Are you flustered, flummoxed and flabbergasted that 2013 is already halfway over? Some updates moving forward for Workplace-laws-and-legal-issues-you-need-to-know

A recent and very extensive survey by Universum, the employer branding firm, (reported in Forbes) surveyed 1,200 of the world’s leading employers to find out exactly what personal qualities today’s big businesses are looking for in candidates. They were asking employers what they were looking for and equally what they were failing to find; so, this survey is a great up-to-the -minute snapshot of what qualities candidates must exhibit to raise the eyebrows of employers and make it through the sift and interview process. So, what were these elusive qualities?

A critical component of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S.744), introduced April 17, 2013, is a provision that would require all employers to participate in an enhanced E-Verify-type program.

Many of the nation’s employers are still on the fence concerning the “Play or Pay” question in health care reform.

Some are leaning toward “Play” (offering employees medical coverage that meets the requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [PPACA]), while others are favoring “Pay” (forking over penalties for not offering acceptable coverage to employees).

The law actually calls for two possible penalties for large employers with 50 or more employees: one for not offering “minimum essential” coverage, and the other for offering coverage that isn’t “affordable” and/or doesn’t provide “minimum value.”

Get this exclusive Alpha Business Brief comparing provisions of the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Plan to the Federal (PPACA) requirements in one concise document.

The Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of people without health insurance by expanding eligibility for Medicaid and providing tax credits that make insurance more affordable for people buying coverage on their own through new health insurance Exchanges. The Congressional Budget Office projects that 32 million more people will have insurance by 2019. Find out who gets covered and how with this simple flowchart, created as part of the Visualizing Health Policy series with The Journal of the American Medical Association.

There are an estimated 80 million young Americans who belong to the so-called millennial generation, roughly ages 18 to 35. By next year, they are expected to comprise 36% of the U.S. workforce, and by 2020, millennials will be nearly half of all workers.

While millennials are the most educated and culturally diverse of any generation before them, they’re also notorious job-hoppers who dislike bureaucracy and distrust traditional hierarchies—leaving many business leaders scratching their heads. What motivates this rising cohort? How do you keep them engaged, earn their trust and get the most out them? Leadership and millennial experts weighed in with a few surprising—and surprisingly easy—ways to inspire millennial workers.

This legislation comes as a shot to business groups, many of whom regard credit checks as a safeguard against hiring people who may have trouble with money for positions of trust that involving the handling of money. According to a 2012 SHRM survey, among organizations that initiate credit background checks, 87 percent do so for positions with financial responsibilities.

It’s not easy being a manager these days. You’re responsible for recruiting, hiring, training, coaching, modeling, engaging, monitoring, motivating, anticipating, prioritizing, planning, evaluating, clarifying, adapting, envisioning, directing, disciplining, reinforcing, reporting, recognizing, budgeting, and building alliances. And that’s all before lunch. And if you struggle with just one, your reports will say you’re over your head.

Have you had any of your employees question you about the DD in box 12 of their W-2?

by by Linda Robertson

No matter how efficient you are, the fact is that we all waste time, at some point or another. This infographic from Office Time examines the top 10 ways we kill time every day. Follow the flow chart and see how you can change the way you work.

Written by David Wallace

Written by Josh Weiss-Roessler

Even though things seem to be slowly improving, our job market is—to put it mildly—not good. Many job seekers have been scrounging and scraping and clawing around for work for far longer than normal, and that kind of desperation sometimes makes people engage in behaviors they likely wouldn’t consider in better times.

by Laura Stack

If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” — Mario Andretti, American race car driver.

“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.” — Rupert Murdoch, Australian-American media mogul.

“I’ve always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team.” — Lee Iacocca, former CEO and Chairman of Chrysler Corporation.

Though we like to think of ourselves as living in the Space Age or the Information Era, future historians may well label this the “Hurry Up Epoch.”

For decades now, we’ve scrambled to keep pace with technological change, ramping up our productivity to startling levels, which helps us further advance our technology, leading to greater productivity … and so on, in a rising spiral.

Nowadays you have to put the pedal to the metal, or the go-getters will leave you eating their dust, taking big bites off the edges of your market. You can’t compete effectively without an agile internal culture capable of reducing time-to-market and cycle speed for all essential processes.

This begs the question: how do you build and maintain such a culture of speed? Let’s look at some principles.

By Dan Schawbel |

Companies need to understand what motivates Generation Y workers if they want to retain them and grow them into new leadership roles. The problem is that companies are still treating them like older generations and are losing them to competitors. The average Gen Y employee leaves after two years of working.  In the book, Happiness at Work: Maximizing Your Psychological Capital for Success, the authors unveiled new research by the iOpener Institute about this important demographic. They found that they are motivated to stay with their employer and are willing to actively recommend their company to friends based more on job fulfillment than pay. The survey of 18,000 Gen Y’s uncovered that a belief in the firm’s economic or social purpose, and pride in the organization and its work, had a strong correlation with staying at a company.  The report also confirmed that there was no connection between retention and compensation. Here are five things you can do to help them achieve more fulfillment at work:

Everyone isn’t as truthful as they always want to be – and resumes are one of the most common places for lies to show up. This infographic (source) shows some of the most common things that job seekers lie about or otherwise misrepresent on their resume or CV.

Takeaways

• 46% of resumes submitted by job applicants contain some form of false information – with 70% of college students saying they would lie on their resume in order to get a job.
• 27% of applicants give false references on a resume, whereas 40% give inflated salary claims.
• 21% of applicants state fraudulent degrees on resumes.
• 74% of respondents said they had never lied on a resume (are they lying?) – but 13% said they hadn’t but would consider it.

Originally published by: Laurence Hebberd

Laurence Hebberd is Community Manager for Link Humans in London. He also runs the Link Humans Twitter feed - @LinkHumans.

In the past few years, the cost of health care for employees in the U.S. has gone up, while the number of small businesses offering health insurance has been on a slow decline, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as "Obamacare," aims to reduce health-care premiums for both individuals and small businesses by increasing the number of healthy people with insurance.

Still, many parts of the law don't sit well with small-business owners, especially the employer mandate, a requirement that employers with 50 or more workers must offer health-insurance coverage or face fines ranging from $2,000 to $3,000 per employee per year.

For a breakdown of the health-care costs your business will face and insight on the future of healthcare for small-business owners and their employees.

Small businesses may be facing a variety of regulatory changes after January 1.
Payroll service provider Paychex outlined a list of 13 potential regulatory changes for small businesses in 2013.

In order to clarify your intentions, goals, and objectives when it comes to employee recruiting and retention in 2013, ask yourself these questions:

Legal and regulatory changes—more than new laws—are driving the need for company policy adjustments, revised plan documents and updated employee handbooks for 2013 by U.S. employers.

Confounding predictions of mediocre new hiring and a rise in unemployment, the U.S. Department of Labor this morning said 148,000 new jobs were added to the national economy, while the unemployment rate decreased to 7.7 percent, a four-year low.