labor lawAdivision of labor law center

HR professionals or owners are faced with my conflicting HR questions or situations everyday and how to solve the issues can vary depending on who you ask.  Many business owners or HR professionals often ponder the same question, “Is there an agency or source where I can go to get guidance or assistance on these HR issues?”.  Well now there is a solution!  www.HumanResourceBlog.com is now available for any HR professional to come and share their thoughts, questions, or issues and to openly discuss the situation or issue at hand.  Where else would you be able to go to find a community or center that has professionals sharing your same common problems and also having suggestions for you to possibly consider.  Like they say, two brains is better than one.  In this particular case, it’s two professionals better than one! 

www.HumanResourceBlog.com has a goal to build a community strictly for HR professionals all across the states to be able to post and receive answers from actual professionals in the same situation or have the knowledge to possibly guide you to answer.  State laws vary from state to state.  If your organization operates in multi-states, this is the place for you.  www.HumanResourceBlog.com does not limit the answer to any particular state or topic.  It does not have boundaries and/or limitations in the state the question is deriving from.  If you are seeking an answer to your HR question, www.HumanResourceblog.com will be the solution!

Answers are posted daily from Real HR experts that are emailed the questions instantly.  There is no automation to the postings of answers.  The website is strictly for owners, HR professionals, supervisors  and managers to post their HR related issues, questions, or concerns.  Post your questions today! The web site is not intended for employees to post employee related questions. 

Come join and lets build an HR Community together.

Hope to see you there!

The original new hire reporting program was started in Tennessee in the late 1990s. as it was with most of the other states that we have looked at in this blog. But more recently than that, the state of Tennessee has actually made some changes to their new hire reporting labor law that we should look out. So strap on your seatbelts! We’re taking a road trip to the state of Tennessee, home of the Grand Ole’ Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame. Heeee Hawwwwww!

The new change to the Tennessee labor law on new hire reporting came about at the turn of this century. Law makers made effective July 18, 2001, a new requirement that makes the date of hire a required bit of info that must be included with the new hire report for every employee. Previously—and it is still the case in many other states—the date of hire of a new employee is just optional when it comes to sending in data.

The new Tennessee law also makes it so that employers have to register one time in order to submit new hire data on the Web. The registration also allows them to upload information from the state system.

The other benefits of registering and submitting new hire reports online in the state of Tennessee include that you don’t have to repeatedly submit your employer info. When you submit the old fashioned way, you would have to provide your company name, company address, and company employer federal ID number. Not in the Tennessee online reporting system. That info comes up automatically when you sign in to the system.

You can also go online and change your employer information any time, if say, you move your company headquarters or change the company name. After that one change, the new company info is stored in the system.

In Tennessee (TN) we take a lot of pride in our workers through our Department of Human Resources. As a department there are a lot of jobs that they partake in to help us. This is in regards to both employees and employers. They do everything they can to maintain and provide a steady and safe work environment for everyone in our state. This department tries to maintain and work at lowering the unemployment rate for our people.

They try to lower and maintain our employment rate in Tennessee through many different ways. In May of 2005 the unemployment rate in our state was at 6.2%. It is now in at the current rate of 5.9% which is an improvement but nowhere near the ultimate goal. When it is compared to the national average of 4.8% it pales in comparison and shows just how much further we have to go. However we are working very hard at maintaining lower rates. In the past three years we have created well over 123,000 new jobs in our state in order to work at the unemployment battle. The department is also working for you to keep the levels down by having retraining and placement programs in place that will put you back into the workforce faster.

One of the primary jobs of the Tennessee Department of Human Resources is also to maintain and keep up with unemployment as well as worker’s compensation benefits. This means that they give these benefits out as well as monitor to ensure that they are not being taken advantage of. This department is also in charge of maintaining and upholding all of the labor laws of the state in order to keep the employers and employees treated fairly and honestly. If you are having issues in your workplace this is the department that you need to contact.

I was recently researching updates to states’ poster posting laws when I came across a recent update in Tennessee. The Tennessee government revised the Workers’ Compensation posting as of September 2005. It is mandatory that all employers post the latest poster so that employees are made aware of the current laws and regulations.

When it comes to workers’ compensation, it is mandatory that employers that have over 4 employees have workers’ compensation insurance. Workers’ compensation insurance ensures that if an employee becomes disabled or injured on the job, that the employer will still be able to pay benefits.

If an employ suffers injury or occupational disease that is covered by the Workers’ Compensation Act, then the employee shall be entitled to vocational rehabilitation services, including retraining and job placement. If the employee is injured in a way that makes it impossible for him or her to return to the job that he or she left, then the employer must pay for that retraining and physical therapy, if needed.

There are a variety of disabilities that workers can claim if they are injured on the job. Some disabilities are long-term and permanent while others are temporary. Additionally, an employer is responsible if an employee has permanent disfigurement. When an employer is “responsible” for an employee, it means that the employer must assure that his workers’ compensation insurance covers the cost of the employee’s medical bills, including physical therapy and retraining.

Many employees that have to receive workers’ compensation benefits are also eligible for disability. If so, then your employee could spend many, many weeks out of the office. Under the terms of the law, you must make a due diligent effort to reaccept and reappoint that employee to his previous position or to a comparable one when he or she returns to work. In the meantime, you may fill the empty position as long as you can bring the injured employee back in a suitable spot.