Shields Up! - New Business Minnesota

Need Help Filing Business Tax Returns? Startup-Friendly Accountants Are on Page 2
The Monthly Resource Guide For Startup Businesses
January 2013
Shields Up!
Special
Report
Protect Your Business
You’ve Worked Hard to Launch Your Business. Have You
Taken Steps to Protect What You’ve Built? These Experts
Offer Their Solutions: Mike Bourgon, Synergy Human
Resources; Kent Gustafson, Safe Shield LLC; John Butler,
True Choice Services; and Steve Emmer, ADT Security
Systems. Page 4.
Reprinted with Permission Courtesy of New Business Minnesota ©2013 – www.newbizminn.com
Shields Up! Protect Your Business
You’ve Worked Hard to Launch Your Business. Have You Taken Steps to
Protect What You’ve Built? Here Are Some Valuable Insights into
How You Can Guard Your Investment.
From the Publisher: Most new businesses take care of the obvious when they launch. They’ve got a
banker, attorney, CPA etc. But they often forget to take steps to protect their business from the unexpected
dangers lurking around the corner.
To examine this topic for our readers, New Business Minnesota approached this team of experts to write
about the latest trends and strategies: Mike Bourgon, Synergy Human Resources; Kent Gustafson, Safe
Shield LLC; John Butler, True Choice Services; and Steve Emmer, ADT Security Systems.
They will share more information in a free interactive workshop on February 13, 2013.
For more information and to register and RSVP go to:
www.newstartupmeetup.com.
Reprinted with Permission Courtesy of New Business Minnesota ©2013– www.newbizminn.com
Control Health Insurance Costs By Escaping the Rules
Protecting Employees Can Be Affordable with an HRA Strategy.
By John Butler
True Choice Services
Special to New Business Minnesota
Q
uick quiz: In the next year, do you expect health insurance costs for your
company to increase substantially or
decrease substantially? If you’re like most small
business owners, you reflexively answered “increase.”
It’s not your fault you got it wrong. You have
been conditioned over the years to think that
the employer is the source of health insurance
and the group plan is the only option.
So how can health care costs go down substantially in defiance of common business
sense? It’s kind of a trick question because
I knew you would be thinking about group
plans. If you think individual plan, the whole
cost equation is turned on its aural canal (ear)
and price decreases enter the picture.
Now that you are running your own show
you really need to learn the advantages of going the individual policy route, whether you
already have employees or expect to in the
future. When you have employees, protecting
their health insurance will become an issue you
need to address.
New Approach
The old model is a group policy with individual employees as members. With the new
model I’m talking about here, a group of individuals own their policies. The employer simply provides tax free dollars each month into
an HRA or Health Reimbursement Arrangement that helps their employees with the costs.
The group plan concept is so embedded that
most employers aren’t even looking at HRAs as
an alternative. They don’t even know they exist. That is starting to change. I’ve been in this
business since 1993 and I’m absolutely amazed
that HRAs have not been used this way before.
It’s finally catching on.
For the employer, there are no more annual
contract renewals and no more bottom-linerattling rate hikes. What I try and do is to shift
the owner’s mindset and help them see how
they can give employees tax free dollars each
month to meet their needs for a health insur-
Call To Action
For a free online comparison of your
current plan with an HRA model, go to
www.truechoiceservices.com and click
the “Download” Button under the “Quick
Comparison for Businesses” or contact
Katie Hufnagle at (952) 892-8450 or
katie@truechoiceservices.com to have
the comparison worksheet sent to you.
ance policy that fits them.
With this approach, employers don’t own or
manage the policies. They just help out with the
expenses in similar form to a business expense
account.
Aside from saving money, an important feature is that employees will own their contracts.
That means they are portable. When they leave
the company, the policy goes with them. It’s
theirs.
Escape the Rules
The key to the cost-saving approach is to get
outside the rules and regulations of the group
system. In Minnesota, there are 64 rules for
group plans. That’s the third highest in the nation. Those rules define what every group plan
must provide, and cost consideration is not important to the state.
As soon as you break away and go with an
individual policy, you get a double positive
whammy that results in savings for employer
and employee alike. For employers, costs go
down because you eliminate nearly all regulations controlling employers.
When the individual’s coverage isn’t mandated by the Legislature, for instance, a single male
doesn’t have to pay for maternity coverage. Or
he can save 6 percent to 8 percent by forgoing
mental health coverage. Your employees can
customize their own insurance program. This
seems to me the way it really should be.
The HRA model allows health insurance
companies to do what they do best: manage
risks and expenses. It allows the employer to
operate under a set budget, and allows the employees a freedom of choice.
The individual health plans are customized
and are underwritten based on the employee’s
health history, not the collective group of employees.
HRA Savings
By adopting the HRA model, it’s not unusual for a 20-employee company’s costs to
fall from $100,000 to $60,000 a year. And that’s
with the company continuing to pay a good
portion of the cost of the employee-owned
plan.
If an employer wants to be a generous, they
can still pay a great deal of the costs, and still
save a ton.
The savings are such that employees start
thinking about what to add back into the plan:
dental, critical-illness coverage, long-term
care, additional life insurance and more. With
choices, they feel they control their destiny.
Employers love the HRA approach because
they never have to go through another renewal
process again and they avoid the hefty costs of
COBRA administration. When the employee
leaves, they take the policy with them and continue to pay the policy themselves. The company avoids the expensive COBRA administration hassles and costs altogether.
Real World Example
Since insurance providers weigh individual
risks, the savings will vary from employee to
employee. I have worked with a company of
33 employees that included a young employee
with no health issues on the one extreme (big
savings) and the 63-year-old worker with diabetes and a heart condition on the other (minimal savings).
It’s instructive to see how the employer handled the transition to the HRA model. First,
the company’s monthly expense went from
$11,200 in the group plan to $6,400 with the
HRA model. They promised their employees
that with the switch, employee costs would decline for most, or at least not increase for others.
As it turns out, everyone at that company,
except the 63-year-old man, was able to get
individual coverage at a substantial savings.
Since coverage for him was declined, he was
automatically accepted into a Medica-administered plan called the Minnesota Comprehensive Health Association (MCHA), which offers
individual plans to those turned down in the
John Butler - Escape the Rules
Continued on Back Page
John Butler is owner and president of True
Choice Services, an employee benefits brokerage
firm that works with businesses of all sizes to meet
their benefits needs, including health, dental, life
and disability. He can be reached at (952) 8928450 or
john@truechoiceservices.com.
www.truechoiceservices.com
Maintain Your Personal Liability Protection
False Security – Is Your LLC Really Protecting You?
By Kent Gustafson
Safe Shield LLC
Special to New Business Minnesota
H
ow protective is your corporate veil? If
your business is registered in Minnesota as an LLC (Limited Liability Company) or Corporation (S-Corp or C-Corp),
the law provides you with that veil, otherwise
known as liability protection. It is what protects
you as an individual (aka – your personal assets) when your company is being sued.
Funny thing about the legal term “corporate
veil” is it can be as impenetrable as a concrete
barrier to separate you, the owner, from the
company’s liability. Or, it can be as delicate as
a veil that is full of holes and will utterly fail to
protect you from the slightest threat and financial ruin.
LLCs make up more than 55 percent of the
56,000 annual business filings in Minnesota.
It is popular because of the liability protection
that it provides.
However, in order for the government to
acknowledge the protection there are certain
strings and conditions attached. State statutes
require that each LLC or corporation keep a
record book of articles, bylaws, resolutions and
meeting minutes, stock information, member’s
contributions and more.
It all seems so easy; just paperwork and filings. An estimated 85 percent of small businesses in the USA do not meet these basic standards, with unofficial research in Minnesota
showing the percentage is significantly higher
(close to 95 percent). That is a lot of personal
exposure and most businesses have no idea that
they are completely exposed.
Chances are your corporate veil is as flimsy
as a…veil. More like a soap bubble that will pop
the instant it is touched.
This happens because many people are
drawn to the allure of low cost entity formations that can be found online. Typical online
services promise to help you properly file your
LLC in a snap. They often provide you with general, one-size-fits-all business formation documents.
But Minnesota has some variations, especially for LLC formations, that are different
from other states. Many online services have
some forms that conflict with Minnesota statutes.
Call To Action
Safe Shield offers a free assessment of
your LLC or corporate record book. All
New Business MN readers who respond
to this offer prior to March 31, 2013, will
also receive a $50 discount if they sign
up for any of the Safe Shield services.
If you used an online service to file, you
should consider meeting with someone who
has experience in the state you’ll be doing business in to make sure the filing was done correctly.
States are different. For example, in most
states LLCs are either member managed (shareholders) or manager managed (appointed). You
need to know the difference. Minnesota statutes
require a board of governors, like a board of directors. An LLC can have a single governor who
has to be named in the formation documents.
The entrepreneur of a single-member LLC
often wears all the hats: members, governors
and officers. It is extremely common for businesses that are one person operations to assume
that they don’t have to observe all the legal formalities, such as holding meetings and keeping
minutes.
Because so many business owners are distracted and overlook “small” things, we created
Safe Shield to help them manage the process
and preserve their liability protection.
In the countless free business formation and
practices assessments that we have conducted
over the years, we almost always find serious
discrepancies and holes; items that have been
missed or not kept current.
Our assessment begins by looking at the
foundation of the filing. For an LLC, we look at
Articles of Organization, the Certificate of Organization and any IRS filings they have made.
We check for creation documents like the original meeting documents, naming of the officers
and board, contributions made by the members, the operating agreement, bylaws, stock or
membership ledger and certificates, etc.
Without a doubt, the do-it-yourself (DIY)
filers have the most trouble. They rarely have
all the required documents. But even attorneys
can miss things if they don’t normally practice
in this area.
DIY entrepreneurs also mistakenly choose
to file as an Assumed Name only. If you chose
this option, you have no personal liability
protection in place. With few exceptions, you
should become an LLC as soon as possible.
And just because you filed your LLC properly doesn’t mean it hasn’t become deficient over
time due to neglect. Ninety percent of businesses who come to us have never updated their
documents. Yet every year you need to appoint
officers, keep meeting minutes of the annual
meeting, document all purchases over $300 or
$400, review leases and loan agreements, etc.
It seems strange to many solo entrepreneurs
that they should hold a meeting with themselves and review – with themselves – all the
things they already know about. This is serious.
Conduct an actual meeting. Document it. Keep
minutes. Review all the things required, take
attendance. Call your own name and answer
present.
Trust me. You never want to be in a position
to have to explain to a judge why you thought
meeting with yourself seemed silly. You could
be facing a nightmare if that ever happens.
A few years ago the owner of a small business corporation with a handful of employees
came to us for help. She had just found out that
her “trusted” CFO had been using corporate
funds for unauthorized vacations and home remodeling projects.
The owner had no idea what was really going
on until she started receiving judgments from
vendors who hadn’t been paid. When she tried
to get the financials from the bank – the CFO
had cut her off – the bank wouldn’t release the
information until there was a court order.
At this point, the vendors were suing her
personally; to which she responded to the judge
that the money was owed by her company, a
corporation, and she wasn’t personally responsible.
Unfortunately, she came to us too late. The
court was not persuaded by her foundational
documents. The judge said that her claims to be
a corporation were meaningless since she had
done nothing to keep documentation current.
A legitimate corporation would have behaved
like a corporation and maintained proper records from its inception.
Her corporate veil had been pierced.
Kent Gustafson - Protect Your LLC
Continued on Back Page
Kent Gustafson, Safe Shield LLC, provides corporate compliance services, expertise in corporate
formalities and corporate governance and structure, entity formation, and corporate record management through secure online system for companies of all sizes. He can be reached (320) 352-4200 or
info@safeshieldllc.com. www.safeshieldllc.com
It’s Alarming How Important Proper Security Is
Technology Not Only Protects Against Intrusion,
It Can Improve Productivity, Make You More Efficient, Too.
I
By Steve Emmer
ADT Security Systems
Special to New Business Minnesota
n the old days, when business owners
thought about security and protection, they
were most likely thinking about one thing:
a burglar alarm, that big bell at the back of the
building that went off when a thief broke in.
Boy, have things changed.
While the alarm is still important, the internet and mobile technology have entered the
picture and created a whole new dimension of
business security. It now includes monitoring
the heat and air conditioning, tracking employee performance and productivity, ensuring employee safety, control of what equipment is on
or off, real time notification of who is coming
and going, and monitoring locked doors and
windows and more.
And just about everything mentioned above
you can monitor and interact with from you
smart phone.
Security systems like we have at ADT are
increasingly becoming tools for managing the
business. As a new business owner who may
be thinking about security issues, keep in mind
that eight of 10 small businesses will have security systems of some sort that go beyond mere
locks on the door. You’re not alone in wanting
protection.
But what is the right solution for your business? We ask all of our clients to first do their
own risk assessment. If you walked in to your
office or shop after a break in, what’s the first
thing you would check? What are you most
concerned about losing? How would you replace it? How long would it take you to be up
and running again? How would this impact
your business, employees or customers?
That assessment will help us put together a
plan that fits your needs, starting with perimeter security: alarms, card and door access, controlled access point, intercoms, motion, intrusion and glass detectors, etc.
When it comes to video cameras, we have
a very basic philosophy: every camera should
have an ROI (Return on Investment) and a
clear purpose attached to it. If the cash register
is missing $20 every other night; that is a loss of
Call To Action
Call or e-mail Steve for a Free business
Risk Evalution and Pulse Demonstration.
All new Business Minnesota readers who
sign up with an ADT Pulse Solution will
Recieve a $100 instant savings off of the
ADT List Price. Steve Emmer,
semmer@adt.com
(651) 724-8612.
$240 a month. The cost of the camera is covered
the first month that it is active!
Another example is employee productivity.
If you paying three employees $10 an hour each
and they are standing around not being productive, it could be costing you $60 a day. With
a camera in place, it keeps them focused on the
job and can improve productivity when you
aren’t around. At ADT, we assess and look for
solutions to every business’ particular needs.
By deterring behavior that is costing the
company money, we can return that money to
the bottom line. The system will pay for itself.
Trends and changes
For ADT, the biggest change in the last few
years has been our Pulse system, an internetbased overlay of your intrusion system…on steroids. Using a smart phone, tablet or any device
with internet access, Pulse can remotely arm
and disarm your security system.
Every business owner has woken up in the
middle of the night wondering if the alarm is
on. They can verify the status with their smartphone and arm it if needed. They can also have
a text message sent whenever the system is
armed. That way when an employee turns it on,
the owner will know.
You can also do other things remotely with
Pulse. If you have to work on a Saturday, you
can turn on the heat or the coffee before you
get there. That also means you can turn those
things off from home if you forget.
Security used to be something you didn’t
really interact with much beyond arming and
disarming it. Now you can use it every day to
check in or perform actions. One ADT client
lives in New Orleans and has a store in Eden
Prairie. He used to have to fly in and check
things out on occasion. Now, with Pulse, the
client uses a phone to see the cleanliness of the
stock room, who is opening and closing and if
the alarm is armed or not.
It also enables you to relax while fishing,
golfing or hanging at the cabin.
Beyond the convenience factor, there are
some incredible potential cost savings. There
was a sandwich shop owner who needed an
employee to come in hours before the shop
opened to turn on the oven. Now the oven can
be turned on remotely, saving the owner thousands of dollars a year with his three locations.
Common misconceptions
• Business owners often underestimate the
value of deterrence that comes with a security
system. One of our clients, and he isn’t unusual,
was disappointed that after six years, the alarm
never had never gone off. He was thinking he
didn’t need it until he came to realize that maybe there were no alarms because of the security
system.
• Business owners let their price sensitivity
mislead them. When they hear of someone else
paying less for a service they wonder why they
are paying so much. For security services, the
question they should ask is “what am I not getting that ADT is offering.”
If you are quoted security monitoring for
$6.95 a month, ask if the person doing the monitoring can take action to respond. Ask how
many locations they are trying to monitor. I can
tell you that they can only effectively handle one
response a time. If they are not adequately supported – the price suggests they aren’t – your
emergency will be handled in the order it is received. Not good.
• Business owners who try and set up a Video
Surveillance system themselves may not know
where to best place cameras. They may spend
a lot of money and still be unprotected. They’ll
buy a package of 12 cameras at a discount store
and place them in ineffective spaces. For example, all of the cameras have the same field of
view, and they may be useless if you put them in
the wrong place.
A do-it-yourself system may succeed only in
giving you a false sense of security. I know of an
owner who had $10,000 in cash stolen. All his
security system did was record a great video of
a guy walking around robbing him blind. For
less than $299, he could have deterred the guy
Steve Emmer - Security Protection
Continued on Back Page
Steve Emmer is in small business sales for ADT
Security, which provides security solutions from
alarms, intrusion protection, camera systems and
remote systems for small and medium size businesses. He can be reached at (651) 600-0764 or
semmer@adt.com.
www.adt.com
Hiring Employees Requires HR Protection
Planning is Essential When Bringing on EmployeesCustomers.
By Mike Bourgon
Synergy Human Resources
Special to New Business Minnesota
O
ne of the best ways to protect your business is to prepare for the unexpected. It
most cases that can be difficult. But if
you have hired or are planning to hire employees, I guarantee the unexpected is coming. And
you can prepare for that.
Over a long career as a an employment lawyer with more than 28 years experience as a human resource (HR) director at a large bank with
more than 18,000 employees, I have just about
seen it all when it comes to employee relations
problems.
Facing those problems is never easy and
takes hard work. The large corporation I
worked for managed HR issues with a staff of
200. Most small businesses face the same challenges except too often they are on their own.
That’s one of the reasons why 12 years ago
I started Bourgon HR Services and recently
joined with three other partners to form Synergy Human Resources. Every small business
has HR needs, but only a few have an actual
in-house HR person. My goal was to create an
ad hoc HR problem solver for special projects
or an on-call basis as needed to help new and
small business owners.
Plan Before Hiring
If you are considering hiring an employee
in the next six months, now is the time to start
planning. From an HR standpoint, you should
define the job and what you expect the position
to do. Then you should talk to an HR professional for help in putting together a job description, employee handbook and discuss compensation and benefits.
Many first time business owners need help
ranging from recruiting candidates to learning to ask behavioral-based interview questions that focus on the essential job skills and
functions. Properly set up and managed, either
in-house or with a consultant, HR is a form of
insurance and risk management.
Here are a few common mistakes I expect
you’ll be susceptible to as a first-time employer.
• You will think you can handle it by yourself, without an HR professional. Fight that im-
Call To Action
Talk to one of our experts today to
discuss your specific HR needs. The
call is free, so please don’t hesitate to
contact us at 1-800-921-6808.
pulse. I’ve made every mistake known to mankind and have learned from those mistakes. We
work with our clients to avoid repeating them.
• When faced with a problem employee,
you’ll want to trust your instincts. Not a good
idea. Some employers shoot from the hip and
fire the trouble maker immediately. Some have
instincts that tell them to be a nice person and
work with the errant employee, only to have the
problem persist for years.
In those situations, take a deep breath and
talk it over with the HR professional you are
working with. It is an inexpensive way to limit
your risk.
• During an intense situation with an employee, you may have the urge to lighten the
mood with a little humor. Be very careful. It’s
surprising how attempts at humor can backfire.
It’s another form of reacting without thinking
and is not recommended.
It doesn’t matter that you think the comments are innocent or funny. Courts will look at
this from the standpoint of the person hearing
them and their perception. You’ll lose.
• You have common sense and it works for
you. Common sense is nice, but it leads more
people astray than you can imagine. Some court
rulings will confound your sense of what is
common. The price of being on the wrong side
of HR law is too high. Talk it over with an HR
professional.
Discrimination
Discrimination claims are one of those unexpected problems you can prepare for. With
the current average claim for discrimination
in the Twin Cities – disability, sex, religious,
race and national origin – at about $225,000
per claim, we spend a lot of time helping clients
manage their risk with current employees and
applicants for open positions.
One employer I know mishandled a sexual
harassment complaint and came to us for help.
It’s was too late by that time. If their policies
had included background checks, the harasser
would never have been hired. If there was a
comprehensive training program, the offending
behavior could have been avoided.
With a well-established process for managing the harasser, the problem would be stopped.
Lacking a process, they took no action…and
lost.
Employee Handbook
Many new employers don’t fully appreciate
the importance of an employee handbook. They
just decide to make up their own or grab one
from the internet. They don’t realize how unbelievably easy it is to blindly mess up.
Take for example this seemingly innocent
statement in handbook introduction: “If you
work hard and perform well, you will have a
great career at ABC company.”
While it is welcoming and encouraging,
that statement comes close to giving someone
a conditional guarantee of continued employment as long as the conditions are met. Absent
a reason to terminate, a layoff action could lead
to wrongful termination claim.
Employees who have never had a handbook
invariably are thrilled when they finally get one.
We worked with a client with 18 employees to
create their first handbook. We took the draft to
the employees and worked with them for three
hours discussing and rewriting and finalizing it.
They appreciated being part of the process
of creating the manual. They loved the finished
book because they finally had clarification on
discipline procedures, vacation and sick-day
policies, absenteeism and more. Everybody
knew the rules and where they stood.
Documentation
Good documentation can save you. Bad
documentation can hang you. And the only
Mike Bourgon - HR Protection
Continued on Back Page
Mike Bourgon, a partner at Synergy Human
Resources and founder / owner of Bourgon HR
Solutions, has 34 years experience as an employment lawyer and 28 years as a human resource
director at a large bank with 18,000 employees
in 28 states. He is an expert on employee relations for small employers, including workplace
conflicts, policies, procedures, employee handbooks, mediation, and recruiting. Mike can be
reached at (800) 921-6808 Ext. 5 or
mike@synergyhumanresources.com.
John Butler- Escape the Rules to Save
From Previous Pages
marketplace.
He was the exception in that his monthly
premium increased from $750 to $800 with the
MCHA coverage. The employer, however, was
more than happy to use some of his dramatic
savings to contribute more to that worker to
keep his rates below what they had been under
the group plan.
Get HRA Help
The move to the HRA model has to be carefully managed to avoid confusion and needless
fear. You need to work with a health insurance
professional to provide the needed education
and handholding during the transition.
When I take a company through the change,
I plan on a 60-day transition period. We have
to meet with employees to announce the HRA
plan and start managing some of the eventual
fear that comes with change.
The reaction of employees varies widely.
Some will “get it” right away. Some still won’t
know what a “deductible” is. Others will have
complicated health issues and many more questions. And some will need hand holding when
they end up in the MCHA plan. Maybe one out
of 20 will need additional employer support to
make sure he or she doesn’t pay more than before.
Obamacare
Obamacare will arrive in 2014. In anticipation of the state health insurance exchanges,
major insurers like Blue Cross, Medica, Health
Partners, Preferred One and others, are coming
out with a variety of new products to address
the changing market.
Where does that leave the HRA strategy?
Steve Emmer - Security Protection.
From Previous Pages
from getting in the front window, and at the
very least, detected when he entered. After that
he came to ADT and we designed a new system
for him that secured all his points of entry. All
three of his shops now have the same system.
Conclusion
It’s easy to get excited by all the new security
technology, but when you are considering a security system, look at the factors as well. ADT
has been doing this for 138 years. It’s all we do.
Look for warrantees and guarantees. Ask about
the average number of years customers have
been with them. ADT’s average is eight years.
The industry average is less than three years.
Kent Gustafson - Protect Your LLC
From Previous Pages
Ultimately, she had to sell her land and
equipment to pay off the judgment. She was out
of business. Everything was lost.
If she had kept a closer eye on the business,
this wouldn’t have happened. And if she had
only followed the corporate formalities, they
would not have been able to go after her personally.
Safe Shield creates processes for ongoing
compliance management to protect businesses.
We annually review all our clients’ documenta-
tion. We initiate the review, provide guidance,
extract the information from the owner and
follow through with the state for annual filings,
regular updates and supporting review documentation.
And we notify clients of any statutory changes, due dates and review dates. Our job is to
keep the whole process moving forward.
Minnesota statutes require that each LLC
or corporation keep a record book of articles,
bylaws, resolutions and meeting minutes. Once
Mike Bourgon - HR Protection
From Previous Pages
thing worse than bad documentation is no documentation at all.
We train all our clients to have the proper
voice in their documentation: It should be
neutral and to the point. Your best defense is
demonstrating your efforts to eliminate or stop
a problem.
Examples of bad documentation would include actually demonstrating bias like making
off-color comments, such as suggesting someone is too old or too young. Imagine that ev-
erything you write will be examined in court so
write it accordingly.
Attention to documentation needs to be
ongoing. Any time a performance evaluation
is done it should be documented. Then there
should be a second level of review by a manger or an HR professional before it goes into the
employee’s file.
Having a second level of review ensures that
nothing goes into the record without scrutiny.
Going through the records of a major engineer-
Well, employers will be thinking more and
more about supporting the individual policies
of their employees with a monthly tax-deductible contribution.
The savings from the HRA approach can
be dramatic and substantial – the cost per employee can sometime drop from $9,000 a year
to $3,000. Even with a possible $2,000 per employee penalty under Obamacare for companies with more than 50 employees (come 2014
and beyond) it still provides a dramatic savings
over a traditional company-owned group plan.
Conclusion
The HRA model provides a unique example
of how a free market system can really work inside a health insurance design! HRAs have been
around a long time, but deployed as a wholesale
replacement for the group plan is something
new. Every employer and new business owner
should be aware of this incredible health insurance option.
NBM
That matters.
Find out how many monitoring stations are
looking out for you. More is better. We always
have a live ADT person involved in monitoring.
Some companies outsource monitoring to another company. The dealer does the install and
isn’t involved anymore. Look for a company
that will build a relationship with you, check
in with you, and most importantly, keep your
business secure.
NBM
we have all those assembled, we post them in
our secure online system so clients can access
them from anywhere or they can give access to
trusted business advisors.
We manage the process and keep their corporate veil secure. That is risk management and
abatement. If there is a back door that could
lead to you personally, we nail that door shut.
Based on our experience, it is wise to adopt
best practices for your business formation documents when you are still new and everything
is fresh. If you are an established business, work
with a qualified individual or company to make
sure your corporate veil is secure.
NBM
ing firm, I found dozens of inappropriate things
in the performance reviews, comments such as
“should consider retirement.” That called for a
refresher course for managers.
Conclusion
HR ultimately is about people and how to
deal with them effectively. Owners and managers need guidance and training to give them
the communication skills, situational awareness
and consequences management so they can recruit and hire the right people, lead them to
success and create an environment where they
can thrive while meeting company goals.
NBM