labor lawAdivision of labor law center

In Rhode Island, the New Hire Reporting system requires a little bit more information from its employers. Not only do they require the standard information on you—the employer federal ID number and your company name and address. But they also require your email address, your name or the name of another main contact at the company, and the telephone number where they can reach you.

The state also allows you the employer to register online onto a special New Hire Reporting Web site. That way, you can just sign in to that Web site and report your new hires right there online. The site is secure, according to Rhode Island officials, so no worries they say about getting hacked in to and having all of that private employer and employee information stolen or lost.

The benefit of doing all of your new hire reporting online is that you can have all of your employee records on hand—the employee file, job application, background investigation release, employment offer, interview evaluation, etc.—and not have to make copies or fax them to the state authorities. Just use them to fill in the spaces online, send in the info digitally, and then store those forms back in the file where they will be safe until the next time you need them.

This process might especially help employers who are in the midst of a big growth spurt, who have frequent turnover in their employees, or who tend to hire a lot of temporary or seasonal labor. Yes, even temporary and seasonal employees need to be reported as new hires to Rhode Island—unless, you get your temporary employees through a temp agency. In that case, it is the temp agency’s job to report the employee as a new hire, and not yours.

Our state of Rhode Island (RI) has a wonderful Department of Human Resources which is primarily responsible for our well being as both employees and employers. This department helps us with all aspects that may be troubling in the workplace as well as determining what the best way is to help out the great people of our state. This department has many items it is responsible for as well.

One of the good accomplishments of Rhode Island has been to lower the unemployment rate from 5.7% to 5.6% in less than a year. However this is not a huge decrease it is still going in a positive direction. It is still high n comparison to the national average but it is something as a state we are always battling and working on to keep our state great. As a matter of fact, since January of ’01 more than 13,000 new jobs have been created in an effort to lower unemployment and to keep people working in our state. This is a large amount of jobs considering our population. There are other things that are being done as well in regards to improving our unemployment and producing better fitting employees for the jobs that are available. The state has also used over $229 million in federal funds to aid in job retraining as well as upgrading the current retraining facilities that were already in use.

In Rhode Island the department is also responsible foe overseeing all employment laws. That means making sure that the laws are followed as well as enforced. It is extremely important that these laws are followed and adhered in respect to minors as well. This department also oversees all workplace safety and wellbeing issues as well for our state. This would include securing unemployment benefits as well as determining the needs and wants of both the employees and the employers.