News & Events

Any hope that the COVID-19 pandemic would be fading this summer, allowing for a return to “business as usual” in the fall, has been dealt a severe blow by the highly transmissible Delta variant and rising coronavirus cases in all 50 states.

What some are calling a fourth wave of COVID-19 infections may have business owners feeling like they are on an emotional rollercoaster they wish they could get off of as they are confronted with tough choices on vaccine mandates and return to office policies.

The Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) set the 2021 employer’s unemployment insurance (UI) tax rate in mid-June after a four-month delay as the state waited to see how the economic recovery progressed before setting Texas State Unemployment Tax Act (SUTA) Rates. The rate set is retroactive to January 1 for all employers in the state.

When software engineer Mike Conley posted a rant on LinkedIn recently about a broken hiring process where he was being asked to do nine rounds of interviews, it hit a nerve with job seekers everywhere.

His viral post racked up nearly two million views, 40,000 “likes”, and a whopping 4,000 comments, almost all supportive.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, employee burnout was a growing problem for American businesses with Deloitte finding in a survey that 77 percent of U.S. corporate professionals had experienced burnout at their current job.

Since the coronavirus crisis, employee productivity has been sabotaged by burnout, not just at the executive level, but on all rungs of the company ladder.

Even amid the COVID-19 pandemic Americans embrace their entrepreneurial spirit with a half million new business applications taken out in May 2021.

The reality is that many of these startup ideas will never get off the drawing board with less than 10 percent of those applications resulting in businesses with paid employees.

“The Census Bureau is projecting that 35,578 new business startups with payroll tax liabilities will form within four quarters of application from all the business applications filed during May 2021,” says the U.S. Census Bureau Business Formation Statistics, May 2021, release.

For more than a year the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to break all the old rules from government and public responses to medical treatment and vaccinations.

Now that vaccination rates are rising -- 56 percent of the U.S. with at least one dose and 48 percent fully vaccinated -- American’s are returning to public spaces, but it seems some have forgotten the “Golden Rule”.

The thing about inventing the wheel or discovering fire, is that you are in uncharted territory when it comes to your first flat tire or when a spark starts a wildfire.

The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in an entirely new remote workplace culture, and it appears that it is not going away, even as the vaccine rate increases around the world, as many companies are embracing a hybrid model going forward that will feature some WFH (work from home) component.

One-to-one meetings are more important than ever as many companies continue to guide a workforce that is remote or transitioning to a hybrid model with limited time in the office.

“Distance creates a new set of challenges that leaders must acknowledge and conquer so they can connect with and inspire their people. Maintaining relationships with your people—and strengthening relationships among your people—needs to be a primary objective,” writes William Arruda in Forbes.

After a year of navigating the uncertain waters of the COVID-19 pandemic, business owners can be forgiven for wanting some clear sailing, but workplace experts are predicting a turnover tsunami in 2021.

“Employers were experiencing high rates of turnover prior to the economic shutdown triggered by the pandemic last spring, but since then, quit rates reached their lowest level in nine years,” wrote Roy Maurer in March for the Society for Human Resource Management. “Retention and turnover experts now predict voluntary job-leaving will increase significantly in 2021 as employees resume job searches they put off for the past year.”

In a U.S. economy with record job openings and workplace experts predicting a post-pandemic turnover tsunami, partnering with a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) can help your company attract and retain top talent.

PEOs can help businesses, especially SMBs, in hiring and retention thanks to their ability to allow their employees access to benefits such as 401(k) plans; health, dental, life, and other insurance; dependent care; and other benefits typically provided by large companies.