Year-End “Punch List” Items – Are You on Track?

The end of any year is always challenging, between juggling personnel holiday vacation schedules, preparing year-end paperwork, and making adjustments for the upcoming year. From Affordable Care Act compliance and reporting to adjusting compensation strategies, there is no shortage of things to do. In case you are overloaded or running behind this year, here’s a handy list of items to review and determine if you have outstanding work for any of them. To simplify things, we’ve put the year-end tasks into five buckets – Benefits, Payroll, Compliance, Hiring and General HR.

And, don’t worry if you don’t get it all done by December 31 – many items that can be tackled at the start of the new year.

Benefits

  • Prepare for ACA compliance responsibilities
  • Examine benefits package
  • Finalize employee open enrollment details
  • Verify employee dependent coverage
  • Ensure proper end-of-year PTO carryover in the system or pay employees out for PTO, depending on your policy

Payroll

  • Review company-wide salaries
  • Prepare for the first payroll run of the new year
  • Confirm new year payroll schedule
  • Order W-2s and 1099s
  • Review employee wage, tax and withholding information (such as W-4s)

Compliance

  • Ensure employee classification compliance
  • Update employee handbook
  • Audit personnel files for compliance
  • Verify that correct labor laws are properly posted
  • Update OSHA logs
  • Distribute annual notices to employees, e.g. ERISA
  • Ensure that anti-harassment training is completed
  • Move terminated personnel files to storage

Hiring

  • Review hiring processes
  • Have departments check staffing needs to plan for new hires
  • Create and update succession plans
  • Update job descriptions

General HR

  • Review HR budget for the new year to begin to allocate resources
  • Perform annual performance reviews
  • Make departmental New Year’s resolutions/set goals
  • Review and update company policies
  • Remind employees to update information (addresses, tax documents, etc.)
  • Review vendor contracts and set up renewal details
  • Back up any necessary HR data and personnel files
  • Clean and organize personal workspaces
  • Create and distribute vacation calendar for new year

For help with any of these tasks, now or in the future, we invite you to click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page or give MarathonHR a call at 678-208-2802.