When employees request leave, especially for unforeseen circumstances, they don't need to assert their FMLA rights explicitly by saying, "I need FMLA leave." In fact, they don't need to mention FMLA ...

With fewer people doing more work, here are three ways to ease the workload: 1. Give people more choices. 2. Help them prioritize. 3. Don't overload star performers ...

Pay attention to how you sound in response to being questioned or contradicted. If your people get the slightest whiff that agreement is what you prefer, that’s what you’ll get. To fight that possibility, take these steps:

Although many of the biggest changes in the new health care law won’t take effect until 2014, others kick in this year. These changes mostly affect insurers and the benefits they must offer. It’ll be up to you to understand (and explain) these changes to employees. Among the health insurance changes to expect in 2010:

Workplace budgets remain tight, yet recession-weary employees are more in need of morale boosters than ever. Now’s the time to use a little creativity to reward workers. Here are a few ideas from Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, whose advice appears on a Harvard Business Review blog:

I need some good employee-appreciation ideas—that don’t cost a lot of money. My company has about 500 employees working in different departments. I just started in HR about six months ago, and they don’t even recognize birthdays! I’d like to start an employee appreciation program. Some examples would help me sell the idea to top management. Can you share what you do in your company?—Rhonda, Miss.

Anything less than a completely honest performance appraisal will only cheat the employee out of personal development, plus it could set the stage for a discrimination lawsuit. Here are eight important do’s and don’ts:

Whether a group is dividing a restaurant bill or working on a shared budget, the more cooperative the group is, the more likely it can rise above a challenge. It helps a leader to understand, then, why some groups cooperate more than others.

If you're relying solely on your memory to evaluate employee performance, you're making appraisals far more difficult than necessary. That's why it's best to institute a simple recording system to document employee performance. The most useful, easy-to-implement way is to create and maintain a log for each person. Follow these six steps:

Inappropriate attire … tardiness … poor work habits ... sexually offensive behavior … personal hygiene. HR professionals are routinely forced to discuss those uncomfortable topics with employees. What's the most awkward conversation you've ever had to have with an employee? How did you approach the discussion? How did it turn out?—The HR Specialist Forum Editors

President Obama’s 2011 budget plan calls for the U.S. Department of Labor to hire 100 new enforcement personnel and gain $25 million in new funding to target employers that misclassify workers as independent contractors (ICs). This comes on the heels of a huge IRS audit program starting last month that randomly selects 6,000 employers for audits over IC and other employment tax issues. Here's a three-factor guideline on how to classify employee or Independent Contractor based off the IRS checklist:

The FLSA allows employers to round off an hourly employee’s arrival or departure time to the nearest five minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter of an hour. But your rounding practices can’t always favor the employer. Rounding must be neutral or it must favor the employee. That means if you round down, you must also round up. You have several ways to make rounding fair:

At real estate settlement firm Title Source, President and CEO Jeff Eisenshtadt doesn’t care who’s right. He cares what is right. Around the office, Eisenshtadt has posted signs containing what he calls “isms”: They’re the words of wisdom that he expects his employees to live by—and that he uses during their evaluations.

Nothing irks like jerks at work.  But some workplace behavior goes beyond being merely annoying.  When the actions of “challenging” personality types land you in court, these workers become a liability – in every sense of the word.

You know the saying: One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. If you’re a manager, you may occasionally encounter a bad apple. So what does a leader do to stop “problem” employees from spreading their negative influence?

Without you realizing it, low morale can creep into your organization. Check every day to make sure people stay in tune. Here are 10 sour notes to listen for:

Nobody said managing poor performers would be easy. So don’t manage them. Try these stranger-than-fiction methods of the truly cowardly. Example: Try "team-building." Instead of working one-on-one with the source of trouble, drag the whole group into “team-building” in hopes that your poor performer will improve.

As painful as it was, NBC’s decision to say goodbye to Conan O’Brien was about protecting and increasing revenue, which is any business’s prerogative. The network did make some missteps, though, in managing its talent:

When leading a luxury brand, success hinges on aligning every employee behind your mission. At Ritz-Carlton, president Simon F. Cooper uses a communication tactic called the “lineup” to ensure all 38,000 employees are on the same page. It’s a 15-minute meeting during every shift.

According to an article in Training & Development magazine (7/07, p. 20), senior executives attend fewer training classes than other corporate employees.

Paul Falcone, author of 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees, offers these scripts to follow when you need to have awkward but essential conversations with employees. Here's what managers should say after they've said, "Hey, got a minute?" 

Sometimes it seems like supervisors and employees work in entirely different places. Several recent studies show that bosses and front-line employees have widely varying views about their organization’s priorities, morale, compensation and benefits. Here are seven key flashpoints:

With everything on your radar during the workday, it’s easy to forget about employee morale. But keeping the team engaged isn’t something that can be ignored or postponed. To keep morale on your radar, be aware of some of the common management mistakes that undermine it. Here are nine main deflators of employee morale, plus tips on avoiding them:

There’s a guy in our shop who whistles almost nonstop at an ear-piercing level. His co-workers have asked him to stop, and then they asked me to ask him to stop. When I did, he said he had a right to whistle. Now whenever he sees me coming, he starts to whistle really loudly. This is causing a lot of tension in our shop, and a lot of his co-workers are getting very aggravated. I don’t believe this calls for any kind of formal discipline—that would be like disciplining someone just for being a jerk. Any ideas on what to do to get this guy to cut out his annoying behavior?—DS, Fla.

Well-supported teams receive the information, training and rewards they need to keep chugging along. Here are four prescriptions for coaching your team: