(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution.  Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

E-Verify is an online system that checks information provided on an employee’s Form I-9 (Employment Eligibility Verification) against data from the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security.

While the system isn’t mandatory for all employers, there is federal legislation pending to change that.  And many employers are already required by state or local law or under federal contracts to run their employees through E-Verify.  But why should that concern you as a recruiter?

Well, if you’re placing contractors and running your own back-office, YOU are responsible for running your contractors through E-Verify, if required.  That means you need to keep up with the federal laws, as well as those in all of the areas in which you place contractors and make sure that you’re in compliance.

If you are required to E-Verify contractors, you’ll need to be trained and certified to use the system.  You must run new contractors through the system within three business days of their start date.  Of course, this is after you’ve had them complete Section 1 of the I-9 on their first day of work and you have completed Section 2, which is a task that also must be completed within three days of their start date.

Even if you use a contract staffing back-office, you still want to ensure that the back-office is running contractors through E-Verify when required.  Not only that, but many clients are requiring that contractors placed at their companies are run through E-Verify, even if not required by law.  If you want to get placements from those clients, you’ll want to be sure to use a contract staffing back-office that is certified to run E-Verify.

Your best bet is to align yourself with a contract staffing back-office, such as Top Echelon Contracting, that runs all of their contractors through E-Verify.  That way, you know all of your placements will be compliant with any applicable E-Verify laws and you won’t miss out on any placement opportunities.

(Editor’s note: this article is for informational purposes only and should NOT be considered legal advice.)

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888.627.3678
dfledderjohann@topecheloncontracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
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(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution.  Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

Like it or not, it looks like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), otherwise known as “Obamacare,” is here to stay.  Even if the upcoming election is a Republican landslide, experts say it is unlikely that the healthcare reform will be completely repealed.

One of the upcoming provisions worrying employers the most is the employer mandate.  Under this provision, employers with 50 or more full-time employees will be required to provide affordable healthcare insurance or pay a $2,000 annual penalty on each employee, minus the first 30 employees.

Even if they do offer insurance, they could be subject to penalties if the coverage is “unaffordable,” meaning that it costs more than 9.5% of an employee’s income or the employer pays less than 60% of the premiums.  And if they do offer coverage, their plan will be subject to new taxes and requirements under the PPACA that will increase their costs and administrative burden.

Even though the mandate won’t take effect until 2014, employers are already looking for ways to avoid these costs.  Some may shift some of their full-time employees to part-time to get below the mandate’s threshold.  Others may be tempted to classify workers as 1099 Independent Contractors, but since there has been a crackdown on worker misclassification at both the state and federal levels, this isn’t the wisest choice.

Some business owners are even considering breaking up their companies into smaller businesses to get around the employer mandate, according to a recent CNNMoney article.  But since the employer mandate looks at the total number of workers employed under common ownership, that also is not a viable option.

One possible solution is utilizing contractors who are W-2 employees of a recruiter or a contract staffing back-office.  In this scenario, it doesn’t matter how many hours the contractor works because they will be counted as an employee of the recruiter or back-office, not the company.

The demand for these types of positions has already surged since the recession due to economic uncertainty, employers’ desire for a flexible workforce, and increased employment regulations.  In fact, according to the American Staffing Association, temporary/contract positions accounted for 91% of job creation between June of 2009 and June of 2011.

Only time will tell if “Obamacare” really affects the number of contractors in the workplace, but as employers try to contain their costs, contract staffing offers a viable solution.  You’ll want to be sure that you’re able to provide contractors so that you can be a sole-source provider for your clients, able to handle ALL of their staffing needs.

But keep in mind, if you have more than 50 contractors and you run your own back-office, you’ll be subject to the employer mandate and will either need to offer insurance or pay the penalty.

If you outsource to a contract staffing back-office, the contractors will become their W-2 employees, so the back-office, not you, will be responsible for complying with PPACA.

(Editor’s note: this article is for informational purposes only and should NOT be considered legal advice.)

— — —

888.627.3678
dfledderjohann@topecheloncontracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
Follow Debbie on Twitter.

(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution. Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

There is a huge demand for healthcare professionals as the American population continues to age.  To achieve workforce flexibility, many healthcare providers are filling their open positions with contractors.  This creates a tremendous opportunity for recruiters who can work this niche.

If you place healthcare contractors, though, you need to take extra care to qualify healthcare contractors and take steps to protect your firm from liability.

Failing to handle healthcare contract placements properly could result in severe consequences for your clients, their patients, and the employer (which is YOU if you run your own back-office).

To avoid problems, be sure that you or your contract staffing back-office:

1. Have a Certificate of Insurance that includes sufficient medical professional liability insurance.

2. Run background checks and drug screenings on every healthcare contractor.

3. Have healthcare contractors sign a HIPPA Agreement stating that they understand and will comply with the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA).

4. Verify their immunizations, specifically Hepatitis B and Tuberculosis.

5. Verify that they have any required licenses and that those licenses are up-to-date.

6. Conduct an OIG/HHS (Medicare Fraud) Search.

7. Conduct an Excluded Parties List System Search (EPLS).

8. Conduct Bloodborne Pathogens training and testing.

9. Have contractors complete occupation-specific skills checklists.

10. Verify their CPR training and certification.

11. Conduct FBI fingerprinting if the contractor will have contact with children.

Instead of handling these extra tasks yourself, you may want to consider outsourcing the employment of your healthcare contractors to a contract staffing back-office, such as Top Echelon Contracting.

We conduct the tasks listed above on all of our professional healthcare contractors, and we recently expanded the types of healthcare placements we can handle. To find out if we can handle your healthcare placement, call us at (888) 627-3678.

— — —

888.627.3678
dfledderjohann@topecheloncontracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
Follow Debbie on Twitter.

(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution. Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

One of the hottest areas for contract staffing now is healthcare.

To help recruiters capitalize on the opportunties in this industry, Top Echelon Contracting (TEC) has worked with our insurance underwriters to expand the types of healthcare positions that recruiters can place through our contract staffing back-office.

The expanded list of acceptable positions includes a greater number of Registered Nurse (RN) specialties, particularly in Pediatrics.

We can place RNs in the following areas:

We are also continuing to place a large number of healthcare professionals in the following growing positions:

TEC carries an extensive Certificate of Insurance that includes medical professional liability insurance.  We also run additional screenings, including drug screenings, background checks, license verification, immunization verification, etc., on all of our healthcare contractors due to the sensitive nature of these placements.

We place healthcare professionals in physicians’ offices, hospitals, outpatient clinics, and charitable and welfare organizations. We can also place professional healthcare contractors in nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities, and home health environments.

For more information about healthcare placements, please visit our Healthcare Contract Staffing page. To find out if we can handle your healthcare placement or to get a quote, please call us at (888) 627-3678.

— — —

888.627.3678
dfledderjohann@topecheloncontracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
Follow Debbie on Twitter.

(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution. Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a direct-hire executive, and able to leap big projects in a single bound, it’s the Supertemp!

That is the term that the Harvard Business Review used in its recent article, “The Rise of the Supertemp,” to refer to a growing group of executives who are trading long hours and stiff suits for more flexible, project-based contract work.

By working as consultants on a contract basis, these “Supertemps” have been able to do the following:

• Spend more time with family.
• Take a month or two off to travel.
• Skip time-wasting corporate meetings.
• Have more “fun” by helping other executives succeed.
• Choose what they want to work on and the people with whom they want to work.
• Free themselves from administrative tasks.

Of course, most companies are more than happy to accommodate executives who prefer temporary, contract work because it helps them stay lean and save money since they don’t have to contribute to plush executive benefits packages.

But that leads to a problem: executives who would like to go independent but can’t get affordable healthcare. As a recruiter, though, you can help solve this problem by placing these contractors and then outsourcing their employment to a contract staffing back-office, such as Top Echelon Contracting, that can provide benefits.

The opportunity is definitely there for recruiters who are willing to delve into this niche. According to the article, this trend, often know as “Executive Temping” is getting so big that some recruiting/staffing firms are focusing exclusively on placing executives as contractors.

Could you be successful at placing Supertemps? Well, if you have clients that need high-level talent and executive candidates who are seeking more flexibility, it may be something worth looking into!

— — —

888.627.3678
DFledderjohann@TopEchelonContracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
Follow Debbie on Twitter.

(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution.  Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

As if the stock market crash a few years ago wasn’t enough to ruin many older workers’ retirement, USA Today is now reporting that many have not saved enough to cover the massive cost of healthcare they will have in their retirement years.

According to the USA Today article, which cites information from a Fidelity Investments study, retirees’ healthcare costs have increased an average of 6% every year since 2002. Healthcare expenses account for about 35% of a retired couple’s annual Social Security benefit.

Those who assume that Medicare will cover most of their healthcare costs are most likely in for an unpleasant surprise. Even with Medicare, the average 65-year-old couple needs around $240,000 to cover their medical expenses over the course of their retirement.

So what can retirees do? Well, according to the article, many are planning to continue working. In fact, 1/4 of middle-class Americans believe they will have to work until they are 80 to have a comfortable retirement!

Rather than continue to work a traditional job to keep benefits, though, they could consider a contract position. If they are employed through a contract staffing back-office, they could be eligible for healthcare benefits. And while they will still have to work a certain number of hours to maintain eligibility for those benefits, there may be more flexibility as to when and where those hours are worked than there would be in a traditional, direct position.

Many older workers are turning to contract assignments to gain more flexibility in a trend known as retiree re-staffing. With the rising cost of healthcare and the availability of insurance benefits through contract assignments, contract staffing may become an even more attractive option to retirees.

— — —

888.627.3678
DFledderjohann@TopEchelonContracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
Follow Debbie on Twitter.

(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution.  Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

The Department of Labor (DOL) has released some new mobile and Internet Browser apps designed to help employees, but recruiters may find a couple of them helpful when negotiating pay rates.

These new apps are the product of online and mobile development contests that the DOL launched in July.  The “Labor Wage Statistics” and the “Occupation Wage Data” mobile apps both allow you to find salaries based on occupation, industry, and location right from your Android smartphone.

These apps do not appear to be available on the iPhone at this time.

A similar app for your Internet Browser called “Where are the Jobs?” allows you to not only look up salaries for specific occupations, but also see the top states for those occupations and the average number of jobs each state has in that area.  The OES Map Web app also provides wage and job information by occupation and state.

As a benchmark to begin negotiations for contractor hourly pay rates, you can divide the average annual salary for a comparable direct position by 2,080 hours (approximately one year) to get the hourly rate.

We’ve saved you some of the work by providing a free Salary-to-Hourly Conversion Table that you can download.

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888.627.3678
DFledderjohann@TopEchelonContracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
Follow Debbie on Twitter.

(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution.  Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

According to a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, companies are planning to increase their use of interns by 8.5% this summer.

The majority of these companies are planning to pay their interns, but if you have clients who are considering unpaid internships, this is a good time to remind them of the strict rules and risks of doing so.

In most cases, interns must be paid.  In order for internships to be legally unpaid, they must meet the following six criteria, as outlined in the Department of Labor’s (DOL) fact sheet on Internships Under the Fair Labor Standards Act:

1. The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;

2. The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;

3. The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;

4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;

5. The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship; and

6. The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

Over the past couple of years, the DOL has been cracking down on illegal unpaid internships, so it is important that your clients handle their internships properly. You may want to suggest that they hire interns on a contract basis and outsource the employment of those interns to a contracting back-office.

That way, they can avoid the risk of not paying their interns without taking on the additional costs (benefits, employer taxes, etc.) and administrative burdens that comes with making them direct-hires.

— — —

888.627.3678
DFledderjohann@TopEchelonContracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
Follow Debbie on Twitter.

(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution.  Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

If you’re running your own back-office and offering benefits to your contractors, it is critical that you’re familiar and compliant with COBRA. COBRA, which stands for The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, was enacted in 1986. It requires employers with more than 20 employees to offer continuation of health care coverage when an employee loses coverage due to status changes, such as resigning, losing a job, or having hours reduced.

In addition to requiring employers to offer continuation coverage, there are numerous notification requirements that come with COBRA.  For instance, you must send a notice to employees explaining their COBRA rights when they first come onto your plan, and you must send another notice when they lose coverage so that they know how to elect COBRA.

The Department of Labor AND the IRS regularly conduct COBRA audits (and enforce penalties), so this is not something you want to get wrong.  The IRS is actually making it easier to comply by publishing a checklist of items it reviews during its COBRA audits, according to Infinisource, which is the third party COBRA administrator that Top Echelon Contracting uses.  This checklist, which is called “Audit Techniques and Tax Law to Examine COBRA Cases (Continuation of Employee Health Care Coverage),” explains:

• Which documents the IRS typically reviews during an audit.
• How the excise tax for noncompliance is calculated and applied.
• How election waivers work.
• Key definitions.

If you’re running your own back-office and are required to offer continuation coverage under COBRA, you may want to check this out.  You may also want to point this out to your clients who have to comply with COBRA.

— — —

888.627.3678
DFledderjohann@TopEchelonContracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
Follow Debbie on Twitter.

(Editor’s Note: This is the next in a series of guest blog posts about contract staffing, courtesy of Top Echelon Contracting, the recruiter’s back-office solution.  Similar posts will appear in future issues of The Pinnacle Newsletter Blog.)

While some employers have intentionally, and most likely illegally, shed their older workers in an effort to reduce costs, some companies are struggling to find experienced talent and are finding creative ways to find and retain it, according to a recent Washington Post article.

Older workers come with leadership and maturity that simply cannot be taught.  As they reach retirement age, they often want to cut back on work, but they don’t want to quit altogether.  Companies that can find ways to retain them or bring them back can benefit from their knowledge and experience.

One agency that has done this successfully is the U.S. Agriculture Department, according to the article.  Working with the National Older Worker Career Center, the department is hiring these workers on a temporary or part-time basis, often to complete specific projects.

As more retirees put off retirement, either due to the economy or their own desire to stay active, these types of retiree re-staffing arrangements are becoming more and more common.  We have even seen some recruiting firms focus their efforts solely on finding contract assignments for retirees.

If you have clients struggling to retain experienced talent and/or older candidates needing more flexible work, this is a niche you might want to look into.

— — —

888.627.3678
DFledderjohann@TopEchelonContracting.com
Connect with Debbie on LinkedIn.
Follow Debbie on Twitter.