HowToHR

Services

HR support and compliance

The filings that have to happen, the documents that have to exist, and a person to call at 4pm on a Friday when something comes up that you have not seen before. Most employers your size do not need a full HR department. They need reliable answers and someone watching the deadlines.

Who this is for

  • Employers whose HR function is an office manager, a controller, or the owner
  • Companies approaching 50 employees and the obligations that come with it
  • Businesses with a handbook that was written years ago and never updated
  • Employers who have had one difficult termination and never want another surprise

The problems it solves

  • Nobody is watching the filing deadlines

    ACA forms 1094-C and 1095-C, EEO-1 if it applies to you, Form 5500 for larger plans, required annual notices. These have due dates and penalties, and in most companies your size they are nobody’s actual job.

  • Your handbook is out of date or does not exist

    A handbook is the document that decides whether a disputed termination is a conversation or a claim. An old one can be worse than none, because it commits you to policies you stopped following years ago.

  • Managers make decisions without guidance

    A supervisor handles a leave request, an accommodation, or a complaint the way that seems fair to them. Fair and defensible are not always the same thing, and the gap only shows up later.

  • You Google it and hope

    Something happens on a Thursday afternoon, you search for an answer, and you get a blog post from another state written in 2019. Your state has its own rules, and so does your industry.

What is included

  • Handbook build and maintenance

    A handbook written for your state and for your actual size, reviewed annually and updated when the law moves rather than when someone remembers.

  • ACA tracking and reporting

    Measurement periods, full-time equivalent counts, affordability testing, and the 1094-C and 1095-C filings, built from your payroll data rather than reconstructed each January.

  • Required notices

    Summary plan descriptions, summaries of benefits and coverage, COBRA notices, CHIP, Medicare Part D creditable coverage, and the rest, delivered on time and documented.

  • Onboarding and termination process

    Checklists and documentation that mean every hire starts the same way and every departure is handled consistently, including final pay rules and COBRA triggers.

  • Manager guidance

    Practical direction for supervisors on leave, accommodation requests, performance documentation, and complaints, in language they will actually use.

  • A number to call

    When something comes up you have not dealt with before, you call us before you act rather than after. That call is included.

  • Job descriptions and classification

    Descriptions that support exempt and non-exempt classification decisions, which is where wage and hour exposure usually starts.

  • Annual compliance check

    One review each year covering filings, notices, postings, handbook currency, and anything that changed because your headcount crossed a threshold.

How this connects to everything else

Compliance obligations are triggered by headcount and by hours, both of which live in payroll, and most required notices are about the benefits plan. Which means accurate ACA reporting depends on payroll data being right, and payroll data being right depends on enrollment being wired in correctly. Running the three separately is how a company ends up filing forms built from numbers nobody fully trusts.

Questions about this

See what your benefits should cost.

Thirty minutes on the phone, a couple of documents, and a written report you keep. If we cannot find anything worth changing, we will tell you that and you will have it in writing.

Book my free review