How much time do you waste in a week? Organizations are losing an average of $15,138.03 per employee annually due to unnecessary tasks, according to a new report from Wrike. Wrike's 2024 Impactful Work Report found that employees are spending 11.24 hours or 30% of their work week on unnecessary work. The biggest time waster? Finding information from multiple systems because it isn’t all accessible through a single interface (2.4 hours). Other time wasters include: having to find and send information to other people they work with because it isn't easily accessible to them (1.4 hours); chasing other people they work with for status updates, approvals, etc. (1.5 hours); doing work only to find actions weren't recorded correctly, so it isn't what should have been done (1.1 hours); repeating work they've already done because the original work was lost (1 hour); doing work only to find out someone else has also done the same thing, so they've duplicated one another's actions (1 hour); repeating work they've already done because they can't demonstrate to superiors that it's been done (0.9 hour).  Source:  HR Director 10/11/24

To disclose or not disclose pay: Based on a survey of 415 hiring decision-makers, a CareerBuilder study found that 55% of employers do not reveal salaries until the interview phase. Only 8% of employers are sharing specific salary information at the outset, while 37% share a range. This year, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that 80% of U.S. workers are more likely to consider applying for a position if the salary is listed. The study found that employers that embrace pay transparency experience several benefits, including increased job visibility and better candidate matches. Job postings that include salary information tend to perform better in search engine algorithms, and CareerBuilder posts featuring salaries perform 30% better than those without.  Source:  CCH 10/16/24

Should you increase benefit education for employees? According to a study by Payroll Integrations, The 2024 Employee Financial Wellness Report, while 57% of employees feel ‘completely’ (27%) or ‘very educated’ (30%) about their company’s benefits, the results overall indicate a problem when, ideally, all employees should feel ‘completely’ informed as to their company’s benefits package. The survey also found that Millennials (ages 27-42) feel the most educated on employee benefits: 31% say they feel completely educated on company benefits. Other generations all feel similarly regarding their education: 26% of Gen X workers (ages 43-58) and 25% of Boomers (ages 59+) say they feel completely educated on benefits, while 24% of Gen Z workers (ages 18-26) say the same.  As to be expected, employees consider retirement plans (73%) and health insurance (72%) as the most important benefits by a considered margin. This does not necessarily indicate that employees consider benefits such as life insurance support unimportant, only that they consider retirement and health insurance most important.  Source: Payroll Integration

Investing in women’s careers is declining: Down from 24% in 2022, only 16% of survey respondents for LeanIn.Org and McKinsey and Co.’s latest Women in the Workplace report said they’re offering formal sponsorship programs for women. In 2022, 48% had women-focused recruiting programs. Now, only 34% have these kinds of recruiting programs. Similarly, 24% had women-focused internships, according to the report. Now, only 11% of respondents offer such programs. Researchers noted an overall decline in commitments to women, stating that “progress has been much slower earlier in the pipeline, at the entry and manager levels.”   Bloomberg’s 2023 Gender-Equality Index, for example, was an analysis of ​​484 top-grossing companies, across 45 countries. While most of the participating employers in Bloomberg’s index were largely forthcoming with data, the overall resulting score for participants was 73% — a C-minus in gender equity. Bloomberg rated the companies on gender pay equity, inclusive culture, anti-sexual harassment policies and leadership and talent pipeline.  Source:  HR Dive 9/24/24

What do you know about R&D credits? Many small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) may be missing out on an opportunity to reduce their payroll taxes through research and development (R&D) tax credits. While HR typically defers to the finance team when it comes to taxes, the unique vantage point of HR can contribute a different perspective. R&D doesn’t apply just to organizations doing hard-core science. In fact, any business in any industry that is investing time, effort, and resources to improving products, processes, or solutions is eligible for the federal R&D tax credit and possibly state R&D tax credits. You don’t have to be a large company to take advantage of this credit. For example, a California-based machine shop has 10 employees with an average annual revenue of $2 million. Working with their payroll provider, they identified $134,800 in federal and state R&D tax credits related to business activities from 2016-2019. A pest control business that developed new software for internal use reaped $265,000 in R&D tax credits. HR should work with finance to identify opportunities for these savings for their employers.  Source: HR Executive 9/17/24