I recently provided insight for an article outlining how companies should discuss retirement plans with their older employees. I explained that an annual review period would be an appropriate time to discuss an employee’s upcoming plans for retirement and any need for success planning. “Employers should pose questions to employees about retirement plans with the sole goal of understanding staffing needs for future workforce planning,” I explained. “This discussion should be general in nature, should…

Student loan debt in the United States is escalating, and employers are finding it harder to fill open positions. In an effort to tackle both of these issues, more employers have been offering student loan repayment opportunities as part of the benefits packages they offer employees. In an article published by the Nashville Business Journal, I discussed student loan repayment benefits offered by employers and the IRS’s ruling last year regarding this issue. For example, employers can…

I am looking forward to presenting on recent pay equity trends at the Tennessee Human Rights Commission’s (THRC) 2019 Employment Law Seminar. The seminar will be held at the One Century Place Conference Center in Nashville on Wednesday, June 12, 2019 from 8:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. CST. For more information and to register, visit the THRC event web page.…

Last Filing for Calendar Year Plans! The annual filing (and fee payment) for applicable self-insured health plans and specified health insurance policies used to fund the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (the PCORI fee) is due by Wednesday, July 31, 2019. For calendar year plans and policies, this will be the last required PCORI filing and fee payment. For plan and policy years ending after December 31, 2018 and before October 1, 2019, one more filing…

More and more companies are implementing socially conscious policies on topics ranging from banning the use of plastic-ware to refusing to reimburse employees for meals that include meat or are otherwise non-vegan. Companies are generally free to implement these types of policies, as long as employees are not unlawfully discriminated against as part of the policy. I recently examined the legality of company implementation of socially conscious policies in the workplace in an article published Workplace…

I was quoted in a piece published in Business Insurance discussing the Supreme Court’s review of three cases related to sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination protections under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Two of the cases, Melissa Zarda et al. v. Altitude Express and Gerald Lynn Bostock V. Clayton County, will be heard together. Both cases include employees contending they were fired from their jobs due to their sexual orientation. The third case, R.G.…

The Supreme Court ruled on April 24, 2019 that an arbitration agreement which is ambiguous as to whether the parties had agreed to class arbitration was insufficient to require a party to participate in class arbitration. In the 2011 case Stolt-Nielsen S.A. v. Animal Feeds Int’l Corp., 559 U.S. 662 (2011) the Supreme Court decided that “silence” in an arbitration agreement regarding the issue of class arbitration meant that a party could not be compelled…