All times stated are Central Time.

8:30 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.                   

Registration              

9:00 a.m. – 9:50 a.m.    

IRS Issues Updated Audit Guidelines for Executive Nonqualified Deferred Compensation Plans

On June 1, 2021, the IRS issued updated audit guidelines for executive non-qualified deferred compensation (“NQDC”) plans in Publication 5528. These guidelines significantly expand on a previously issued version of guidelines published by the IRS in June 2015 and including the compliance requirements arising under Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code (“Section 409A”). The issuance of 2021 guidelines certainly suggest that the IRS will increase its enforcement activity with respect to NQDC plans. This session will cover common compliance risk issues and how the 2021 guidelines more clearly inform employers about what the IRS expects to see in compliant NQDC arrangements.

10:00 a.m. – 10:50 a.m.              

Auditing and Updating Employee Handbooks

Most organizations have an employee handbook, but when was the last time it was updated? Get the tools and knowledge to tackle updating your employee handbook and remove it from your “to-do” list. An employee handbook serves as an important management tool and the document employees first turn to with questions about an employer’s policies. However, having an out-of-date handbook can expose organizations to legal risks, and in some circumstances may be just as risky as having no handbook at all. During this session we will: identify legally required and best practice policies to include in an employee handbook, flag common problematic policy language and suggest revisions, and discuss the effect recently enacted laws may have on your current policies.

11:00 a.m. – Noon

Artificial Intelligence in Employment Addressing the EEOC, TAD, CA Proposed Regulations and Laws Popping Up in Other Jurisdictions

Whether it’s an app that helps to drive retirement plan investment election, a video interview service, or a program that helps to assess worker performance, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are being employed to help businesses and their employees make more decisions, faster. As the same time, these technologies can create legal risks and compliance challenges in areas such as workplace discrimination, disparate impact, and data privacy and security. This session will explore these concepts and outline recent state and local laws businesses should be considering when investigating and deploying one of these technologies.

Noon – 1:00 p.m.

Lunch

1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.                   

Privacy Settings: Social Media Policies and Problems

Should your company have a social media policy? We will discuss good and bad examples of social media policies and lawsuits regarding social media posts by employees. We will emphasize how federal, state, and local laws may affect what your social media policies cannot say, including First Amendment considerations.

2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.                   

Fiduciary Training

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) strictly regulates most retirement, health and welfare benefit plans sponsored by employers. Central to ERISA's requirements is that persons serving as plan fiduciaries must act solely in the interest of plan participants and beneficiaries with the exclusive purpose of providing promised benefits and do so prudently in accordance with the applicable plan documents. Fiduciaries who do not meet these standards of care can be personally liable to make harmed employee benefit plans whole by restoring incurred losses. Whether or not a given fiduciary's actions are prudent depends on whether such fiduciary makes decisions and/or take actions based on a reasonable process. Therefore, when a reasonable process is not in place to fulfill a fiduciary duty, there may be no defense to a breach of fiduciary claim. The fiduciary training session is intended to both identify important fiduciary responsibilities and describe key actions a fiduciary should consider taking to meet ERISA’s prudence standard.

3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.    

Employee Data – Emerging Compliance Obligations and Best Practices

Whether it’s payroll, employee benefit plans, biometric timeclocks, COVID protocols, DEI initiatives, AI-supported recruitment, or a range of other activities, organizations continue to amass significant amounts of employee personal information. Leaders in HR are increasingly taking more direct roles in the safeguarding of that information. This session will help HR leaders better understand compliance and litigation risks and best practices for their organizations. Topics will include:

• Navigating the alphabet soup of privacy and cybersecurity in the workplace: ADA, HIPAA, GINA, ERISA, CCPA, CMIA, BIPA, SHIELD, etc.
• Understanding the diverse types of “personal information.”
• Ten specific action items that minimize an organization’s data security risk.

9:00 a.m. – 9:50 a.m.                   

Arbitration Clauses and How They Affect Benefits Plans

Mandatory arbitration clauses in ERISA governed employee benefit plans are being heavily scrutinized by the Federal Courts. This session will cover the issues and arguments getting the most attention and highlight the advantages and risk associated with such arbitration clauses.

10:00 a.m. – Noon

Disability Accommodation and the Family Medical Leave Act

Federal, state, and local laws prohibit employers from discriminating against individuals with disabilities. They also generally require employers to reasonably accommodate the known disabilities of employees unless doing so would cause an undue hardship on the employer. In theory, providing a reasonable accommodation is as simple as changing how an employee performs the job without changing the essential functions of the job itself. That sounds easy, but in real life, we often struggle with how this might work, especially when it comes to the interplay of reasonable accommodation, worker’s compensation benefits, and unpaid and paid leave policies and/or laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”). In this session, attendees will review the basics of the Americans with Disability Act and FMLA, and work though detailed scenarios to help identify solutions and effective accommodations that will inevitably cost less than defending a failure to accommodate claim or FMLA retaliation claim.

Noon – 1:00 p.m.                          

Lunch

1:30 p.m. – 2:25 p.m.                   

Cryptocurrency and Employee Benefits Plans

Some believe cryptocurrency is the future and it is an appropriate investment option to be offered to participants in 401(k) plans. Similarly, ESG investment funds have been touted recently in much the same way. This session will cover the ERISA standards of care applicable to plan investment fiduciaries when selecting funds offered to 401(k) plan participants and what the DOL has said about cryptocurrency and ESG funds. 

2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.    

Interactive session – Jackson Lewis attorneys and attendee participants

3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.    

Roundtables - Small groups facilitated by Jackson Lewis attorneys

9:00 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.  

Non-Financial Factors: How ESG trends and looming regulations are affecting the banking industry

Environment, Society, and Government (“ESG”) considerations are affecting people in their day-to-day lives, both personally and professionally. How they invest and where they spend their money (and where they work) are being influenced increasingly by consumers’ ideas of what is best for the environment and our society, not just them as individuals. Federal and local banking regulatory agencies are paying attention to the growing demand for ESG accountability. Even though there’s not an official ESG reporting requirement, yet, or even a uniformly accepted data set, it’s only a matter of time until there are universal standards, per industry, that will possibly apply to your business.

In addition to regulatory issues, DEI is a subset of ESG, so we will discuss DEI initiatives and how your company can have a positive DEI profile.

We will spend time analyzing and discussing the following (and other ESG topics), and allow time for audience interaction:

• What do you think are examples of ESG factors?
• How has the SEC (and other agencies) defined ESG?
• What are pros and cons about using a non-financial factor to measure the value of a company?
  

11:00 a.m. – Noon