This March, at BUILD26: AWCI’s Convention + Expo, March 15-18, in New Orleans, I’ll be sharing insights on the major issues affecting your business and, more importantly, how top leaders and managers are navigating them to ensure their companies thrive.
My talk will cover a range of topics, from the economy to technology, with a specific focus on the workplace. To succeed in the coming years, you’ll need to consider three key areas: regulations, benefits, and technology. Here’s a quick preview of what we’ll discuss.
Regulations
Although the labor market has softened in the past few months, businesses in this industry are still short of skilled workers. And they’re sensitive to losing valuable people. Finding and keeping the best talent remains a high priority. So, what are smart business owners across the country doing to create the best work environment possible.
For starters they’re keeping up with labor regulations.
The Trump administration is in the process of rolling back many regulations from its predecessor. For example, in 2024 the Department of Labor issued new rules that would have eventually raised the level of eligible overtime for certain employees earning as much as $59,000 per year from the current level of approximately $35,000 (ACE, 2024). This rule, after being contested in court, is not being defended by the Trump administration, so federal overtime wage limits now remain at approximately $35,000. But that’s not all.
More onerous rules that would have required many employers to re-classify their independent contractors as employees are also being relaxed (Disbrow and Ritzman M, 2025). The National Labor Relations Board has been gutted, which means that union activity will be minimal over the next few years (Kaye and O’Brien 2025). And the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has recently eliminated rules issued 2024 that greatly increased an employer’s responsibility for recognizing and addressing discrimination and harassment in the workplace (Stacey et al. 2024).
Speaking of the EEOC, the agency in April issued guidance regarding diversity, equity and inclusion, informing employers that “Under Title VII, DEI initiatives, policies, programs or practices may be unlawful if they involve an employer or other covered entity taking an employment action motivated—in whole or in part—by an employee’s or applicant’s race, sex or another protected characteristic.”Many employers may think that this relaxation of rules at the federal level will reduce red tape and give them the ability to hire and fire more freely and for many that is true. But all that’s happened is that the federal government is pushing these types of regulations to the state levels. And the states have responded.
As of this writing, six states have higher overtime wage limits than the federal government (Oldham, 2025). Thirty states have minimum wages that exceed the national level of $7.25 per hour (NCSL, 2025). Fifteen states are now requiring their employers to be transparent about the pay they’re offering for jobs and advertising as such (Paycor, 2025).
Three states require their employers to have mandatory paid time off (Hugh, 2024) and 17 states have required sick leave requirements for employers (GovDocs, 2025). Many other states are either considering or have legislation in process that would impact these rules. So, you can make the case that things are getting even more complicated!
And then, of course, there’s immigration. It’s well known that the administration is coming down hard on illegal and undocumented immigrants and, while most of the attention has been on higher profile raids and arrests in cities the efforts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will soon be re-directing toward employers. Of course, those employers who have undocumented workers on their payroll are breaking the law and ICE will address this. A consequence will be a further shrinking of available labor.
Interestingly, one area that the Trump administration has not touched is workplace safety. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration has continued to increase fines and widen its rules regarding workplace safety. However, the agency recently released new rules that could relax fines for qualifying small businesses with no history of infractions and who address issues quickly (Bland and Pinkstone, 2025).
All of this is important, regardless of where your business is located. It’s important to keep up with the rules. It’s important to run a safe and happy workplace. You don’t want to be found on the wrong side of these requirements and have employees—or your community—be aware that you’re not providing the best workplace possible.
So, what to do about this? Here are three suggestions:
Work with a good human resources expert or labor attorney to review all the recent rules, with special emphasis on state and local legislation, and confirm that you are complying (or get in compliance!).
Regarding safety, it’s important—for all the obvious reasons—that you are running a safe business. Finally, ask your insurance company if they offer services where internal inspectors can review your facility and practices and make recommendations (many do). Consider working directly with OSHA and using their consulting services—which are free for small businesses—to provide a safety review. Or retain an outside safety expert to conduct a similar review.
Regarding immigration, it’s imperative that you’ve got all your documentation in order and current. Make sure all employees have current I-9 forms along with supplemental documentation. Validate your employees’ work status using E-Verify. Consider hiring an outside immigration attorney to be on call if they need to work directly with any of your more valuable employees that need special assistance.
Benefits
There are three critical benefits your business needs to provide: (1) health care, (2) retirement and (3) flexibility.
Health Care
Health care is the toughest. Predictions are that health-care costs for employers will be increasing 5.8% this year, and that’s on top of similar increases in the past few years (Mercer, 2024). Not providing health-care benefits puts you at a serious disadvantage to your competitors, which include large companies and the government. So how can you stay competitive?
Many employers are opting to continue to provide group health insurance but are passing a larger share of the costs to their employees. Here are some other things to consider, based on what I’m seeing and writing about.
Investigate level benefit plans. A level benefit plan is a form of self-insurance that’s becoming very popular among small businesses. With such a plan you reimburse your employees for their health-care expenses up to a certain annual amount (i.e., $500 or $1,000) and then have a stop-loss group plan (which will be less costly) kick in after that to cover any major incidents.
The reason for doing this is because many employers have found that they’re paying for group insurance that their employees, because of their youth or good health, aren’t even using. So why not just pay for what’s being used? My clients and others I’ve interviewed who do this have saved on health insurance by doing this.
Expand health savings accounts, or HSAs. An HSA is like a 401(K) for your health care and has exploded in popularity over the past decade. With HSAs, employees can put pretax money away ($4,300 individual/$8,550 family in 2025) and then withdraw the money tax free to use for approved unreimbursed health-care expenses like over the counter medications, dental and vision care and counselling services. Unused amounts rollover and grow and there are no minimum distributions. Better yet, recent legislation has expanded the use of HSA eligibility and funding options (Rippy and Schmid, 2025).
Also consider health reimbursement arrangements or HRAs. With an HRA, an employer can contribute pre-tax money to a special account for each employee and then that employee uses those funds to buy their own health care, either from a recommended broker or from a health-care exchange. By doing this, the employer can determine what they want to pay for health care (rather than their insurance provider doing it for them), reduce their administrative costs and lower liability risks that could be caused by privacy violations. I have some clients and readers who have replaced their existing health plans with HRAs and others that offer the program supplementally.
Retirement
Regarding retirement, the SECURE 2.0 bill that became effective in 2022 now gives employers many incentives to set up or add to their existing 401(K) plans. Eligible employers can get tax credits for creating and even for matching their employees’ contributions to their retirement plans. New rules allow employers to match their employee’s student loans, expand payments to part-timers and enter Pooled Employer Plan arrangements that reduces costs and liabilities.
Flexibility
Finally…flexibility. If the pandemic taught us anything it’s that people can work from home, at least for a short period of time. Younger generations want this. Older generations want it ever more. Which means that employers have had to respond and I’m seeing three trends emerging.
The first is work from home policies. Most of my clients and business readers have them, allowing employees to work one to two days from home. The best policies I’ve seen make this benefit earned after a year of service with the company and subject at any time to a supervisor’s discretion.
Technology security needs to be considered. Schedules and behavior of employees when out of the office are also important. Contrary to what you may read, most employees are mandating a full return to the office, but they do require in-person face time for a majority of the week. Working from home is becoming an essential benefit.
Also connected to flexibility is paid time off or PTO. I’m seeing a trend toward more “unlimited” PTO plans. My company offers one. Like many others who have taught me, I offer my employees who have been with me a year to take unlimited PTO subject to their supervisor’s approval. It’s a great recruiting and retention tool and has yet to be abused.
Finally, there’s abbreviated work schedules. A four-day workweek. Sabbaticals. The ability to take time off for oneself as long as the work is getting done and responsibilities are being met. I have both clients and readers who have shifted schedules to 10-hour days so their employees can work four days a week.
Others offer up to a month each or every other year for paid (or partially paid) sabbaticals that not only contribute to their employees’ well-being but foster cross-training and the ability for employers to gauge just how productive their employees are by measuring output when they’re not around.
AI and Technology
I cover AI for Forbes, and my focus has been on what AI tools are available, working and truly creating ROI for businesses right now. Spoiler alert: not many.
Some studies have reported that AI is being used by a growing number of small businesses (Paypal Newsroom, 2025). But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. When these studies refer to AI, they’re talking about generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Anthropic, Copilot, Gemini and even Grok. And yes, these tools are being used by both business owners and their employees.
And they’re producing some productivity benefits. People are writing better emails, getting research done faster and drafting policies and documents with minimal input from lawyers and experts except for their final reviews. This is good. What’s not good is their inconsistency, unreliability and frequent generation of bad information that tech people call hallucinating.
What will really have an impact on businesses in the years to come will be agents. Already big tech firms like Microsoft are rolling out agentic AI to perform tasks—from answering customer questions, creating bills, matching invoices and doing reconciliations with minimal human involvement. But there’s some way to go before these agents are working well enough for a business to rely on them.
Regardless, our employees are watching. And many of them are scared for their jobs. As business owners we have no intention of replacing our very valuable people with robots anytime soon. But we need our people to leverage this technology and get more done. To that end, we must not only encourage but invest.
My best clients and business readers are doing just that. How much Microsoft Office or Google Workspace are you really using? I bet it’s less than 20% of its capabilities. That’s silly, considering that we’re paying for 100% of the product. And as these—and many other software companies—are rolling out new AI capabilities that knowledge gap only becomes wider.
What to do? Three things.
Challenge Your Software Vendors
Check in with your software providers for systems like accounting, inventory, order management, CRM and HR. They’re constantly investing in new AI features and capabilities. Your job is to understand these features and implement the ones that make sense for your business. Schedule a call with them twice a year. Challenge them to justify their monthly fees by showing you how their new AI and other features can help your team become more productive and your business more profitable.
Clean Up Your Data
The second thing is to have your people clean up your data. Because no matter how good AI is, it’s never going to be effective if it uses lousy data. Take the time to review your databases, update old data, fill in empty fields, require data entry in some places and create alerts for when data hasn’t been updated timely. Create lookup lists and custom views for your data administrators to monitor. Forces on those applications with the best AI functionality you’ll be using.
Invest in Training
Hire a consultant or a trainer from one of your software vendors. Their job is to teach you how to use all the application’s features that specially apply to your business. The more training people get the less fearful they’ll be of this technology. They’ll soon understand that by leaning into the AI features of their software they can get their jobs done quicker and easier and relieve stress.
They’ll find themselves being better at what they do and take more pride in their work. The smartest employees I’ve met as clients and business readers understand that they can use these tools to become even more valuable to their employers, which means a better work/life balance and job security in the years to come.
Conclusion
We’ll talk about lots of things when I see you at BUILD26, March 15–18, in New Orleans (www.AWCIBuild.org). But in the meantime, the article represents a few actions you can take to build a better workplace, attract better talent and retain your best people. This will always be a top concern of good business managers. CD
Gene Marks, CPA, is the founder of The Marks Group, and runs a 10-person technology and financial management consulting firm in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. He speaks 50+ times per year to business groups on technology, the economy, public policy and workplace topics and is the author of six books on business management. A former columnist for the New York Times and Washington Post, Gene now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Hill, The Philly Inquirer, Entrepreneur and other national platforms.
References
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Bland K, Pinkstone W. (2025) OSHA Cuts Penalties for Small Employers and Fast Abatement. https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/osha-cuts-penalties-for-small-employers-and-fast-abatement.
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