News & Events

For almost a year now Americans have channeled their inner Johnny Paycheck, telling employers to “Take This Job and Shove It” as more than 4 million workers a month since June 2021 have voluntarily left their jobs.

“The pandemic-era trend known as the “Great Resignation” remains a prominent feature of the labor market, as favorable conditions lead workers to quit their jobs at near-record levels in search of better (and ample) opportunities,” reported CNBC.

Now that your 2021 taxes are officially filed, it is not too early to start thinking about next year’s 2022 tax return.

Businesses might want to toss the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality into the dustbin when it comes to your employees and how they feel about their jobs.

Why? Because waiting until an employee departs – which is happening in record numbers during the current “Great Resignation” – leaves companies conducting exit interviews, which can lead to valuable insight but are delivered too late to retain the talent.

Instead, employers can conduct “stay interviews” with current employees, which can improve employee retention and stave off unwanted exit interviews.

Businesses can be forgiven if there is confusion surrounding guidelines concerning the classification of workers as independent contractors vs. employees, and that’s because the rules on the federal level are constantly shifting.

In just 15 months, the Trump Department of Labor (DOL) issued a Final Rule that adopted an “economic realities test”, then the Biden DOL scuttled the Final Rule, and now a Texas federal judge has reinstated that former Final Rule.

Businesses in 2022 could use a good dose of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” spirit and leadership which led the British people through the darkest days of World War II.

While the world is not at war, per se, there are enough global challenges – COVID-19 pandemic, rampant inflation, supply chain woes, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – to test even the steeliest company’s resolve.

It is unrealistic to expect that your employees will never have any complaints about their jobs or workplace conditions.

It is realistic, however, for your company to have policies and procedures in place to handle employee grievances in a timely and professional manner, which can go a long way to bolstering your employee retention and workplace culture.

If you have spent any time in a workplace you probably have experienced various levels of feedback from your employer.

Those sit-downs, both formally in scheduled performance reviews and informally when the boss asks you to step into their office, come in all varieties.

Sometimes the feedback can come off as superfluous with an uncaring supervisor quickly checking generic boxes that provide no real insight or help to sharpen your role with the company.

It is incredibly hard to envision just how historic “The Great Resignation” has been with a record number of American workers voluntarily quitting their jobs month after month.

Consider this: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking the number of U.S. workers who quit their jobs each month, and prior to last year, the record for quits in a single month was 3.6 million in July 2019.

Last year, nearly 4 million U.S. workers quit their jobs in April and the number of quits stayed above that 3.6 million high-water mark for each of the next eight months.

The 87^th Texas Legislature met from January to May and then again in three more special sessions from July to October, giving lawmakers many opportunities to pass new bills in the Lonestar State.

There were a whopping 9,999 bills introduced in the regular session alone with 3,803 passed.

While many of the bills passed are ceremonial there are several new laws that affect Texas employers.

Compliance is a bit like flossing … you may not see immediate consequences from letting it slide, but the long-term repercussions ultimately reveal themselves.

Lax compliance protocols increase the risk that your small-to-medium size business runs afoul of local, state, and/or federal regulations.

For most business owners, compliance violations are more painful than the sound of any dentist’s drill.