Month: September 2011

Awesome!

With just two weeks to go until the new season begins, I wanted to make sure we give proper attention to another potential candidate for Michael’s position (once Robert California vacates it and proceeds to rule the Company and then the world) — Kelly Kapoor. She has gone through a number of transformations since slapping Michael […]

Despite Phony Divorces, Pension Plan Must Pay Spousal Benefits

Retirement plan administrators do not have the authority to conclude that a domestic relations order (DRO) is not qualified because it is based on a “sham” divorce, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided July 18, 2011. The 5th Circuit stated that a key ERISA section “does not authorize an administrator to consider or […]

Self-Funded Health Plan Can’t Shake Down Providers for Benefits Paid for Non-Enrollee

The sponsor of a self-funded health plan cannot escape its responsibility to ensure that only fully eligible people are enrolled. Illustrating this maxim is a self-funded plan’s sad quest to recover gigantic sums from health providers for services it paid on behalf of a non-beneficiary. The plan paid more than $1 million in claims for a […]

Never Uncapped, Short and Long Term, with Clawbacks

 “We’ve looked at hundreds of companies’ plans,” Dolmat-Connell says “I guess if you could boil it down, there are three key pieces of advice.” (Dolmat-Connell is president and CEO of compensation experts DolmatConnell, & Partners in Boston, Massachusetts.) First of all, he says, make sure you don’t have uncapped plans. Second, make sure you balance […]

Social Media: NLRB Says Employees’ Job Complaints on Facebook Are Protected

An employer violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by firing five employees who complained on Facebook — off-hours — about their jobs, an administrative law judge for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) held. So the employer must do penance by rehiring them and making them whole for any loss of earnings and other […]

Huffington: Look in the Mirror, HR

In yesterday’s Advisor, Sir Richard Branson riffed on HR and management. Today, Arianna Huffington and Michael J. Fox echo some of Sir Richard’s ideas and add a few of their own. Huffington (of Huffington Post fame) posits three basic instincts in the pursuit of happiness—survival, sex, and power—and adds a fourth—doing something for others. That […]

Incentive Comp Threatening Your Organization? Think AIG

In spite of the old saying that a salesperson cannot be overpaid, it seems that one indeed can be. And they were, says Dolmat-Connell, president and CEO of compensation consultants DolmatConnell & Partners. He points to AIG as a prime example of where things went wrong.  “They had traders whose pay was $100,000 a year, […]