News & Events

Most of today’s workforce are too young to remember early 1960s teen heartthrob Neil Sedaka, but they likely know that his signature song “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” continues to ring true in any decade.

Sedaka’s sad song may be at the top of some Spotify playlists as big-name employers are “breaking up” with employees during a wave of mass layoffs centered around the tech industry in the U.S.

“Tech jobs feel like they're vanishing quicker than steam from a pot of boiling water lately,” reported USA Today.

The massive tech worker layoff, which started in 2022 and has extended into 2023, has led to more than 200,000 employees being let go and has many examining its effect on the U.S. job market.

“More than 66,000 workers in U.S.-based tech companies have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2023, according to a Crunchbase News tally, and the year is just getting started,” reported Keerthi Vedantam for CrunchBase. “Last year, more than 140,000 jobs were slashed from public and private tech companies as they were forced to confront rising inflation and a tumultuous stock market.”

It’s never easy to make HR predictions for the coming year but the crystal ball is particularly cloudy in 2023 due to the chances of the U.S. economy entering into a recession between now and December.

HR compliance checklists come in all shapes and sizes with the spectrum covering an alphabet soup of acronyms from COBRA to FMLA to ADA to FLSA.

The Society for Human Resource Management offers its members a whopping 39 compliance checklists that fall among 13 different categories.

“Ensuring your company is compliant with tax and labor laws helps create a safe and secure workplace for employees, provide fair compensation and ensure your company keeps up with its tax obligations.

Dusting off the year-end HR checklist is a good sign for most small and medium-sized business owners as 2022 has been one of the most challenging years ever and cannot come to an end quickly enough.

It’s no secret that small business owners must wear many hats from CEO to sales to marketing to HR and all the way down the line to being the warehouse and logistics honcho who knows where the extra toilet paper is stashed.

Sartorial success, however, is often hard to pull off with not every hat a comfortable fit – Texans understand this every time they get a glimpse of any “dollar store cowboy” in an oversized 10-gallon hat.

“It’s a reality that we all deal with as we work to grow our businesses. We have to perform several different functions as effectively as possible. One day you might be working on your marketing plan. The next day, you might be negotiating with vendors. After that, you might find yourself being your own accountant,” Jeff Charles shared in Startup Advice.

Businesses that are not preparing for the possibility of a recession within the next year are gambling because experts put the odds of an economic downturn as a true coinflip.

“The median probability of a recession over the next 12 months is 47.5 percent, up from 30 percent in June, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists completed last week,” reported CNBC on July 20, 2022.

In March, those odds were just 20 percent. The latest survey was conducted July 8-14, with 34 economists responding about the chances of recession.

There were mixed signals with the release of the June JOLTS report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as job openings fell by over 600,000 to 10.7 million, but for the 13^th consecutive month more than 4 million workers voluntarily left their jobs.

“The drop in job openings marks the third month in a row of declines, indicating that labor shortages are beginning to ease, although levels remain nearly twice as high as the pre-pandemic norm,” wrote Roy Maurer for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) for June 2022 released on August 2, 2022, showed that, while down slightly, “the number of quits was little changed at 4.2 million.”

In a perfect world your hiring managers would only select top talent to join your organization.

These are not perfect times, however, as HR teams must navigate one of the tightest labor markets in memory while being buffeted by external factors such as the pandemic and rising inflation which have changed both workplace and salary expectations.

In this challenging environment, assembling your team with “A” and “B” players is harder than ever. While business leaders never want to see their positions go unfulfilled, settling for less-than-stellar hires can be a costly move.

Employer Flexible has been named one the Best Places to Work 2022 by the San Antonio Business Journal.

“We are excited to be recognized as one of the best places to work in San Antonio. As a PEO, we understand how important employee engagement and first-rate benefits are to the recruitment and retention of talent that allows smaller businesses to grow and thrive,” said Employer Flexible San Antonio Market Manager John Seybold. “This award demonstrates that at Employer Flexible we practice what we preach to our clients.”