no longer required to keep by law, make sure you know the federal and applicable state requirements for the length of time files are required to be retained. If it is not your practice to purge files you may consider putting those files in long term storage.

Training Needs: If training needs have been identified, plan out a training schedule for 2010. Schedule trainings required by your industry, licensing requirements, or state and/or local governments. For example: California requires Sexual Harassment Prevention training for supervisors on a bi-annual basis. If training needs have not been identified work with staff andmanagers to determine what trainings will be of benefit to the employees and organization as a whole. Develop a plan and establish a budget to address those identified needs.

Staffing Needs: Many employers have had the unfortunate circumstance of having to lay off employees in the last year or have had to implement cost saving measures in regards to staffing such as reducing work hours. Now is the time to look at the current state of your business and determine if those staffing decisions are still applicable. If you have open positions to fill consider recalling employees that were previously laid off.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/human-resources-articles/4-ways-to-start-fresh-for-2010-1590280.html