By: Jeffrey Agranoff, Chief Human Resources Officer, HR Consulting Principal, NYC Market Leader, Grassi Advisors & Accountants

The American Rescue Plan Act, the new stimulus package passed last week, includes several provisions that employers need to be aware of and address within their Human Resources procedures.

The most significant is a 100% COBRA subsidy that employers must provide to assistance eligible individuals (AEIs), which are generally employees who experience involuntary termination or a reduction in hours that disqualifies them from the employee benefit plan.

Employers must pay the entire COBRA premiums for AEIs during a six-month period, beginning on April 1, 2021 and ending on September 30, 2021. This benefit must also be made available to AEIs who previously declined or dropped COBRA but whose coverage would have extended into the six-month window. 

Click here to read about required notices and more analysis from Grassi's HR Consulting professionals.

Employer Tax Credits

The Act allows for a refundable payroll tax credit for employers to cover the cost of the COBRA subsidies. The maximum credit is limited to the amount of Medicare payroll taxes paid in a quarter. 

Under the language of the Act, these credits will be reduced by credits received by the employer through the paid sick and family leave credit and the employee retention credit. Grassi’s tax advisors will keep you informed as new guidance is released on this topic.

The Act also extends the paid sick and family leave credits under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) through September 30, 2021 (formerly March 31, 2021) for employers who choose to provide optional FFCRA paid leave benefits. The maximum tax credit for family leave wages was also increased from $200 per day and $10,000 per employee to $12,000 per employee. 

Grassi is Here to Help

Grassi has a full team of HR Consulting professionals who can help you navigate these changes. Please contact your Grassi advisor or Jeff Agranoff, HR Consulting Principal, to receive the guidance and support you need.

By: Bill Passarotti, Senior Vice President, HUB International Northeast

It has never been more important for business owners and leadership teams to strategize with their insurance advisor well ahead of their next policy renewal. Largely due to impacts of the pandemic, double digit rate increases are expected across the board. Those in high-risk areas (such as natural disaster) or with underlying losses or underwriting issues are potentially facing even higher increases. With rates steadily on the rise, the key to reducing insurance costs this year will be managing your business risk.

Practicing proper preventative maintenance is vital to minimizing insurance rate increases. The best plan to help mitigate the risk and potential losses is to work to prevent them. In addition, the following best practices will help position your business in a positive light with the insurance underwriters: 

• Create an emergency plan. Your emergency plan should take a holistic approach to take all hazards into account, including but not limited to fire, natural disasters, water damage, pandemic, workplace violence, terrorism, civil unrest, etc. Consider the potential for a compound disaster, or a catastrophic scenario in which: COVID-19, a natural disaster and cyber breach all converge at once. How will this affect your business or facility? Make sure your plan covers your entire portfolio based on local risks and train your staff to implement it accordingly.

• Preventative Maintenance & Safety Measures: Actively engage in preventative maintenance measures. This includes testing fire pumps monthly, fixing broken handrails and changing out electrical panels, just to name a few examples. These best practices keep your building up to date, which reduces your likelihood of a claim and paints a positive picture for the insurance companies. Water damage has emerged as a major loss leader in recent years so it’s important to know where your shut-off valves are located and how to isolate water leaks to minimize risk. Make sure water pumps, water tanks and other domestic water systems are properly maintained.

There are numerous measures that a business can take to strengthen safety on the property, for employees and clients alike. To begin, develop a comprehensive self-inspection and audit program. Train your employees to identify hazards before they cause losses. Consider external security risks and potential perimeter breaches. Utilize cameras, access control and even hire a third-party security team if your property is in a high-crime area or has been the subject of looting. Common onsite losses like slips, trips and falls can affect anyone on your property. Focus on upkeep of parking and common areas and other high traffic spaces.

Reducing the spread of COVID-19 and other communicable viruses across a facility requires increased cleaning efforts, installation of effective barriers and new paths of egress to promote social distancing and enhanced tenant communication to streamline efforts and promote optimal infection control.

• Contractual Risk Transfer: Working with third parties can potentially add a new level of liability exposures for your business. Third party losses can impact significantly impact your bottom and long-term profits, especially when there’s a question of who is liable. Require that all contractors working on your property provide a certificate of insurance (COI) proving that they carry adequate liability coverage and workers’ compensation insurance. 
COI tracking is a vital risk-management activity, however, it comes with its own set of issues and must be properly managed and supplemented with additional measures. Even if the COI is accurate, the underlying policies could have severely limiting exclusions. Additionally, the policy that the COI certifies could be cancelled tomorrow, and without the insured endorsement, the certificate holder does not have to be notified of policy cancellation.

• Implementing Inspection Suggestions: It is very important to implement any recommendations that the insurance company suggests during an inspection. Working with an insurance broker that has specialized a risk management and loss control division is extremely beneficial for this reason as they can help you accomplish these goals proactively, meeting the carrier's guidelines and expectations.

These are just some of the ways you can get ahead of rising premium costs. Now more than ever, it is imperative to work with your insurance advisor to review your coverages and to understand what your P&C policies cover, what they don’t and the best ways to mitigate the individual and unique risks of your properties.

CIANJ member, Bill Passarotti, currently serves as Senior Vice President with leading global insurance brokerage, HUB International. Based out of Summit, NJ, Bill works with businesses in a wide variety of industries on custom-tailored, comprehensive risk & insurance solutions. He can be reached at 908-666-6200 or [email protected].

For the latest information, guidance and resources on COVID-19 to help you protect what matters most, please visit www.hubinternational.com/coronavirus. 

By: Steve Mendelsohn, Leadership Coach, Better Self Leadership Consulting

Emerging from the pandemic means change for your organization. How can you prepare your leadership team to navigate the challenges and seize opportunities?

As the world looks forward to emerging out of the COVID-19 pandemic and into a vibrant, competitive economy, companies will have to re-establish cohesion and shift their focus from surviving to winning.  How will they communicate this shift and all it will entail?  Are CEO’s and their teams equipped to deliver the message in a way that engages their teams? Leadership coaching may be an important tool to enhance their success.

The Challenge

Emergence from our cramped existence of the past year may be halting and inconsistent, but we will all face fundamental questions as we design our “New Normal.”  What will our offices and our organizations look like?  What enduring role will working from home have in our businesses?  What impact will the increased focus on diversity, inclusion and equity have on our cultures? Will we have to confront extreme political polarization in our organizations?  What have we learned from surviving in a crisis? As we look forward to normal levels of competition, how do we emerge as stronger competitors – competing for customers and also for high-quality employees.

These are some of the pressing strategic questions facing business leaders in 2021. They lead to another pressing question: as we rethink our priorities and reshape our cultures, how do we bring our employees along on that journey?  How do we coalesce as a focused team on a clear mission?

Our employee populations have largely spent the last year in their individual hidey-holes. In the New Normal, they may stay at home or come to office or some combination of the two. Regardless of where everyone sits , however, organizations have to transition from surviving oppressive conditions to defining and creating an inspiring environment. For this pivot to be credible and effective, the message has to start from the top and it has to be disseminated in a coordinated, consistent way with sincerity and authenticity.

How Does Leadership Coaching Fit into this Story?

What is Leadership Coaching Really About?

The essence of coaching – any type of coaching – is helping the person being coached get the most out of their unique mix of strengths and weaknesses. In business coaching, this involves helping a leader sort out what’s most important and helping them overcome obstacles – often self-imposed – to achieving their objectives. It is done by tapping into their authentic selves – not their image of what others expect a leader to look like. In leading change, coaching helps them to focus on the positive elements of the journey and to communicate honestly in order to engage their team in their mission.  It involves striking the right balance between empathy and authority. It’s also about helping leaders to more fully recognize and trust their own strengths, and to use those strengths to super-charge their leadership effectiveness.

Leaders are People, Too

Leading change requires embracing the change completely. However, leaders will have their own doubts, their own anxieties, as they face major change. Coaching is a process that can help them to bring themselves authentically to a challenging situation. To find the positive and lead with it.  To manage their own hesitations and focus on their responsibilities to lead others.

Why Talk About This Now, When There is so Much Else Going On?

This is exactly the right time. Change, especially cultural change, is only successful if employees can look upward and be reassured that it’s going to be all right.  One eye-roll, one sarcastic snicker, one cynical remark can derail an entire initiative. Is this asking too much from your leadership team?  After all, they’re people, too, with their own insecurities about the changes they’re facing. That’s why they need the support that a coach brings.

Who Can Benefit?

CEOs

It is often said that “It’s lonely at the top.” And it’s true. The exhilaration of senior leadership that a CEO has earned is balanced by a heavy burden of responsibility. CEOs are keenly aware of the hundreds or thousands of tens of thousands of families depending on the quality of their decisions in leading their organizations. Yet from the CEO’s perspective, the onus they carry can be isolating. The motivations of peers and other business relationships are often impure, and true friends may be difficult to distinguish from people merely hungering for access and advancement. The presence of a leadership coach provides a partner who has no agenda other than the CEO’s success – a partner whose job is to keep the CEO on track with their mission. To keep them true to their own values.  And to keep them accountable to their own standards. A coach can be a rare lifeline for the CEO in their sole dedication to keeping the CEO connected to their best self.

Senior Executive Team

The CEO’s leadership team must be able to fan out and reinforce the messaging that comes from the top. They can tailor or refine the message to make it relevant to their part of the overall mission, but their main responsibility is to sing from the same hymnal and to do it with a melody and rhythm that resonates with their specific audience. All this while managing their own fears and uncertainties.

High Potential Performers Climbing the Corporate Ladder

Real and potential leaders aren’t all tagged and given a certain job title. Leadership can come from any direction. And any good executive knows who their de facto leaders are. This is a time to invest in this high potential talent. To ensure that they’re on board and on message and their own concerns are addressed. The assignment of a coach to a rising leader is an investment in that future leader’s skill set and in their commitment to the organization.  It is a precious gift to a deserving employee.

Where is the Return on my Investment?

As competition for talent grows in a reviving economy, holding onto and motivating your most expensive resource – your people – is a paramount concern. Ensuring that your leadership team effectively communicates and models a vision of your company’s New Normal is critical to getting the most out of that most precious resource.  Showing your willingness to invest in key individuals is an important ingredient in retaining the right people and in winning the competition for the best talent.

Conclusion

The future, as always, is coming fast. Being ready to define how you will deal with the next chapter in your business’s history is important. Living up to that definition is critical, and leadership teams at all levels will need all the help they can get. The stakes are high at this inflection point, and it’s worth considering all the tools available in your arsenal.

By Robert Devine, Principal, The DAK Group

The COVID Crisis is a “Black Swan Event” and the most disruptive global occurrence in 100 years. Most businesses were already dealing with the disruptive impact of technology – the pandemic’s mandated closures have changed how people live and work.

As the economy reopens business owners need to make decisions, set direction and determine the specific actions to move their company forward. If we look at history to help guide us, the last BIG impact to American business was in 2008.

The Great Recession of 2008 was the result of several factors: The end of an economic cycle, speculation in real estate, easy access to capital and the transformation of the economy. Much discussion has been made about the first three and not enough about the transformation of the global economy. As the United States and most of the world struggled with little or no growth, companies were forced to look inward to sustain themselves and improve earnings. Much of the reason for such a prolonged period of low growth was the transformation of the economy. The technology revolution commenced in earnest after the Great Recession.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted businesses around the world, but American businesses have faced some unique challenges. Mandated closures, limitations on occupancy, supply chain disruptions along with staff illness and fear have American companies scrambling into new practices and techniques to sell and deliver their products or services. The
pandemic has thrust the technology boom into overdrive – what was coming in the next 5 -10 years is now here. Most companies are pivoting to technology to operate - providing the visibility and data making the marketplace much more efficient.

Technology is not the only answer. All companies in all industries must offer their products and services on time, with the highest quality and at the lowest cost.

Any activity involving labor, material, equipment or any process that is not efficient – does not add value to a product or service – must be eliminated.

This is what companies must do to survive – eliminate waste and inefficiency – operate better delivering a perfect customer and client experience. As the economy continues to emerge and transform from the pandemic, it is critical for all companies to engage all their resources in becoming Lean and Efficient – the new reality.

What is Lean? “Lean is a system of process improvement designed to eliminate waste through the application of lean practices and tools optimizing value with the most efficient use of capital, equipment, and materials.” Capital includes your people and their talents, equipment includes your business systems, and material includes all the material you use in the process of satisfying your customer’s requirements. Lean lowers costs, greatly improves competitive advantage, is applicable to all types of businesses, and creates a cultural transformation in the business.   

Another key factor in today’s fast-paced, rapidly transforming environment, is that companies can no longer just count on the business Leader or even the Leadership Team to manage the business. The culture must change and involve all your employees in the success of the company. Your customer service department is no longer a facilitator but must become a solutions provider. He or she must come to work every day seeking better ways to do his or her job. Every employee must be aware of the processes they use to execute their duties and continually be searching for ways to do their job better—error-free. Continually improve or perish.

 A Lean culture and mindset will allow business owners to engage the organization to set a new direction and allow the company to be competitive in the marketplace.

DAK’s Strategic Leadership Consulting are Lean, Continuous Improvement experts. Please contact Robert Devine [email protected] to discuss how a Lean cultural transformation could be benefit your business.

By: Dr. Dale Caldwell, Executive Director, Rothman Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Fairleigh Dickinson University

My father, the late Reverend Gilbert H. Caldwell, Jr. was a Civil Rights Movement “foot soldier” who knew and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As a child of the “Movement,” I paid close attention to Dr. King’s strategic approach to transforming the United States. Most people are not aware that the official name of the march where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech was the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” In this historic speech, he states that it is tragic that some people live “on an island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” Dr. King knew that racial equality would only be sustainable if residents of poor communities had jobs that enabled them to pay their monthly bills. I am convinced that if he were alive today, Dr. King would say that the economic stability of communities is the foundation of the social well-being of countries.
 
No country has sufficient funds to fight poverty in perpetuity. Current “top down” poverty reduction programs providing a “safety net” have had little success reducing systemic poverty. The current safety net programs trap families in a net of economic instability that is difficult to untangle. It is time for a “people up” poverty reduction program designed to provide a “safety trampoline” that bounces people up from poverty to the middle class. Poverty reduction strategies must be based on the belief that if you give someone a fish you can feed them for a day. However, if you help them start a fishing business you can feed a community for a generation.
 
The United Nations made “Ending poverty in all its forms” its number one Sustainable Development Goal because the inability of people throughout the world to feed, house, cloth and educate their families is a “cancer” on society that can be cured if innovative new approaches are implemented at the community level.  The Grameen Bank microfinance program, created by the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunis, is an example of a successful innovative program that works very well in certain circumstances. Unfortunately, the community development bank approach has limited applicability in many locations. One of the most successful ways to reduce poverty in the Group of Twenty (G20) countries is to implement a place based program called “Entrepreneur Zones” or “EZones.”
 
Specific words can be a powerful tool in generating support for a community revitalization program. The term “Entrepreneur” refers to a specific person committed to utilizing novel approaches to creating value. The term “Zone” is a specific location with clear boundaries. Historically, poverty reduction programs have been disconnected “social support” programs that exist as long as there is political support and government funding. The EZones are a “social investment” program designed to help entrepreneurs create jobs and generate greater income and tax revenue. One of the key components of the program is the provision of quality job training and placement for residents. By investing in EZones with public funding, private investment, grant funds and tax credits, economically challenged communities can generate the revenue and jobs needed to reduce local poverty in a sustainable way (without the need of long-term government funding).
 
One of the best examples of an Entrepreneur Zone was the Greenwood Section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1896 that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation in the US. Black communities survived this racist ruling by developing, what we would consider today as, segregated EZones that succeeded economically because of thriving black-owned small businesses. These neighborhoods fought against discrimination by developing healthy communities rooted in entrepreneurship. The wealthiest of these communities was the Greenwood Section of Tulsa. This community was so strong economically that it was nicknamed “Black Wall Street.” White supremacists and the local government were so jealous of the economic success of this community that on June 1, 1921they bombed it by plane and attacked it by foot. Tragically, more than 300 people were killed and 200 businesses destroyed simply because the black community was living the “American Dream” of entrepreneurial success.
 
One positive lesson that we can learn from this embarrassing American history is that when economically challenged communities are given the opportunity to develop entrepreneurial businesses they can flourish and transform poor communities into middle class communities. Government leaders committed to implementing sustainable solutions to chronic poverty, should establish EZones in economically challenged communities around the world. Businesses in these locations should receive public funding, regulation relief, investment fueled by tax credits, grants and entrepreneurship training. In addition, qualified nonprofit organizations should provide poverty-informed job training and placement programs helping the long-term unemployed find jobs. Government programs providing housing, education and health services should be aligned and leveraged to provide more comprehensive and effective support to residents of the EZone community. By creating Entrepreneur Zones in economically challenge communities, we can move the world closer to Dr.King’s “Dream” of a society where all people live in an “ocean” of financial stability and social well-being.