We all know that implementing paycards is by far the easiest way to reduce costs and increase efficiency in the payroll department. Until now, there hasn’t been a simple way to do that. We’ll discuss the single-source EPAY paycard solution, powered by SimplyPaid, that will move your employees to 100% paperless pay.

That’s why it’s so important to make the most of meetings and conference calls held between all impacted departments as well as your time tracking vendor. Positive, productive meetings will advance you to your goal, save time and effort, and keep everyone in the loop.

When it comes to implementation meetings (and other project meetings, too) these simple steps will help you maximize your meetings.

Before Scheduling, Determine if a Meeting is Really Required

Time is money. Valid reasons to call a meeting include:

• To develop an action plan
• To share information analysis
• To problem solve as a team
• To generate activity

Always consider: can your tasks be accomplished via a conference call or email instead?

Plan and Prepare for Your Meeting

• Clearly define the meeting’s objectives
• Only invite attendees who will add value and gain from the session
• To maximize attendance, send calendar invitations as far in advance as possible
• Create a written agenda outlining activities and discussion points, and allot time limits for each

Conduct the Meeting Efficiently

• Be prepared and start on time
• Conduct needed introductions; take roll call
• Encourage participation from all, either through conversation or active note-taking
• Be mindful of the time (take breaks if needed and stick to your time limits)
• Send follow-up meeting notes, including specific action items

If you’re setting recurring meetings, keep the calendar updated and always distribute a new agenda in advance. That will keep you on a roll and keep your implementation on point.

To learn more about EPAY’s implementation process, visit here or contact us.

On this webinar, you will learn ways that building service contractors, property managers, and business service providers can:

• Reduce their labor costs by automating their time tracking at remote locations
•  Increase their payroll efficiency
•  Reduce their compliance risk

Also included: Preview a demo of Blueforce Mobile(TM), EPAY’s newest solution for the mobile workforce

Save Money On Your Telecommunications Bill

EPAY has partnered with the National Service Alliance offering business service contractors national purchasing programs for various goods and services.  As a valued partner of the National Service Alliance, Sprint offers a Special Discount Program for corporate and individual Liable Wireless Users.

See how you can take advantage of this offer from the National Service Alliance.  Contact us.

Some restrictions apply. Sprint makes the final determination of eligibility of the Sprint Program.

Today, the Federal Judicial Center released its annual statistics of the types of lawsuits filed in federal courts throughout the country.  The result for wage and hour lawsuits?  A remarkable increase of 10% for the reporting year ended March 2013 over the previous 12-month period.

7,764 federal wage and hour lawsuits were filed from April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013 (the reporting year used by the FJC) as compared to 7,064 filed during the previous reporting year.  This sharp increase only applies to federal, not state court cases.  We suspect (although precise data is not available) that state court filings, especially in key states like California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, have at least similar increases in state court wage and hour lawsuits.

We have seen spikes in the number of federal court wage and hour lawsuits in prior years.  For example, 2011 saw a 15% jump in wage and hour lawsuits over 2006.  Many lawyers and HR professionals, however, hoped that the modest increase between 2011 and 2012–barely 1%–was a sign that the pace of wage and hour claims was slowing.  Today’s release of the 2013 data demonstrates that wage and hour lawsuits continue to pose the greatest risk of employment litigation to U.S. employers.  See, Seyfarth Shaw’s bar graph of wage and hour federal court filings since 1990. (here)

So, why the increase?  As we continue to analyze the newly released data, we see a number of reasons that may explain this sharp rise in wage and hour lawsuits:

• The improving economy may provide incentives for plaintiffs’ counsel to sue new and relatively unsophisticated companies, employers whose workforces are growing, and companies whose improved financial position has made them more attractive targets.
• The economic recovery has seen an increase in employment demands on all employees, both exempt and non-exempt, which cause them to question their employer’s pay practices.
• More lawyers who had not considered wage and hour claims in the past–both employment specialists and general practitioners–are now filing wage and hour lawsuits, perhaps motivated by large settlements in past cases.
• Attorneys in geographic areas that traditionally have not seen a large number of wage and hour filings have begun to focus their practices on those claims based on successful lawsuits brought by plaintiff-side attorneys in other jurisdictions.
• Employers continue to struggle to comply with the ever increasing complexity of federal and state wage and hour laws and regulations, especially in today’s technological workplace.
• Employees are more sensitized to wage and hour issues, at least in part as a result of their access to social media.

Taking into account the USDOL Wage & Hour Division’s recent focus on a number of specific industries, such as retail, hospitality, financial services, insurance, staffing, and construction, we believe this upward trend in wage and hour lawsuits is likely to continue.  As a result, employers should continue to focus attention on this challenging area of the law and review their wage and hour policies and practices.

Employers can win over conscientious employees by emphasizing how the new time-tracking system will benefit them. After all, if employees are putting in their hours, the system will work to their advantage. (And if employees are not…well, that’s why employers need a full-proof system in the first place.) Those benefits include:

It’s accurate – With electronic time-tracking, hours worked are recorded correctly, so employees get paid for the actual time they put in. If they work overtime, they’ll get paid for overtime. With handwritten timesheets, that’s not always the case.

It’s fair – Ever drop in on an employee chat room? Employees fiercely resent deadbeat coworkers…those who come in late, cut out early, and use their buddies to cover for them. But with automated time-tracking, everyone’s activity is transparent. And with biometric time clocks, ‘buddy punching’ isn’t possible.

It’s empowering – Most time and attendance systems give employees access to their employment information, including hours worked, earned time off, and perhaps even their schedule. Instead of depending on their manager, now employees can access their records when they want.

Employers can create more enthusiasm for their new time-tracking system by launching it in conjunction with an attendance incentive program. Whether the incentives include time off, a bonus, or prime parking, rewarding employees for being prompt and present puts the accent on the positive.

In short, when employers show employees how the new time-tracking system will benefit them personally, employees will be happy to punch the clock. In a good way.

One may ask why should I use biometrics? The answer is that biometric measurements are helpful because only the person with that fingerprint, or any other identifying biometric feature, will be able to get access to his/her device. It is the most secure way to ensure the integrity of personal belongings. The great thing is that no one can steal ones fingerprints, faces, and eyes. The use of biometrics comes in many forms: computers, safes, timekeeping devices, and identification systems. So if one wants to keep their most precious assets safe they should turn to biometrics. Form the store owner who wants to make sure only he can access his safe, to the business owner who wants to make sure that their employee is coming to work and not cheating him out of money, many can benefit from the security measures provided by biometric security. In today’s society more and more people are turning to biometrics to secure their lives.

Here at EPAY, we have successfully utilized biometrics in our time clocks by integrating finger print image reading and a facial scanning camera to fully eliminate buddy punching and time theft, click here to learn more or here to contact sales.

Click here to download a copy of this recorded webinar.

Join litigators from Seyfarth Shaw, the top U.S. labor law firm, as they share do’s, don’ts, tips, and traps for employers in the staffing industry.

Join us at 12:00 cst on Wednesday, May 8 as labor law attorneys from Seyfarth Shaw, LLP–the country’s top wage and hour litigator–share their best advice for minimizing compliance risk for staffing firms, as well as firms providing physical security services.

Join us for a free, informational webinar:

Wage & Hour Attorneys’ Top Secrets for Staying Out of Trouble

Seyfarth Shaw attorneys Alex Passantino and Arthur Rooney will discuss:

• Litigation trends and recent settlements, and what they mean to you
• Your greatest compliance risks (you may be surprised)
• The ‘riskiest’ times of day for employers with hourly workers
• Simple safeguards that can keep you out of court

About your presenters: For more than 60 years, Seyfarth Shaw has been recognized as one of the “go-to” labor and employment firms for business by providing extraordinary, cost-effective results. EPAY has joined forces with Seyfarth Shaw to educate employers of distributed labor environments on how compliance risk can be minimized.

When: Thursday, May 9th, 2013 at 11:00 est/10:00 cst/8:00 pst

EPAY’s Blueforce is specifically designed for the distributed workforce, and its flexible architecture can easily manage related labor complexities, too, including:

• Multiple locations
• Multiple job assignments
• Multiple job types
• Mobile employees
• Shift differentials
• Labor laws
• Union rules
• All of the above!

This 45 minute webinar will provide a brief demonstration of EPAY’s automated time keeping solution. We’ll discuss how you can:

• Minimize payroll workload and errors; prevent buddy punching.
• Reduce overtime pay, alerting you in real time before workers hit OT.
• Keeps customers happy. If a worker is tardy, it sends real time alerts to your cellphone, so you can get another employee onsite ASAP.
• Keep you in compliance by tracking labor laws and union contract rules.
• Eliminate paycheck printing and distribution costs. You can print paystubs and attendance reports directly from our biometric clock.
• Use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to track time with GPS locations.

Download a past recorded webinar here .

View the recorded webinar here.

In this information-packed webinar, Jennifer Kraft of Seyfarth Shaw LLP, will review this pay or play mandate and ways employers can mitigate the financial impact, including:

• Are you even subject to the Affordable Care Act and if you are, what are your options? Which employees must you offer coverage to or pay a penalty? What are the state exchanges and how do they work with the employer mandate?
• How is the employer penalty calculated?
• How will the expansion of eligibility for Medicaid in your state affect the employer penalty? How do you discover whether your state’s ruling will impact your employees and who you will need to provide insurance to?
• If your employee hours vary (i.e., part-time and fluctuating schedule workers in industries such as retail, hospitality, and health care), how do you calculate your ACA liabilities?
• What steps should you be taking right now to determine whether you should pay or play? How can you ensure that you’re minimizing the financial impact of the ACA on your business?

In addition, EPAY will briefly discuss how a time and labor management system can help you monitor and track the data required to make these decisions and manage the ACA on an ongoing basis.  Automated tools from your time-tracking system, such as reports and alerts, will be critical to managing who is eligible and mitigating the risk of non-compliance. For more than 60 years, Seyfarth Shaw has been recognized as one of the “go-to” labor and employment firms for business by providing extraordinary, cost-effective results.  EPAY Systems, Inc. has joined forces with Seyfarth Shaw to educate employers of distributed labor environments on how compliance risk can be minimized.

Join us for a free, informational, webinar:

New Time & Attendance Technologies for Tracking the Mobile Workforce: Thurs, May 30th 10:00 am CST

Learn how savvy employers are using mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to manage their employees’ time and attendance, easily and inexpensively. See how these advances improve the bottom line, by reducing buddy punching, payroll errors, and payroll administration time…even for hard-to-follow employees and those in remote locations.

EPAY’s mobile solution expert, John Gaudiuso, will present the latest trends in mobile time and attendance and show how they’re saving employers additional labor dollars.  He’ll also preview a demo of Blueforce Mobile(TM), EPAY’s newest solution for the mobile workforce.

• Learn how field managers can clock employees in and out as a group, saving time
• View how GPS verification eliminates buddy punching,  saving money
• See why this works where time clocks won’t!

Who should attend: HR professionals, COOs, CFOs, and any manager committed to cutting costs and staying abreast of workforce management trends.

If you would like to view a recording of the webinar, click here.