Letter from the President – Bart Farmer
Are You Paying Hidden Costs for Employee Benefits?
Welcome and thank you for subscribing to the Pro Pay Online Newsletter. As a Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) provider using Saas technology, we’ve been serving clients since 1996 and we’re fully committed to continuing our tradition of remarkable client service.
Over the last 14 years, we have noticed a rise in the hidden costs of employee benefits. These hidden costs result from companies paying for the incorrect type of employee coverage, deducting the wrong amount from employee paychecks, or continuing coverage for terminated employees. We know how miscommunications and data entry errors put extra strain your valuable resources.
At Pro Pay, our first priority is identifying and eliminating these problems by offering an integrated solution from the employee to the benefit provider.
When an employee’s status changes, it can take hours, or even days, to check manual forms for errors, double-check date stamps and ensure all forms and supporting documents are received, entered and filed properly. That’s why Pro Pay has developed integrated HRIS solutions to ensure all your employee processes are updated in real-time. Simple changes to employee coverage selections take seconds to update and appear accurately on the next paycheck.
By combining our HRIS solutions with the
online employee enrollment portal, our goal is to reduce the cost associated with delivering paper packets to new employees and the resulting errors associated with transferring data from paper forms. Our
self-serve employee portal handles enrollment, processes the information, updates the benefit and payroll information to the employee record and
sends the HIPPA 834 to all benefit providers’ web portals. Your employees receive their benefits and insurance cards sooner as well.
Our focus is saving you money. Combining our services gives you a one-touch comprehensive solution that reduces wasted time and costly errors.
We continually improve our products and services by embracing, and adapting to, the steadily changing worlds of business and technology, and by building on the business partnerships we create with every client.
Today we are focused on the future, and how we can take innovation, service and professionalism to levels unparalleled in the HRIS industry. Your satisfaction is our priority.
Bart Farmer
President, Pro Pay LLC
February 2010 Industry Article:
Did you know?...Your COBRA Subsidy Can Be Retrieved Prior to the 941 Filing?
COBRA—the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act—allows workers to stay on their employers’ health insurance plans after they’ve been terminated if they keep up the premium payments. The 65% subsidies have recently been updated and extended. As a business owner you need to be aware the COBRA subsidy:
- Period has been extended from nine months to 15 months. It includes people currently receiving the subsidy.
- Extends the qualifying time when the workers were laid off. The previous cut-off was Dec. 31, 2009; it has been extended (for now) through the end of this month: Feb. 28, 2010.
- Extends coverage for people who had already used up nine months of subsidy eligibility under the original legislation. Those workers qualify for the subsidies if they retroactively pay back for COBRA coverage during the lapsed months.
- Requires plan administrators to notify eligible former employees of the subsidies’ availability.
This is quite a bit of responsibility for the business owner but very helpful for the former employees. But your duty doesn’t end there. Your next hurdle is to
retrieve the funds the government is subsidizing. That 65% subsidy needs to come back into your bank account as quickly as possible.
Record keeping is paramount to the success of your subsidy recovery. Most employers claim the subsidy credit when filing their 941 at the end of the quarter. However, you do not have to wait until the end of each quarter to retrieve your 65%.
Your Federal Deposit may be reduced by the amount of the subsidy with each payroll period. Your payroll provider simply needs to be made aware of the number of people under COBRA subsidy and the amount that was subsidized by your company at that point in time.
Contact us for more information on this alternative.
If you have any questions, or would like to learn more about the services that Pro Pay offers, please call
Brian Denney at 913.826-6327, or email
bdenney@propayonline.com. We look forward to being of service.
February 2010 How to:
Effectively Manage Workloads with Diminished Work Forces
One of the toughest decisions a business owner faces is to lay off good people in bad times. Whether it’s lack of work, a change in the business structure, or a response to economic times, the remaining employees are faced with additional responsibilities to learn and incorporate into their same 8-hour work day.
Sirota Survey Intelligence completed a study regarding employee attitudes toward work after the dot.com bubble burst in 2002. They surveyed over 500,000 employees and “learned a great deal about the reactions of employees who survive cutbacks,” according to the firm’s president
Douglas Klein. The analysis provided no surprises: survivors suffered greater insecurity, higher stress, less teamwork, heavier workloads, and a general feeling of being “less valued.”[1]
Not a big revelation: employees feel bad after layoffs. But what can we, as business owners and managers, do to help alleviate at least some of the blow-back that occurs? I have three tips and then one piece of advice:
- Give ample room for response – Anger, guilt and insecurity are all perfectly natural emotions for employees to feel. It is crucial for managers to spend time assuring employees that it is natural (and safe) to feel this way. Within limits, of course. A reaction is expected but prolonged resentment leads to a hostile work environment. If you let employees know up front you are sympathetic, they will less likely gossip and harbor feelings they feel afraid to express. Communicate, communicate and then continue to communicate.
- Proactively address the negative effects of less staff for the same work – Increased workloads for employees who survive layoffs are inevitable, and often have the added effect of negatively impacting teamwork. Managers can counteract this by involving their employees in the search for solutions.
This is a great time to consider out-sourcing some of the more time-consuming job tasks a professional could handle more quickly and effectively. Payroll and Human Resources are job tasks that have little room for error and a crushing learning curve to the average employee.
- Consistently determine how things are going – don’t just guess. Establish consistent one-on-ones and group assessments. This can be done formally or informally (bringing in lunch) but should be done frequently, especially during the first year after terminations and layoffs.
The impact of a reduced workforce may not be noticed until the end of a quarter, fiscal year or project deadline. That’s when the remaining employees will be best able to gauge their ability to handle new job functions. (You will too.) The last thing you want is to be surprised with unnecessary taxes or penalties by discovering after the fact that deadlines were not being handled in a timely manner.
A word of advice: Don’t be timid about getting bids and gathering information when out-sourcing. There are many firms – large and small – that specialize in the one thing that you may be asking your already-overworked employee to take on as an additional duty. Competition is fierce – you may find you will save additional dollars by using an outside company such as Pro Pay, LLC to handle your payroll and human resource functions. Call us for more information: 913-826-6327 or email Brian Denney at bdenney@propayonline.com.
Pro Pay Employee Self-Service Portal:
Save Time, Resources, and costs with Real-time Employee Information
Our Employee Self-Service portal offers a multi-function single online entry point providing employees with options to view and update their information. Features include:
- Basic Employee Contact Information
- Benefits and Enrollment
- Family and Dependant Beneficiaries
- Direct Deposit Information
With one ID and login, your employees can keep track of:
- Paychecks and W-2 Information (From first date of employment)
- Training Course Information and Enrollment
- Year-to-Date Hours and Earnings
- W-4 Information
And take full advantage of our other valuable time-saving options, such as:
- Real-time Company Directory
- Electronic Time Keeping and Vacation Requests
- Internal Job Postings with Online Application Process
- Customized Online Company Documents and Forms
- Scrolling Company Messages
- Electronic Suggestion Box
Your employees can access the Employee Self Service portal, from any internet connection and browser, 24 hours a day.
Fully branded and customized, your Employee Self-Service portal provides real time updates to employee data records, so you have access to the most up-to-date information when you need it.
Reduce paper files, data entry errors, strain on your Human Resources department, and costs with our fully-automated Employee Self-Service portal. For more information, contact
Brian Denney, 913-826-6327 or email Brian - bdenney@propayonline.com. We look forward to demonstrating this unique, time-saving feature to you and your company.
Employee Spotlight:
Brian Denney
Vice President, Client Relations
913-826-6327
Establishing strong client relationships is an important part of the ProPay culture. As a member of the Leadership Team, Brian Denney is responsible for overseeing the implementation of new clients. With effective meetings and comprehensive product demonstrations, Brian ensures each client fully understands the potential of ProPay’s valuable services.
With over 20 years experience in the Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) industry, Brian joined ProPay in 2008. Previously, he managed the payroll and benefits department for an international company with 30,000+ employees. He also has spent 10 years working for a national payroll provider. It was through their payroll industry affiliations, that Brian and Bart Farmer, the President of ProPay, met 15 years ago.
Married for 19 years to his high school sweetheart, Brian and his wife have an 11-year-old daughter. When he’s not managing ProPay’s marketing campaigns, he enjoys sailing and playing the guitar.
What’s Brian’s favorite ProPay client success story?
A number of years ago, one of ProPay’s oldest clients decided to move its accounts to one of the national HRIS providers based on proposed cost savings. Within 6 months, despite the discounted rates, the client returned to ProPay because of the outstanding service and partnership that ProPay brings to our clients.
Connect with Brian:
PH: 913-816-6327
[1] www.sirota.com; research archive: http://www.sirota.com/pressrelease/2-Impact_of_Worker_Reductions_-_Final_NA.pdf
