I hate the alphabet

The summer is almost over here in the Northeast, and it's that time of year again for burning eyes and strained shoulders. Back to school, touch football? Not in HR. No, it's time to make all of the policy and compliance updates to the Employee Handbook that have been put off for the past year (or more...), so we can get them approved for January 1st. So they can then change them again and we're no longer up to date. I'm going blind from alphabet soup.

Here are some overviews of areas we've all been putting off:

• New FMLA Rules: 10 Important Revisions
• New FMLA Rules: More Important Changes
• ADA Amendments Act (ADAA) of 2008 and EEOC Issues New ADA Guidance
• Unscrambling the New Legislative Requirements of 2009
• Gallagher Benefits Services Webinars (some require registration but good content for HRA/HSA, HIPAA, COBRA, etc.)
  

So you have employees in every state

At my current company, we have employees in almost every state, working from their homes and traveling to client sites 4 days per week. We don't have an internal corporate counsel, so to keep on top of all the state regulations without paying extreme hourly fees to our employment attorney,

I've found these lists of laws by state to be very useful:

• Who is a dependent for Health Insurance? National Conference of State Legislators
• When do you need to provide Final Pay to terminating employees? Nolo
• Which states allow vacation to be forfeited (use-it-or-lose-it) at year end? Employment Law Handbook