Thank You Obamacare

I'm not being sarcastic on that Thank you and it's not for the obvious reasons you may be thinking. I don't make any money off of which ever medical insurance plan a client purchases.  It has been one of the best conversation starters for a Human Resources Consultant like me.

Early last year,  parts of the national health plan act included penalties to employers for not offering group health care insurance and for those who did but the plans didn't meet the regulations' standards. Typically, small businesses are running on such tight margins, that the expense of health insurance was never attractive. But making it a compliance issue highlighted the need for all employers to consider other compliance issues that were never taken into consideration.

Many business owners were suddenly made aware of other employer regulations which in years past were never considered when they created and grew their businesses. Mostly business owners and business decision makers became more interested in these regulations after a claim was filed and they had to pay fines and legal fees. Unfortunately, many weren't even aware of legal requirements of this aspect of doing business. Some even continue to ignore these issues. The mind set of "it's my company and I can do what ever I want" still prevails. In some aspects this is true and many employers get away with non compliance for years.

HOWEVER, this may be the very behavior behind the inability to find or even keep quality employees and talent the business needs to run better. It may also be in the way of the company's ability to grow,  getting investors or even selling.

Anything, even something as unrelated as national healthcare, that helps me make business owners and decision makers aware of employer compliance issues, is OK by me. Makes my mission a bit easier.

Point is, if you run a business and you have employees or use consultants, you need to know what your legal responsibilities are and the steps you need to take to protect your business and profit margin. You hired a lawyer or used a legal service to register or incorporate, you use an accountant to deal with your financial matters  - you need a Human Resources professional to deal with the human capital and employer compliance issues.