Think Before You Call: Contacting Employees on FMLA Leave

Bob WerkheiserHuman Resources

Shared by Deb Franklin from the Disability, Leave & Health Management Blog of Jackson Lewis, by Tiffany A. Buckley-Norwood on February 21, 2017 How many employers have had this situation arise? An employee requests and receives Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave. While they are out, the employee’s supervisor needs to locate a document, find out the status of a project the employee was working on, or a crucial question comes up that only the employee on leave can answer. According to the courts, a few minor, work-related communications with the employee to “pass on institutional knowledge or documents”, or as a “professional courtesy”, may be permissible. See Massey-Diaz v. University of Iowa Community Medical Services, Inc. (2016). Any more than …

Murray Named “Marketing Agency of the Year for 2017” by Rough Notes Magazine

Denise GillinNews

Rough Notes, one of the insurance industry’s leading publications, previously featured the Murray executive leadership team on their cover and in the May 2016 edition as “Agency of the Month”. Later, other insurance agents and brokers across North America voted for Murray to be named Rough Notes Magazine’s “Marketing Agency of the Year for 2017.” Dave Willis, Editor-in-Chief of Rough Notes stated, “Murray was chosen by its peers – other agencies and brokers from across North America that have earned the same recognition over the past 28 years. These leading agencies and brokers saw characteristics in Murray – from its creative approaches to addressing risk to the fact that it’s an employee-owned agency – that made it stand out from …

What am I Doing Wrong? Common FMLA Mistakes

Bob WerkheiserHuman Resources, Uncategorized

“What did I do wrong?” and “Am I doing this correctly?” are frequent questions from clients regarding Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) administration. Here are some of the more common mistakes employers can inadvertently make in this regard. Not providing an employee with a sufficient Notice of Eligibility and Rights & Responsibilities. When an employee requests FMLA leave, or when an employer acquires knowledge that an employee’s need for leave might be FMLA-qualifying, an employer must: Notify the employee of the employee’s eligibility to take FMLA leave and rights and responsibilities within 5 business days, absent extenuating circumstances. This “Eligibility and Rights & Responsibilities Notice” must be in writing and must state whether the employee is eligible for FMLA leave …

The Myth of Beating the Market

Russ HarlanWealth Management

Americans have been talking a lot about the “fake news” phenomenon lately, but fake news has been part of the investment world for some time, on TV, online and at cocktail parties. How many “hot stocks” and “can’t fail strategies” have you heard about over the years? Maybe the idea that some stock guru has “the secret to beating the market” is as mythical as a unicorn. According to Dalbar, an independent research firm that has been studying investment performance and investor behavior since 1976, there is evidence that trying to beat the market does investors more harm than good. Their 22nd Annual Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior (2016) found that, for the 20-year period ending on December 31, 2015, …

Will You Do Better as an Active Investor or a Passive Investor?

Russ HarlanWealth Management

It’s one of the most contentious debates in investing. Perhaps a more important question: which approach will be superior over the long term, active or passive investing? Active investing is when you proactively move assets (buying and selling) with the goal of beating relative market performance as measured by an index. Relying on trend analysis and your past experience, you seek to buy individual stocks, sectors and/or fund managers when they appear low with the plan to sell them when they’re higher. If you guess correctly, you have the potential for significant returns. But if you’re wrong, the results can be costly. Passive investing is when you buy a diverse mix of assets and reallocate your funds only when rebalancing …

Why Passive Investments are Popular

Russ HarlanWealth Management

“We’ve long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good.” This classic quote from Warren Buffett encapsulates the guiding principle of passive investors, who prosper not by trying to do better than the stock market, but by mimicking it at a low cost. These investors are often proponents of index funds and ETFs (exchange-traded funds), which are “portfolios that match or track the components of a market index, such as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500).”1 Active investors are those who try to beat the performance of the overall stock market by selecting stocks (or other investments, such as bonds, real estate or precious metals) whose value will grow faster than …