Our annual community conference, AmbroseConnects, is now less than a month away! It’s our biggest event of the year, and we hope you will join us there. For those of you who don’t know already, AmbroseConnects is a great day-long event for HR professionals, business leaders, and other members of the Ambrose community. It’s a place to gain knowledge, share ideas, communicate, collaborate, and network with peers in your industry. We have a focused schedule of excellent breakout sessions and panels this year. For the first time, we have developed two distinct tracks for the sessions: one geared specifically towards HR professionals and one for business leaders.

A non-compete agreement (or covenant not to compete) is a contract by which an employee promises not to compete with his or her former employer for a specified time, within a specified region, and in a particular way. Such an agreement can serve to protect legitimate business interests like preventing employees from leveraging relationships, goodwill, information, or skills acquired as a result of employment for the benefit of a new employer. Often these agreements may be combined with non-solicitation and confidentiality agreements as well. 

Ambrose is following the healthcare reform legislation very closely and will continue to provide updates such as this as they occur. We began with a post including a brief civics lesson and outlining the regulations that have already gone into effect. This post marks the first in a series that will discuss the upcoming regulations, such as wellness regulations for participatory plans and health-contingent programs, the Traditional Reinsurance Program Fee, and discrimination testing.

Though winter bonus season is in the past, compensation – whether base or supplemental – remains a sensitive topic with lingering effects for many employees. On a surface level, employees tend to correlate a job well done with receiving financial recognition from their employer. Examples include, but are not limited to, bonuses, expense accounts, profit sharing contributions, and 401(k) matching.  

There are two basic types of paid leave. Category 1 leave is only taken occasionally and most employees will use it just once or twice during their tenure at your company (e.g., Parental Leave).

Love may be in the air (or maybe it’s just leftover Valentine’s Day fever?), but before jumping into an office romance, check out your Employee Handbook and consider the following information.  

A Brief Civics Lesson

After the Supreme Court Ruling and the result of the presidential election this fall, everyone is now realizing that the Affordable Care Act is here to stay. Although the law establishes the general guidelines of healthcare reform and outlines what will change and how this will be implemented, many of the details are not explained there. One part of the law is that it dispatches to different federal agencies the duty to develop regulations that iron out all the details. For this law, the primary agencies are the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Department of Labor (DOL), and Health and Human Services (HHS). 

Do you cringe when it's time to conduct performance reviews? It’s ok; you can admit it. Let's face it, few people look forward to performance reviews regardless of what side of the table you're on. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to make this process less painful, more effective, and maybe even…fun?

On January 1, 2013, Congress passed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 in order to address several tax and spending cuts and avoid the dreaded “fiscal cliff.”  Below is a quick list of seven ways the bill will affect you or your employees.