We're considering starting a "leave donation" program in which employees could contribute accrued sick, vacation and personal leave to co-workers whose ongoing health problems drain their own leave banks. It sounds like a great idea, but I want to make sure we do it right. For those of you who have such programs, what issues should I consider as I draft the policy? Have you experienced any unintended consequences?—Bill, Colorado

“My senior admin recently asked us what we should discuss during our monthly admin meetings,” a reader wrote. With time at a premium, this is a good point, as there’s an ever-increasing need for groups to get more real work done during regular meetings. Suggestions for making your next admin meeting more productive:

Occasionally, employees work up the nerve to complain about sexual harassment only to get cold feet about pressing their complaints or naming names. What should you do if an employee complains, but then just asks for a transfer instead of identifying the alleged harasser? That’s the situation one employer recently faced.

More than two-thirds of the world’s online population visits social networking and blogging sites. Reaching this captive audience can lead to greater credibility, more exposure, and higher sales. If you’re considering SMM, be sure to avoid these five mistakes:

When Fiona MacLeod was tapped to become president of BP Convenience Retail U.S. & Latin America, she rolled out a bold plan that eliminated 9,500 jobs. But she needed those employees—whose jobs were being phased out—to stay motivated over the next 18 months. How did she keep them performing at their peak?

Try these cool Outlook tips: Click-and-drag names to your Contacts list. Eliminate the auto-complete names that appear in the “To” field of your e-mails. Share calendars with others in Outlook 2007 ...

A University of Minnesota study of sexual harassment shows that female supervisors are more likely to be harassed than women with no supervisory duties. More than half of the female supervisors who responded to the survey reported having been sexually harassed on the job. But only 30% of women with no supervisory duties reported harassment.

Wrangle all your to-do lists into order with these four online tools: Springpad, Zoho.com, Cozi.com and the Things application:

If an employee’s FMLA medical certification is incomplete (required information is omitted) or insufficient (the information provided is vague, ambiguous or nonresponsive), an employer is now entitled to request additional information directly from the employee’s health care provider, subject to certain key limitations.

President Obama last month signed an executive order that directs federal employees “not to engage in text messaging while driving government-owned vehicles; when using electronic equipment supplied by the government while driving; or while driving privately owned vehicles when they’re on official government business.”

August Turak explains how Trappist monks are guided by a management philosophy that has six basic tenets, applicable to companies large and small:

Women leaders in Generations X and Y don’t go it alone or count on legal remedies to break the glass ceiling. They are highly interdependent. This distinguishes them from their predecessors. Today’s high-watt Silicon Valley women make heavy use of social networking to get ahead.

Do you aspire to work in the C-suite? You can safely assume that top executives will require a prized package of office skills. But most high-level execs say they also want assistants who have the “X Factor.” Love it or hate it, high-ranking executives want employees who can read minds, anticipate needs and supply that indescribable “something” that propels an executive toward success.

Advertising titan David Ogilvy, who died a decade ago this year, sent these thoughts scrawled in a note to a business reporter in 1991: "Our founding fathers referred to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Profit didn’t enter into it" ...

Q. As a cost-saving measure, our company reduced the salaries of exempt employees by 10%. Employees get their salaries regardless of the number of hours they work. We have always asked our employees, though, to fill out a time sheet on which they write down 40 hours every week. Now we will ask them to record just 36 hours on this time sheet. Any problems with this?

Here’s a reason to slow down and act deliberately when disciplining an employee who has filed an EEOC complaint: A court has concluded that coincidental timing alone can be enough to keep a case alive. That’s true even if it turns out that all the accusations in the EEOC complaint turn out to be unfounded.

Help attendees convert decisions into action after the meeting ends. Here’s how:

Generally, employees aren’t entitled to FMLA leave to care for adult children who suffer from serious health conditions—unless the child is disabled. The test is whether the child suffers from a physical or mental disability that makes self-care impossible.

Daniel Brant liked to curl his eyelashes and wear mascara and heels when he went to his hair-stylist job at the Chop Shop on the Philadelphia campus of Temple University. When his boss transferred him to the salon’s South Street location and later fired him, he sued for discrimination.

Asperger’s syndrome may be a covered disability under the ADA, a federal court hearing an Ohio case has concluded. Asperger’s is a developmental disability characterized by “severe and sustained impairments in social interaction,” according to the American Psychiatric Association. The condition is permanent and is similar in some respects to autism.

Q. I sold a real estate property to my son on the installment basis. Is there any tax problem if he resells it at a gain?

You are no doubt familiar with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It prohibits various kinds of discrimination and also spells out tight deadlines for when employees must file complaints with a state discrimination agency or the EEOC. But there is another avenue employees can use to get into federal court, as long as race is at the core of the discrimination claim: Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act.

As people gain experience, they look back on their successes and overrate their judgment, says Malcolm Gladwell, distiller of social trends and author of The Tipping Point. Research shows that even when playing games of pure chance, people carry an illusion of control, thinking they can win because they’re “better.” A simple explanation: overconfidence.

One of the cardinal rules of hiring is that you should ask all applicants the same questions. Even good rules can sometimes be broken—when it makes good sense. For example, if you have an open position and are interviewing both internal and external applicants, it’s perfectly logical to ask internal applicants different questions, since they’re already familiar with your operations.

Set aside any notions you might have that the federal bureaucracy is inherently dysfunctional. In fact, Uncle Sam’s best agencies have a thing or two to teach private-sector employers. Here are eight lessons employers can learn from the biennial agency-by-agency ranking of federal employers by the Partnership for Public Service and American University’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation.