The longer Scott Berkun works as a shaman in leadership circles, the greater the danger he’ll start believing his own PR and acting like one of those annoying gurus who talk as if everybody else is too stupid to do in a year what he could do in a day. To keep know-it-alls from falling for their own malarkey, he makes the following suggestions for keeping “experts” in line:

What does it take to reach the top of your game, professionally? Women, at least, can learn much from a new book, How Remarkable Women Lead, by Joanna Barsh and Susie Cranston. The authors spent five years on research and 100 in-depth interviews with women leaders from around the world. They discovered that women who excel share these five qualities:

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. In 2008, Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, did just that. He invited a dozen of his fiercest critics to dinner—those who had served in leadership positions, had disagreed with him or “just straight out don’t like me.” Because of the dinner, LeBlanc and his dissidents now have a “reasonably affable working relationship.”

When employees say they’re having trouble completing their job duties because of their ADA-qualifying disabilities, employers are required to enter into an “interactive process” with them to find accommodations that allow them to perform the job’s essential functions. That’s where the newly updated, redesigned Job Accommodation Network (JAN) site can come in handy.

It took the failure of Lehman Brothers and the devastation of Wall Street for many executives to admit that their policy of “legislated optimism” wasn’t working. Leaders are increasingly replacing the culture of “Trust me! We’re fine!” with a policy of radical transparency.

According to a study by the International Association of Administrative Professionals and OfficeTeam, promotions and cash bonuses were ranked by managers as the most effective ways of recognizing employee accomplishments. But administrative pros put two other appreciation tactics at the top of their list:

Think like an inventor by looking for opportunity in failure. British inventor James Dyson says that in trying to develop a fine blade of high-speed air for another product, his team accidentally came up with new hand-dryer technology ... Nail the solution to a problem by defining the problem ... Give better feedback with the "puppy theory," says Carol Bartz, chief executive of Yahoo ...

John S. Barry staked his entire claim on WD-40 and the motto of keeping it simple. When he took over his father-in-law's small company—$1 million in annual sales—he made it smaller, chopping the product line to one and renaming the company after that product: WD-40. Then … no changes—for 25 years. While his strategy seems simple, it’s actually pretty savvy:

High-performance leaders revolutionize their roles by changing the dynamic between leader and follower: Not only do they hold team members accountable for results, but they themselves expect to be held accountable by team members. Being held accountable requires a thick skin and brave employees willing to offer honest feedback.

Q. An employee brought in a doctor’s note that said, “Employee can work only eight hours a day due to arthritis.” I don’t think that’s an ADA disability. Is it a violation of ADA if we don’t honor this restriction?

Mike Figliuolo’s favorite part of being a tank platoon leader was taking his men on a tank gunnery exercise. But a new soldier who transferred into his platoon flouted rules, took a sloppy approach and lacked fire in the belly. No amount of yakking helped—but a 7UP did ...

Here are five tips on how to get promoted: (1) Think like a leader. (2) Lighten your boss's load. (3) Ask for forgiveness later. (4) Make things better. (5) Get a life!

When you’re thrust into working environments, you deal with all sorts of people on a daily basis. If you don’t get along with some of them, the hours can drag on. If these people are your bosses, the days can seem like torture. Here’s how to manage your manager.

Whether you’re giving notice at your job or going through the departure of a deputy, here’s how the world generally interprets the length of  notice of an executive:

Help a boss avoid “death by PowerPoint” by stealing presentation tips from the famously charismatic CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs. Jobs is a gifted speaker, not necessarily because he was born with talent, but because he sticks to several strategies. Jobs uses presentation software as a tool to visually complement his stories.

Effective leaders know that even as a business is growing, it needs pruning—trimming old products and complex processes. Example: Paris-based Schneider Electric, with its 100,000-plus employees, has made more than 80 acquisitions over the past five years. Yet its senior managers have made simplicity a strategic imperative.

The Navy classified Larry Zeiger 4-F because of his bad eyes. His friends had all joined the service, so he was left behind, wandering aimlessly. The young man wanted to go into broadcasting. “What are you, a pipe dreamer?” a friend asked. "What are you, nuts? Get a job!” Zeiger finally landed a job as a radio disc jockey and a new name five minutes before the show: Larry King.

Many employers believe that if an employee needs accommodations for a disability that’s related to the same serious health condition covered by the FMLA, they don’t have to provide any additional leave once the employee has used 12 weeks of FMLA leave. That’s not always true. In fact, additional unpaid leave after FMLA leave has been exhausted may be a reasonable accommodation under the ADA.

Here’s a record-keeping requirement you may not be aware of: Employers must keep any written requests for ADA accommodations for at least one year. That includes requests received via e-mail. If you routinely purge information from computer hard drives or servers when employees quit, are fired or retire, you may be in violation of the requirement.

Q. Can I implement a rule against hiring people who are overweight?

Q. Can I require my employees to be vaccinated against the flu? I am concerned about the impact H1N1 will have on my business if it spreads among my employees, and a large group needs to take time off.

Like the ADA, Ohio’s disability discrimination law covers only some injuries, illnesses and conditions. It doesn’t cover temporary injuries.

Employees who suffer from some psychological disorders may need a less stressful environment. But if being stressed out at work is the only impairment the underlying condition causes, chances are they won’t meet the definition of “disabled” under the ADA. Therefore they aren’t entitled to an ADA accommodation.

Sometimes, it makes sense to make an accommodation even if you aren’t entirely convinced the employee is disabled or that the accommodation will work. Think of it as a risk/benefit analysis. If the requested accommodation is easy to implement and doesn’t cost a lot, why not make it? It’s probably much cheaper than defending an ADA lawsuit.

Here are a few interviewing tips from Bob Edwards, who hosts a show on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio:

Never forget that part of your job in giving a presentation is to build drama. The famously charismatic CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, is a gifted public speaker—ot necessarily because he was born with it, but because he sticks to several strategies. With a Jobs speech, there’s always a “holy smokes” moment ...

Roque Pastorius sued his former employer for disability discrimination covered under the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA), which took effect on Jan. 1, 2009. The court tossed out his case, saying the law didn’t apply to alleged discrimination that occurred before the amendments became law.

Avoid these five common myths about motivating employees. For example: Motivating with money—recognition and status work better.

If your company hopes to break out of the economic doldrums, research shows you’re better off bringing in a complete stranger to lead a reorganization, rather than promote from within. Example: Ford brought in an outsider to turn around the organization—Alan Mulally from Boeing. Meanwhile, GM replaced CEO Rick Wagoner with his protege, Fritz Henderson, who may have felt too much empathy for his former boss to completely reverse past decisions.

Five words changed Mitch Albom’s outlook: “Will you do my eulogy?” They came from Albom’s boyhood rabbi, Albert Lewis ...

Employees who aren’t disabled under the ADA can still be eligible for FMLA leave because a health condition can be serious without being a disability. That means you really need to consider requests for ADA accommodations separately from any requests for FMLA time off. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that denying an ADA accommodation means you can deny FMLA leave, too.

To concentrate single-mindedly on a single task, without diversion or distraction, keep asking yourself these questions:

Resistance to change is one of the hardest things to face, and follow-through one of the hardest things to do. It’s easy to become defensive about changes—you risk running off track, rolling over skeptics, losing goodwill or ignoring red flags. To manage resistance:

Employers don’t have to put up with employees who pose a safety hazard to others—or to themselves. While suicidal behavior at work may indicate that an employee is suffering from a serious health condition (covered under the FMLA) or a mental disability (covered under the ADA), it isn’t an excuse for violating established safety rules.

Effective HR pros often have to balance sensitivity and compassion with hard-nosed business realities. Never will that dichotomy be more severely tested than when an employee attempts suicide. Then you'll have to consider the employee's situation, ADA and FMLA rules ... and your obligation to maintain an environment that's safe for other workers.

Donald Keough, former president of Coca-Cola, has 10 commandments (plus one extra for an even more spectacular flameout) if you want to be a “highly successful loser.” Here they are:

Protecting yourself and your organization from lawsuits starts the minute you decide to hire someone. Potential lawsuit land mines line your path. To stay out of court, build your hiring process around these principles:

Q. I understand that the EEOC proposals to implement the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA) favor a broad interpretation of the term “disability.” Are there any impairments that would always qualify as a disability?

Starting a project requires so much effort that you may keep it going even when it isn’t performing. The bigger the investment of time, energy and resources, the bigger the temptation. What you need is a disengagement plan that addresses two critical issues:

Employees who need to take care of a disabled relative may be eligible for FMLA leave if the disability qualifies as a serious health condition—but only if the employee has worked enough hours to be eligible for FMLA leave. Likewise, employees sometimes think their employers must provide them with reasonable accommodations so they can care for a disabled relative under the ADA’s so-called association clause—that’s simply not true.

Think like an inventor by looking for opportunity in failure. British inventor James Dyson says that in trying to develop a fine blade of high-speed air for another product, his team accidentally came up with new hand-dryer technology.  “We saw, in that moment of failure, an idea that had huge advantages in another field,” he says.

In their new book, Sixty Feet, Six Inches, two baseball legends—pitcher Bob Gibson and slugger Reggie Jackson—examine qualities that take a player to the top. For starters, advantage: “There are at least three kinds of advantages that the pitcher and batter contest,” Jackson says. “There’s the physical advantage, the strategic advantage and also the psychological advantage. I didn’t want two out of three. I wanted them all.”

Sidney Pestka, the “father of interferon,” had two early influences urging him to aim high. His parents and Marshall Nirenberg at the National Institutes of Health. Nirenberg, who later won a Nobel Prize, told the young man that “it takes as much effort and time to work on something that’s not significant as it does to work on something that will make a major contribution,” Pestka recalls. “I’ve always remembered that.”

Consider your level of integrity by answering these questions honestly and also consider gathering feedback from your colleagues, customers, family and friends:

Imagine if baseball GMs, ignoring batting statistics, took potential players out for a beer at Applebee’s to test their culture fit. That’s what leaders do by using interviews to pluck out the best candidates. But interviews are less predictive of job performance than work samples, job-knowledge tests and peer ratings of past job performance.

What leadership needs is a return to character, says John C. Bogle in his best-selling book Enough. “We’ll be better human beings and achieve greater things if we challenge ourselves to pursue careers that create value for our society—with personal wealth not as a goal, but as the by-product, " writes Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund Group.

Stressed out, you say something you shouldn’t have. Or you overlook a detail that ends up dooming an entire project. If you’ve said or done something in the past year that jeopardized your career, you’re not alone. Here’s how to recover:

To be efficient, leaders can embed the basic techniques of Six Sigma, which involves measuring and analyzing operations. The new buzz, though, is mastering “design thinking”—understanding customers’ day-to-day problems. Chuck Jones, vice president for global consumer design at Whirlpool, explains how the two techniques can happily coexist:

Technology changes fast, and so do the skills employees need to succeed in their jobs. But some employees don’t feel comfortable taking the steps needed to adapt. If those employees happen to be older and you end up having to replace them, you could face an age discrimination lawsuit. You can avoid such lawsuits with a good skill-building plan ...

Q. We have an employee who just developed a disability that will keep him from performing his job for an unknown time. After he uses up his FMLA and other accumulated leave, do we have an obligation to look for another position for him?

The first time Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, was put in charge of something, the business started losing money right away. Nervous as hell, he went to his boss. "Blankfein said, ‘You know, we’re losing money.’ And the boss said, ‘Well, what would you do?’ Blankfein said what he would do, and the boss said: ‘That sounds right. Why don’t you do that?’” Blankfein would always remember that leadership lesson.

When a control-freak boss monitors your every move, you and your co-workers may be tempted to rebel. Instead, don't let your annoyance show. “Getting visibly irritated when he leans on you will only make him think he needs to keep an even closer eye on you,” says Albert J. Bernstein, a clinical psychologist and author of Am I The Only Sane One Working Here? Here are more strategies:

Look anywhere and you’ll find advice for achieving success, even if, like blogger Todd Taskey, you’re specifically looking for how success can turn into failure. Why on earth is he looking for failure? Because it happens all the time. Here are three ways people let their success go sour:

Crises are too messy to predict or define, but you can identify a huge crisis so that it’s comprehensible. A major crisis: grips an entire organization; takes a big toll on life, property, money or well-being; and sometimes can destroy an organization.

List-makers know: The act of compiling to-do’s can help organize your mind. Two ways to use a task list:

Q. I know employees can be required to waive their rights to sue to resolve employment-related disputes, either through a negotiated release or binding arbitration agreement. Can an employer also require employees to agree to waive their rights to file EEOC charges?

Billy Beane revolutionized the way baseball players are valued and also exploited the advantages of timing. The reason his Oakland A’s played like a different team in the second half of their 2001 season is because they were a different team. Their general manager, on a shoestring budget, had scooped up undervalued players right before the trading deadline ...

Stephen Bechtel Jr. wasn’t sure he wanted to go into the family business. His grandfather founded the company that built the Hoover Dam and the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant. Those were big projects with high expectations ...

Some employees believe the Pregnancy Discrimination Act makes it illegal to discharge a pregnant woman for any reason related to the pregnancy. That’s not quite true. The PDA merely requires employers to treat pregnant women no differently than other employees. That may mean discharge for complications associated with pregnancy—under the right circumstances.

Even leaders have blind spots, those automatic behaviors that can narrow your field of view and foul up decisions. Some myths that create blind spots: “I should have all the answers, I should know what to do, and I should be able to handle things alone.” Watch for these three blind spots:

An Arizona technician lost 100 pounds in a weight-loss competition to snag the grand prize: his first skydive. Read about that and other employee wellness initiatives from across the country. They're keeping employees healthy, and helping employers keep health benefits costs down.

Skip straight to someone’s voice mail by using Slydial, a service that lets you leave a message for someone you know you can’t reach in person ... Take your job search to Twitter. Some companies are using Twitter to fill positions that tend to attract tons of applicants on job boards, such as administrative roles, one HR vice president tells The Wall Street Journal ... Put a meandering meeting back on track by addressing those who veer off-topic.

Most leaders of any stripe won’t admit they don’t understand something. When a problem is forcefully brought to our attention, we gather everybody together and start brainstorming solutions. That’s what we’ve learned to do. It’s wrong, says retired Gen. Tony Zinni. You've got to define the problem first.

According to a recent working-conditions survey, many employers are not doing the routine maintenance they should to keep their labor and employment compliance in tip-top shape. There’s no guarantee that tuning up your workplace policies like you do your car will avoid lawsuits. But, some routine preventive maintenance will go a long way to ensuring better compliance and fewer problems.

Legendary football coach Bill Walsh remembers that quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young came to the San Francisco 49ers with supremely high expectations of themselves. Walsh let them know he thought they could do more than anything. The best way to do that with your own team, he says, is to use the four most powerful words:

Cyclists at this year’s Tour de France proved you don’t have to be the “leader” to dazzle people with your leadership skills. Teammates on one team acted like leaders when they helped propel one of their fellow cyclists to win six stages of the race.

It is often said that leaders see opportunities in rotten situations. That was certainly true for Barbara Lauwers, who led one of the most successful psychological operations of World War II.

A federal trial court has concluded that coming to work is an essential function of one’s job. Therefore, the ADA doesn’t cover disabled employees who can’t meet that basic requirement.

Under EEOC guidelines, employers can demand a fitness-for-duty exam if they can prove they have a reasonable belief—based on objective evidence—that an employee’s medical condition will impair his or her ability to perform the essential functions of the job or pose a safety threat. If you believe either is the case, make sure you document your objective and reasonable beliefs before demanding the exam.

Here’s a novel twist on the ADA violation of regarding someone as disabled. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that an employer doesn’t necessarily consider an employee disabled just because a manager uses a health-related excuse to help a worker get out of jury duty.

As the winter months set in, some people may notice that they feel more tired, experience weight gain or struggle to get out of bed in the morning. While the majority of people who experience these symptoms have nothing more serious than the “winter blues,” others suffer from a potentially debilitating condition known as seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Be careful not to brush off employees who complain of SAD.

When A. Barry Rand, now chief of AARP, was chairman and CEO of Avis back in 1999, “I went in there with a bias. I was tired of seeing the motto, ‘We’re second and we try harder.’ I intended to change it." What stopped him?

Employers are required to offer job accommodations to employees who have qualifying disabilities, says the ADA. But if an employee has a medical condition that requires frequent bathroom breaks, does that count as a “disability”? The answer is clear, especially this year …

Bosses hear some wacky one-liners when perfectly healthy workers try to justify taking sick days. Here are a dozen doozies uncovered in a recent survey of employers.

The EEOC has finally issued 93 pages of proposed regulations explaining how employers should implement the ADA Amendments Act (ADAAA), which took effect on Jan. 1. The ADAAA expands the definition of “disability,” allowing many employees to be protected under the ADA for the first time.

Alden Mills, founder of Perfect Fitness, received his most valuable business lessons while serving in the Navy SEALS—how to practice unconventional warfare, how to keep going even when the race is over and why you should always take along a swim buddy. One lesson he got later, though, was going with your gut.

Ask a person if he likes criticism, and he’ll probably say no. Most of us would prefer constant praise. But most of us also want to know that people take our work seriously. We crave feedback that is thoughtful and thought-provoking. The trick is learning how to give and receive meaningful feedback.

At Google, anyone can be a leader—or at least act like one. The result is that anyone can be more effective, get more done, influence the process and support an innovative environment. To teach leadership to 20,000 employees, says Evan Wittenberg, head of global leadership development, Google leans on a few principles:

Before taking command of the U.S. Army’s VII Corps in West Germany in 1978, Lt. Gen. Julius Becton needed to brush up on his German. Becton’s college studies in German, though, had focused on reading and writing, so now he put in three weeks of training to work up a little fluency. His real lesson came later ...

Ask senior executives to decode leadership for you and you’ll probably get a long, useless list of qualities. For this reason, three students of management set about grouping together what happens when leadership happens:

Mindful of his fast rise, Matt Mullenweg has given some thought to leadership. The idiosyncratic 25-year-old founded Automattic, parent company of the blogging tool WordPress, which powers 12 million blogs. Some of his priorities:

The ADA requires employers to enter into an interactive process with disabled employees to find accommodations that allow them to perform the essential functions of their jobs. Recently, the federal government updated its Job Accommodation Network (JAN) web site, which employers can use to to find specific accommodation information. 

Since leaders deal in new ideas, it’s good to look at how ideas take form and spread. There’s a science to the trajectory of new ideas, says Everett Rogers, a scientist who studied innovation and published the groundbreaking book Diffusion of Innovations. Potential users unconsciously evaluate new ideas in five ways:

Though big is beautiful at Kraft Foods, by 2006 the behemoth was too weighed down by its centralized structure to be nimble or responsive. So in 2007, chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld announced to the management team a new initiative, later dubbed “Organizing for Growth”—a rewiring of the organization that put more power in the hands of business units.

These days, we all could use some help in guiding our teams through the storm. Don’t force your “Rudolphs”—the 2% to 10% of employees who could be your innovators—to hide their bright lights. Here’s how to recognize Rudolphs:

When Jim McKay hosted ABC’s “Wide World of Sports,” he wasn’t a network star with blinding good looks or a grandiose manner. He never understood that he was a celebrity. The way he got through telecasts, he said, was pretending that rather than broadcasting to millions, he was talking to one person: his wife, Margaret.

Employees who suffer from chronic conditions may have to see their doctors regularly. Under the FMLA, if those employees give you 30 days’ notice, they’re allowed to pick the day for their appointment. You can’t simply argue that they don’t need to take off that particular day because there is no emergency or urgency.

A federal court hearing a Minnesota case has concluded that the amendments to the ADA that were enacted in 2008 are not retroactive. That means you don’t have to worry that employees will sue over alleged violations that occurred before the amendments were passed ...

There’s been a lot written lately about the demise of humility in our culture. Fortunately, we still have some great examples of successful leaders who demonstrate humility. One of those is the Super Bowl winning former coach of the Indianapolis Colts, Tony Dungy.

The Washington Redskins’ hiring of an “offensive consultant” looked to some like a pure play to undermine the head coach. The Redskins owner rationalized that his hired hand was “another pair of eyes.” That only works, though, if the coach wants another set of eyes. Since that wasn’t the case, the owner appeared to be perpetuating infighting and chaos. Result? A case of “toxic management.”

It’s not that you can’t trust your judgment. It’s that some of the decisions your brain’s frontal lobes come up with can lead you seriously astray. That’s why it’s important to pause, reflect, gather data and consult as widely as possible before you make a decision. Here’s a sampling of the thought processes that can mess you up:

While investigating the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986, physicist Richard Feynman pondered what had caused a disconnect between managers and leaders that allowed the shuttle’s equipment to fail and its crew to die. NASA’s leaders insisted they didn’t know about problems. Feynman concluded that either they didn’t know, in which case they should have, or they did know, in which case they were lying.

You’re promoted to a more demanding, high-profile job, and the first thing you think is, “They must have made a mistake.” That’s your Inner Critic, whose prompts can get you out of bed in the morning, on the treadmill or through a pressing deadline. But its disapproving words can also make you miserable ...

Dump this worst “best” practice, 360º anonymous feedback, advises Susan Scott, author of Fierce Leadership. “Anonymous feedback doesn’t tell us what we really need to know and leaves us wondering, ‘Who thinks that about me?!’” she says. Instead, exchange feedback face-to-face as soon as possible after something occurs.

In his 1905 yearbook entry at the University of Maryland, a student named Archie Graham included a quotation: “The world knows nothing of its greatest men.” That certainly could be said of Graham for most of the 20th century.

Real leaders aren’t talkers; they’re doers. For example: They delegate, but what they don’t delegate is the one thing that matters. That, they do ...

Employers don’t have to put up with employees who pose a safety hazard to others—or themselves. While suicidal behavior may indicate an employee is suffering from a serious health condition under the FMLA or a disability under the ADA, it isn’t an excuse for violating safety rules.

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, signed into law on Feb. 17, was designed to advance the use of health information technology, such as electronic health records. Among other important aspects, the HITECH Act expands the scope and enforcement power of HIPAA, with greater penalties for noncompliance.

In a town of 1,600 in western Kansas, coach Roger Barta has compiled a 289-58 record, eight state championships and the longest active winning streak in high school football. His secret? Never play to win.

Leaders possess an unconscious, gut-level idea of where they are and where they’re likely to go—a “default future,” say two close observers of business. Your default future is deeply rooted in your assumptions, hopes, fears and experiences ...

At an administrative assistant gathering recently, one admin pro talked about how uncomfortable she felt drawing attention to herself. It’s not unusual among women: Girls are taught to sit up straight, mind their manners and not to brag. But these are the habits that can hold you back professionally.

Every organization, no matter how successful, has problems. They often lie beneath the surface. An effective leader realizes the need to find problems before they become disasters. An effective leader also realizes that problems rarely exist in isolation.

We’ve all been told a thousand times that to increase our influence and effectiveness, we need to write personal thank-you notes. Here’s the right way to do it, as evidenced by a 1991 note from George H.W. Bush to Goldie Hawn.

Nancy McKinstry, chief executive officer and chairwoman of the multinational publisher Wolters Kluwer, describes herself as an analytical person. She also calls herself an “insider-outsider” who knows her company thoroughly from the inside but also is an outsider in the sense that she became its first non-Dutch CEO and the first woman to lead it.

Gary E. McCullough, president and CEO of the Career Education Corp., recalls the role a candy bar played in one of the most important leadership lessons he’s ever learned ...

In my presentations and group coaching, I’m fond of quoting Charles de Gaulle’s observation that “The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.” Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke may be the exception to de Gaulle’s rule.

When a CEO buys an extremely showy house, there’s your warning that the company’s performance is about to tank, according to a study by Arizona State University and New York University a couple of years ago.

The H1N1 influenza virus has added a note of urgency to the need to understand the ADA’s privacy requirements. Although some of the rules are relaxed in emergencies, employers that use confidential medical information to discriminate against workers will have to answer in court for their actions.

Has staring at your monitor for hours left you bleary-eyed? Give your eye muscles a break throughout the day with these three exercises:

Employers sometimes think they can get around the ADA requirements by calling every task in a job description “essential.” They hope they’ll be able to exclude anyone who can’t do absolutely every aspect of the job. But that strategy can backfire badly because not every task is essential.

A former Teknor Color Co. employee is suing the Jacksonville company for violating the ADA and the Civil Rights Act when it terminated her from her crew leader position.

Employees who take their full 12 weeks of FMLA leave and can’t return to work lose their FMLA job protection. But that doesn’t mean they’re not still protected by the ADA. In fact, if an employee who can’t yet return to work asks for a reasonable accommodation—such as additional time off or a reduced schedule until she is ready for full-time work—you should consider the request.

Employees who have successfully dealt with drug addiction but don’t have any current or continuing drug problems are not disabled under the ADA , as the following case shows.

Employees who are unable to perform anything but sedentary work may be disabled under the ADA. That means employers may have to find ways to accommodate them, including finding open positions for them to fill elsewhere within the company.

Employees who have minor physical problems—even permanent ones—aren’t necessarily disabled and entitled to ADA accommodations. The test in each case is how the impairment compares with the average member of the general public.

The hallmark of a good leadership story? Inspiring, motivational, memorable and short—like, two minutes short. In the age of Twitter, people don’t have time or patience for much more than that. How to build a 120-second narrative? Here are six tips:

Avoid sending big files back and forth with your boss—try Dropbox, a virtual hard drive ... Hold a web conference free and invite up to 20 guests, with DimDim, which Inc. magazine calls the best in its class ... Print less by taking advantage of the less-popular settings in your Print dialogue box ...

Despite a two-year rise in job satisfaction between 2006 and 2008, about 212,000 federal workers consistently gave lower ratings than private-sector workers on their supervisors’ leadership skills, openness and willingness to help employees advance.

The EEOC has issued proposed regulations for enforcing the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAA), a sweeping law that took effect earlier this year. Among the changes: a new definition of what constitutes an ADA disability. With the EEOC in charge of suing to force compliance, you need to know the answers to these 10 questions.

Many leaders at larger companies fancy themselves too busy or important to do the messy work of managing, says Henry Mintzberg, management professor at McGill. You’re not a leader if you’re AWOL. And while, yes, there’s a difference between leading and managing, that doesn’t preclude leaders from rolling up their sleeves and pitching in.

In the armed services, there are “peacetime generals” and “wartime generals.” Some leaders thrive on turbulence. Others don’t. Same goes for CEOs.

Several states peg the minimum wage to the cost of living. For decades, inflation has meant cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) that delivered regular pay raises. But what's happening now that the cost of living has declined 1.3% so far this year?

Leaders should ask less and tell more. But is that right? Sometimes it pays to go back to the vault for advice. NASA research on crisis management suggests the command-and-control response may be wrong.

Delays, cramped seats, rundown hotel rooms—who needs ’em? Here are five web sites that can help you plan a trouble-free trip: FlightStats.com, Raveable.com, SeatGuru.com, TripIt.com, Packinglistonline.com.

Business blogger Steven Berglas has been pondering whether self-starters can be made, or whether they’re born that way. At a minimum, he’s identified a few questions you can ask to ferret out true enterprising natures. Don’t take their answers literally—any version of self-starting behavior will do.

A key part of the ADA is the so-called “regarded as” rule. Essentially, it says that if your organization treats an employee as if he or she is disabled, then the employee earns the job protections provided under the ADA—even if he or she isn’t truly disabled. What does it take to “regard” someone as disabled? It can be as simple as jotting “disabled” on an application or employee paperwork.

Q. Legally, is there a difference between exempt employees “volunteering” their time or being required to reduce their salaries (or work hours) during these slow economic times?

Question:  “I suffer from adult attention deficit disorder (ADD). After a recent mishap at work, I mentioned this to my boss. She said she knew nothing about ADD but was glad I told her. Since then, I have noticed that she treats me differently. My co-workers talk about me behind my back and seem to think I’m not very bright, which is so far from the truth. What advice do you have for someone in this situation?" —  D.F.

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?

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" ...

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.

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.

Whirlpool wants to be the No. 1 innovator among big-ticket appliance makers. To achieve its goal, it has a formal process for screening ideas. What you can learn about innovation from Whirlpool:

Some employees with genuine disabilities may think they can use their physical or mental conditions as an excuse to break workplace behavior rules. They can’t. As long as those rules are clearly explained and enforced equally, you don’t have to listen to my-disability-made-me-do-it excuses. You can lower the boom.

Show you are responsive to consumers by venturing into social media with a plan. Example: When McDonald’s launched its first blog, customers bombarded the company with complaints about toy Hummers in its Happy Meals. Unprepared, the company was slow to respond. Lesson: Social media is a powerful relationship-building tool, but only if you’re ready to listen and act on customers’ comments ...

Ten states tie increases in the minimum wages to the inflation rate: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Since the cost of living has actually declined this year, none of those states will see an increase in their minimum wages.

Sears agreed last month to a $6.2 million settlement with the EEOC over charges that it violated the ADA. This is the largest ADA settlement in a single lawsuit in ADA history.

When the responsibility rests on your shoulders to communicate in a crisis, follow these five rules: 1. Speak the same language. 2. "Kill" all the lawyers. (Well, don’t kill them, but do cage them.) 3. Define the CEO's role. 4. Don't wait for a crisis. 5. Drill employees.

Now that word’s out about the importance of advertising in a downturn, here comes a reminder that while promotion is good for your existing business, you also need to renew the business itself. Redesigning your company, however, is hard. That’s what Robert Kiyosaki tried to do.

If it’s important to be user-friendly, and if the highest form of user-friendliness is user-centric, then why aren’t you doing it? That’s the challenge posed by Dev Patnaik and Robert Becker, co-founders of Jump Associates. They do “need-finding,” which is part of their user-based business design. Three reasons to uncover your customers’ needs:

When an El Pollo Loco restaurant manager filed a wage lawsuit, the company pointed to its handbook that said (in English and small type) “all employment-related disputes must be resolved through binding arbitration.” The manager argued that employees didn’t understand what they were signing and, therefore, the policy wasn’t valid.

It’s no picnic when you have to fire people for poor performance. Wayne Downing, a retired four-star general who ran the U.S. Army Special Forces, says you’ve got to do it. His advice:

Seth Goldman, co-founder of Honest Tea, soon found that he had no sounding board. But when the Aspen Institute chose him for a leadership program, Goldman found the outlet he needed. Here’s what he did—and what you can re-create:

If discrimination has always been a head-in-the-sand issue for you and your organization, it’s time to get serious about your policies and practices. Discrimination complaints of all types—race, sex, age, etc.—have skyrocketed in the past year as the economy has fallen. Here's how to avoid becoming one of the EEOC's targets.

According to the Edelman 2008 Trust Barometer, released before last year’s market flameout, a mere 20% of Americans said they trust CEOs to do the right thing. Instead, “they see arrogance, blundering and unabashed greed,” observes Jason Jennings, author of a primer for new leaders. When you’re wondering how important trust is, ponder these gems:

You need to show supervisors how your new online time sheet system works, but you're having a hard time getting everyone together for face-to-face training. Ditch the calendar tag routine (and the conference room) and make your own training video. Here's a free, easy way to do it.

Benefits consultant Ken Stahlmann spells out three keys to creating crowd-pleasing employee-recognition awards:

It takes courage and a sense of security to use humor, especially in unfamiliar situations. Sure, it’s risky, but greater rewards generally require greater risks. Take John Golden, an amateur champion in golf who qualified for the U.S. Senior Open. The first day, he found himself on the green with Jack Nicklaus ...

Somehow, Walt Disney’s toy division, run by Chris Heatherly and Len Mazzocco, churns out scores of innovative new toys every six months. What’s their magic? Their continuous innovation hinges on a systematic brainstorming and prototyping process that works like this:

Though work mates care about you, they pay more attention to messages that show there’s something in it for them, says Susan Mason, a principal of Vital Visions Consultants. So, for example, if you want something from your boss—whether it’s approval on a new printer purchase or a more flexible schedule—figure out what benefit she will realize. Figure out “What’s In It For Me?” from her perspective.

You’ve just had a brochure printed for your company and you notice a very big, embarrassing typo. What should you do? Tell your boss about your role in the mistake? Blame the colleagues who checked the final proof?

When Paul O’Neill took the helm at Alcoa in 1987, he declared on his first day that no one should ever be hurt on the job. The acceptable accident rate now would be zero. Because of the chief’s gut feeling, Alcoa became one of the safest companies in the world.

The year after a flood, everybody buys flood insurance. After a crisis, executives turn to scenario planning. Consider this: The year after the 9/11 attack, use of scenario planning rose to 70% of executives, up from 30% in 1999, according to consultants Bain & Co. The numbers will likely be high again this year because of the recession.

Sometimes, it takes a new manager or supervisor to see how poorly an employee is performing. If an employee who has been getting good reviews suddenly appears to slump under new leadership, don’t jump the gun and discipline the employee right away. Here’s a better approach ...

It’s true and here’s why: Because legions of colleagues, current and past, have access to a job candidate’s profile on LinkedIn, their scrutiny keeps the candidate on the up-and-up. So potential hires are far less likely to lie about their job titles or dates of employment on a public profile as compared to a paper résumé.

“Dirty Jobs” TV show host Mike Rowe never would have figured on launching a web site to promote vocational schools. But he’s done it precisely because he didn’t follow his passion. Instead, he stumbled into a good job and brought his passion along.

IBM managers “all the way up the chain” are on Facebook—and if you’re not, “You feel like you’re doing something wrong,” one employee said. But most businesses don’t have a social media culture like IBM’s. Instead, more than half of all U.S. companies prohibit the use of such sites at the office. Such policies may create more problems than they solve.

Most federal appeals courts have concluded that driving is not a major life activity under the ADA. Thus a disability that simply impairs the ability to drive isn’t covered under the law. But what if the inability to drive prevents someone from holding a wide range of jobs? Does that mean the individual is substantially impaired in the major life activity of working? According to one federal trial court considering a Florida case, the answer is yes.

Insight is so central to invention that legend has Archimedes, who suddenly realized how to calculate density and volume, jumping from his bath and running naked through the streets yelling “Eureka!” In our day, “aha” moments may not be so dramatic but still produced Velcro, the World Wide Web and organ transplants. What creates these brilliant flashes of insight?

Managers of the massive federally funded Starrett City housing complex in Brooklyn have settled with the EEOC, bringing a halt to a lawsuit that accused the management company of disability discrimination after it allegedly failed to promote an employee because he suffers from attention deficit disorder.

Employees who are disabled after an injury on the job often apply for workers’ compensation. Receiving those benefits, however, isn’t a bar to asserting ADA and state disability claims, as a federal court hearing a New York case recently concluded.

Pregnant women have many legal protections under Title VII’s sex discrimination provisions, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the FMLA. They rarely, however, qualify as disabled. That’s because normal pregnancies may create temporary difficulties, but they’re not severe enough to count as substantial limitations ...

Here’s a bit of good news for employers: While class-action lawsuits have been all the rage in recent years, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to expand the types of cases that can become class-action claims when the ADA is at the heart of the case.

Leadership advisor Marshall Goldsmith was having dinner with a top officer in the U.S. Army. Also at the table were seven new generals. The senior officer laughed as he looked at their bright new stars and contemplated his own retirement—a transition Goldsmith was helping him make. What advice did he give them?

Matt Smith’s secret weapon is talent. The Washington, D.C.-area advertising superstar says he buys experience slowly by focusing and investing only in top senior people. A few unorthodox ways he runs his business:

Q. One of my employees has informed me that she is about to begin undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. She requested some intermittent time off from work. Am I required to grant her request?

Dov Frohman says leadership can’t be taught—but it can be learned. He should know. The founder and former CEO of Intel Israel never takes the easy path. Through an almost desperate force of will mirroring that of his mentor, Intel CEO Andy Grove, Frohman built up a small desert outpost into a massive semiconductor plant, Israel’s largest private employer.

It’s getting dark out sooner. And with the darker season comes struggles for employees who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD is a form of depression in which a decrease of natural light triggers a mood disorder. So does that mean you may have to offer SAD sufferers a workspace near sunlight? Quite possibly, as a recent court ruled that “Natural light may be a medical necessity”…

Employee benefits have been in the national spotlight right from the start of 2009. From the new FMLA and ADA rules that took effect in January to today’s white-hot health care debate, employers are dealing with important changes and “could-be” changes. Let's look back at the year in benefits and ahead to what could be coming.

Size matters when it comes to planning events. For smaller events, you can go solo. But for larger ones, it takes a committee, a nod from management and a zinger of a spreadsheet for keeping tasks and timelines on track. To help you track the details, try this sample checklist adapted from Midwest Meetings:

Talk about timing. Ellen Kullman, long on the short list of possible chiefs at DuPont, became president on Oct. 1, 2008, and CEO on Jan. 1. As the economy tanked and the chemical company’s sales fell, Kullman almost immediately had to decide what should and shouldn’t change. Organizing the company to respond to these trends, Kullman decided on four principles:

Time magazine asked prominent leaders to describe their own favorite leaders. Here are three of their picks: Tiger Woods, Nouriel Roubini and Jeff Bezos.

Even the best bosses sometimes blow up. An employee slacks off or messes up, and the manager lashes out. Everyone knows such outbursts shouldn’t happen. That doesn’t mean they won’t. How you handle the aftermath may make the difference between a jury trial and a smooth return to workplace normalcy.

The pace of change seems to grow more urgent every year. Some see it as an attribute of leadership in the 21st century—right up there with judgment and courage. Consider then, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who spread the speed creed 70 years before it was cool.

Federal and state public health agencies are closely monitoring the H1N1 influenza (also known as swine flu) that was first identified this spring. Since then, every state in the U.S. has had confirmed cases of the virus. It’s not time to panic—but it is time for businesses to think strategically, be proactive and be prepared.

This summer, a spontaneous outburst of dancing captured on video at the Sasquatch Music Festival showed the power of leaders to sway crowds. Business bloggers Seth Godin and Todd Taskey shared their thoughts on what it teaches about business innovation.

Nobody argues the fact that Robert McNamara was a genius. The Ford Motor Co. whiz kid who led the Pentagon into the Vietnam War, and the World Bank into unprecedented expansion, solved problems with sheer brains. But McNamara’s flaw may have been that, in a larger sense, he just didn’t “get it.”

With the diminishing time you have to communicate, it’s a good idea to tighten your writing and say everything that needs to be said in half the words. With thought and discipline, you can do great things in small spaces. Here are six tips from Brady Dennis, who as a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times wrote a series of profiles in just 300 words apiece.

Managers and supervisors are at the front lines of making decisions that often trigger lawsuits—promotions, pay raises, terminations and job assignments. But the most legally dangerous of all those situations is interviewing job candidates. Here are five questions that can reveal more about job interviewees, without risking a hiring discrimination charge.

“Write this down in the minutes,” demands a board meeting attendee, implying that his clout alone should be reason enough for you to do what he says, right or wrong. In such a situation, you could use minute-taking standards.

A Rhode Island software company has created a system for new ideas that’s as transparent as they could make it. They call it an idea market. CEO Jim Lavoie and President Joe Marino of Rite-Solutions have leveled the playing field so all employees have a shot at putting their ideas on the table.

General Electric’s CEO emeritus Jack Welch says leadership in tough times is the same as it ever was: “to do and dream at the same time.” Problem is, because of economic gridlock, most of today’s leaders are only doing. Why?

Have you discovered all the shortcuts buried within Excel? Try zipping around Excel spreadsheets using these keyboard techniques.

Tell a lie about a co-worker? Never. But there are times your boss doesn’t need to know everything, says Nicole Williams, author of Girl on Top. Here are five things your boss doesn't need to know about you.

Should a leader jump into the media spotlight, even at the risk of damaging his image? Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, says yes. A leader must communicate with the outside world as part of being a good corporate citizen. British CEO Stephen Martin agrees: Leaders must offer their business perspective to the public, or someone else will.

Q. We have an employee out of work due to a workers’ compensation injury. Does the employee’s time off count against his FMLA leave?

Dr. Robert Eliot is famous for saying, “Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.” The cardiologist has even more great advice about keeping stress in check:

If you have an employee who seems constantly exhausted, take note: He or she may suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). And under the newly revised Americans with Disabilities Act, that person could be deemed “disabled” and entitled to reasonable work accommodations.

You wouldn’t think good ideas could be bad, but letting too many at once into the pipeline can slow it all down. Most organizations try to run more than two projects at a time. Turn five projects into one and you’re looking at about a 50% reduction in time to market (18 months versus 30 months) and earlier cash flow. Bottom line: Tackle one thing at a time.

How do you gracefully exit a conversation during a networking event, without using the same excuse every time? (After all, there are only so many times you can go to the restroom.) Lynne Waymon, author of Make Your Contacts Count, offers some of her most effective ways to move around the room:

The World Health Organization raised the swine flu alert to its highest level, saying the H1N1 virus has reached global pandemic levels. Your best HR defense is a good offensive plan to handle the logistical and employment law issues ...

Ram Charan, leadership guru and author of Execution, offers what he calls the essential qualities leaders have to possess in hard times. For starters, honesty, which isn't easy, especially when the wind is constantly shifting. “How can you tell people what you believe,” he asks, “when you can’t be confident that it is right?”

When Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach for America, considers someone for a leadership role, she goes beyond standard questioning to discover whether it’s a good fit. Think of it as an extended interview.

Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey gets credit for several firsts. He’s best known for signing the first black major league baseball player, Jackie Robinson; drafting the first Hispanic, Roberto Clemente; inventing the minor league farm system; and introducing the batting helmet. Rickey, however, did none of those things alone ...

It’s a mantra that can’t be repeated too often: Develop a policy, communicate it to your employees, investigate when you learn of possible infractions and, if wrongdoing did occur, punish those who violated the policy. It’s refreshing to report on an employer that did everything right and emerged victorious from court.

Approximately 3 million doses of the vaccines designed to prevent the H1N1 flu virus—swine flu—shipped last week. Local health authorities are preparing to offer vaccines as early as this week. Can you—should you?—demand that your employees get flu shots?

You don’t need to be born with the ability to come up with ideas. Madison Avenue's David Ogilvy is proof. “I had a reasonably original mind, but not too much so,” he said in an interview when he was 75. “Which helped, not being too original. I thought as clients think. I also thought as women think.”

There’s more than just semantics involved when you’re talking about the tax treatment of “repairs” for a business building versus “improvements.” On one hand, the cost of repairs made by your business is currently deductible. On the other, the cost of improvements must be capitalized and written off over time via depreciation deductions.

Are some of your organization’s supervisors still stuck in the Dark Ages when it comes to attitudes about pregnancy, childbirth and child care? If so, your organization may be a few off-base questions away from triggering a discrimination lawsuit. Remind managers and supervisors to keep their opinions on mothers and motherhood to themselves.

The Mayo Clinic is known for its unique approach to leadership development. These four tenets are critical to maintaining its culture:

When a colleague or customer gets so upset they stop making sense, you need to remember this: Too much adrenaline is muddling their thinking. Here are the most common forms of ranting, along with what to say to get them back on track quickly:

Nestlé CEO Paul Bulcke is a quiet guy, the engineer father of two engineer sons who describes his family as “boring.” He loves working behind the scenes. Most of his career has been spent simplifying processes, building teams and slowly scaling the ranks in Latin American obscurity. For Nestlé, this was perfect.

You can’t know what your employees are really thinking. That’s why one CEO went undercover to find out. He worked, in disguise, for two weeks on 10 different sites. His goal was to hear what workers said when they were uncensored. The biggest lesson he learned?

The Workers United union has filed criminal charges with the Philadelphia Police Department against food-service giant Aramark, alleging that the company has pocketed union dues deducted from employees’ paychecks. Aramark manages concessions at Citizens Bank Park, the Pennsylvania Convention Center and the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia, plus 40 other arenas in the U.S. and Canada.

The key to determining whether someone has a condition that meets the FMLA’s definition of “serious health condition” is the medical certification the employer receives from a health care provider. But the rules on how to get that certification have changed. Here's what you need to know to comply with the law.

Internet pioneer Esther Dyson continues to work as a venture capitalist in Eastern Europe and also sits on the board of Yandex, a Russian-language search engine described as the “Google of Russia” even though it started first, in the late 1980s. A few lessons from Yandex:

HR professionals are often in the position of having to say "no" to employees. Don't make that negative perception worse with the nonverbal cues you may be inadvertently giving off. Here are five negative "microexpressions" common to women ...

Swissotel has entered into a settlement agreement after the EEOC alleged supervisors at the Swissotel Chicago harassed a developmentally disabled employee. According to the suit, hotel managers called the worker “retard” and ultimately fired him because of his disability.

By almost any standard, Sara Blakely was living an ordinary life. Blakely had never taken a business course and was clueless on patent law. But doggedly, without quitting her day job, she did the research and took time off to get her invention manufactured and sold. She named it SPANX ...

Every HR pro has to deal with especially difficult and argumentative employees now and then. You may believe an employee is having emotional problems—maybe even a diagnosable mental disorder. But don’t mention your suspicions. You would risk being charged with regarding him as disabled, which gives the employee protections under the ADA or state disability-bias law.

In a decision sure to create a buzz, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Title VII does not provide retaliation protection for employees who weren’t involved in protected activity.

You know that you have to accommodate disabled applicants and employees under both the ADA and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. When making those accommodations, think of customers, too. The California Supreme Court has ruled that customers who can’t access your public spaces can sue for damages.

The EEOC has sued construction giant Glenn O. Hawbaker Inc. for refusing to hire an apparently well-qualified backhoe operator after the company learned the man has diabetes.

If an employee rebuffs your offers to consider her for ADA accommodations or FMLA leave, make sure you document her desires. That way, she can’t come back later and claim you didn’t accommodate her or give her leave.

The EEOC has sued the New Hanover Regional Medical Center over its policy of refusing to hire people who take legally prescribed narcotics. The lawsuit alleges the policy violates the ADA because the center is regarding all employees taking prescription narcotics as disabled when they are not.

Employers don’t have to provide a disabled employee with an indefinite leave of absence when the employee has a medical emergency and doesn’t know how long it will take to return to work. As long as the employee isn’t covered by the FMLA (in which case, she would be entitled to 12 unpaid weeks of leave), you can terminate her without violating the ADA.

“The core of leadership is intentional influence,” says Tim Tassopoulos, Chick-fil-A's COO. He knows that his success depends on whether his employees behave in ways that improve results. How do leaders influence behavior change?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been in place for almost 20 years and was expanded this year to create even broader protections. If employees know their rights, and courts know them too, why don’t employers? Let’s see how a talk show ended up in the middle of a big courtroom drama …

It’s never a good idea to scream death threats at federal agents. And if you do, chances are it won’t help to say you’re sorry. Just ask 49-year-old Albert Bront, of Valencia, Calif., who is now sitting in jail. But wait ... the story gets worse.

In the days leading up to his start as host of The Tonight Show, Conan O’Brien said he felt like a racehorse being led to the gate, rearing and bucking and eager to get started ...

Do you have employees who are easily distracted, restless, disorganized and forgetful? Maybe that’s just who they are—or maybe they’ve been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). It’s an “invisible” disability, but one court recently said employers shouldn’t be so fast to discount it. A disability is a disability … whether you can see it or not.

A growing number of Americans are going back to the land, growing vegetable gardens in backyards, schoolyards and even traffic circles. So it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that employees are spending their lunch hours and breaks digging in employee gardens.

The United States is facing a swine flu outbreak that has caused the government to declare a public health emergency. Recently, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published new guidelines to help employers prepare for flu season and prevent the rapid spread of the H1N1 influenza. Here are the CDC's suggestions, plus insight on your risks and obligations as an employer ...

The federal government has slowly been introducing laws that force employers across the country to provide employee benefits: for example, the FMLA, USERRA and the ADA. Now Congress is considering several legislative initiatives that would require employers to provide additional benefits.

Years ago, a landmark study at General Electric found its performance appraisal counterproductive and ineffective. Praise had no effect on performance, and criticism led to backsliding. What was going on?

In past recessions, furloughs—requiring employees to take a certain number of unpaid days off—were mostly limited to blue-collar workers. But this downturn is different. In the past two years, everyone from tech firms to state government has furloughed their white-collar employees. Experts offer the following options for furloughs:

When Jan Carlzon, former CEO of Scandinavian Airlines, wanted to give customer service representatives more autonomy, he feared the board of directors would balk. Even if the board members initially approved it, they might reverse course when faced with any backlash ...

Company size isn’t important when it comes to saving money in little ways. Here are five practical ways to watch those workplace pennies: 1. Reduce delivery fees. 2. Cut overnight shipping. 3. Look for group discounts. 4. Turn off the lights. 5. Consolidate your suppliers ...

Chris Gardner’s life story, turned into a book and movie The Pursuit of Happyness, strikes a chord because it’s really the story of everybody who makes good. Gardner offers maxims for success, including: Without a plan, a dream is just a dream. To help crystallize your plan, be clear, concise, compelling, committed and consistent.

The EEOC has sued Chicago-based United Airlines for disability discrimination on behalf of disabled employees.

When HR director Kris Dunn is in recruiting mode and gets your phone’s answering machine, he uses the occasion to judge you as a leader. “Good energy and kind of dynamic-sounding in your voice mail greeting? Cool. I’m more interested,” he says.

There’s a reason successful start-ups often require teams of two. You need talent and a network. Case en pointe: The Malaysian shoemaker Jimmy Choo made a name for himself creating custom, handmade shoes for an elite clientele including Diana, Princess of Wales. But his brand never would have shot into the stratosphere without Tamara Mellon.

If you truly have a horror of public speaking, use this trick from pop singer Beyoncé Knowles: “I become someone else when I’m onstage,” says the diva, who calls her stage persona “Sasha.”

A former “Star Trek” writer started wondering why: Why the six television series? Why the 11 “Star Trek” movies? Why the video games, conventions and cookbook? Why? Even non-Trekkies recognize something special about the franchise, acknowledges Leonard Mlodinow, who wrote for the second TV series. But what is it?

Spotting insights from fields far outside your own is one characteristic of an innovative leader. That’s what 49ers coach Bill Walsh does. Walsh, who led the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl wins, invented the West Coast offense. And where did he get the idea?

Employees who qualify as “disabled” under the ADA have the right to reasonable accommodations to allow them to perform the essential functions of their jobs. But choosing those accommodations requires an “interactive process” between employer and employee. Employers that rush to judgment about the alleged disability or the accommodation request will risk legal trouble.

Lead your team using Google’s “wisdom of crowds” model ... Lay the foundation for tomorrow’s workforce by developing virtual teams ... Close the gap between leader and followers by demonstrating visibly that you value employees.

Q. We would like to administer personality tests to job applicants. Would this violate the ADA? A. Personality tests are a good example of the types of policies likely to be affected by the recently passed ADA Amendments Act of 2008 ...

When faced with an employee who may have a physical or mental disability, a manager's legal antenna should go up right away. The ADA requires employers to engage in an interactive dialog with employees to determine whether a disability can be accommodated. Do it wrong, and you're probably looking at a lawsuit. Here's how to handle the conversation.

The journal Chief Executive again rated its 20 best companies for leaders last year, with 3M shooting up to the top from 15th place the year before. One thing that may account for 3M’s rapid rise was a greater reliance on peer assessment.

You’re required to offer job accommodations to employees with qualifying disabilities. But if an employee has a medical condition that requires frequent bathroom breaks, does that count as a “disability”? The answer is a clear “yes," especially this year …

Common sense and experience can help you make decisions, but they’re not enough. An expert can provide options. But only the decision-maker knows all the circumstances, so make sure you have a reliable method for reaching a decision. Seven steps to help you get there:

“All first drafts are terrible. I don’t care if you’re Hemingway.” That comes from a writing professor who may as well have been talking about email. No email should be sent without revision. Here's an email etiquette checklist to follow:

Your 26-year-old co-worker doesn’t want to wait until her annual review to find out how she’s doing at work. She wants to know now. Gen Y employees want more feedback, more often, than previous generations. They’ll seek it from their immediate boss, as well as others. If you’re not comfortable with or accustomed to offering feedback, heed these tips:

Here’s how NASCAR great Mark Martin stays fit as a box of lug nuts and, at age 50, faster than most young drivers, ranking seventh this summer:

This spring’s swine flu scare might have been just a warm-up act for a far more serious flu pandemic this fall. If you took steps to prepare your workplace for an outbreak in April, dust off those plans and check them against our list of things to do to make sure your organization keeps running in the coming months.

Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive, says that he and Bill Gates used to like meetings where the presenter took the long and winding road—or where a presenter describes his winding path of exploration and his ultimate conclusion. Now, though, Ballmer feels the practice is inefficient. He espouses a different approach to meetings.

Some marriages will make it, and some won’t. In these pressure-cooker days, marriage failure may be slightly up. Marriage expert Thomas Bradbury likens it to the treadmill stress tests used to screen cardiac patients. Here are some tips to make it through the strain:

The key to not letting gossip drain energy from your workplace is teaching supervisors to effectively address employees’ concerns, such as rumors about layoffs. “Write a script, so that everyone is speaking in the same voice,” advises management expert Quint Studer.

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was designed to ensure pay equity for women. It does a whole lot more than that! Learn how this landmark legislation affects all protected employee classes and could influence your employee benefits program.

In my presentations and group coaching work, I’m fond of quoting Charles DeGaulle’s observation that,  “The cemeteries are full of indispensable men.”  The point I’m trying to make with that line is that while every leader has unique opportunities and responsibilities in their role that only they can do, no one is personally indispensible.  President Obama’s renomination of Ben Bernanke for another term as Chairman of the Federal Reserve has me thinking that Bernanke may be the exception that proves DeGaulle’s rule. As Robert J. Samuelson writes in the Washington Post today, Bernanke, with his unique background as one of the world’s foremost experts on the Great Depression and his willingness to take decisive and innovative action to restore faith in the credit markets, could merit a Time magazine cover headline as “The Man Who Saved the World.”

This month's collection of real-world quick tips from American business leaders, brought to you by members of The Alternative Board.

Job discrimination claims are running at record-high levels in the past two years. Way too many problems start when hiring managers ask the wrong questions during job interviews. Here's how to ask five key questions without risking a hiring discrimination charge. (Plus 16 questions no one should ever ask.)

A recent study says that 40% of managers are considered “bad bosses” by their employees. Yet most managers assume that their relationships with their employees are running smoothly. Obviously, some of those bosses are wrong … and that can create major problems for a business. Here are seven common employee complaints about management, plus ways managers can silence them.

There’s good reason for gathering data. Make sure the “facts” in your head conform to reality. Take the case of Gordon Livingston, a newly minted lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division, trying to orient himself one day on a field problem at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Some employees think that any disability that periodically acts up entitles them to unlimited time off. Sometimes, courts view extra time off as a reasonable accommodation, but there are limits.

At 26,000 feet in the air and only 400 feet from the summit of Broad Peak in Pakistan, two climbers were forced to stay in a snow cave for the night. The pair strategized a survival plan. Three things are critical to survival in those conditions, which work in other situations when you have to hunker down:

Fixating on setting and meeting goals creates tunnel vision. How? Take what happened when General Motors set out to recapture 29% of the American car market a few years ago. GM execs sported lapel pins with the number 29 on them, but the company never did regain that market share.

Sure, at one time or another, we’ve all worked for some great bosses and some bad bosses. But nothing can be more debilitating than working for someone who is ignorant of the laws. In the following case, a company president walked right into an FMLA lawsuit because he had never even heard of the Family and Medical Leave Act. He knows about it now ...

There’s a hefty price to pay when a company doesn’t trust its employees, and employees don’t trust their company. Stephen M.R. Covey, son of the 7 Habits author, argues that if you don’t have a high-trust organization, you’re actually paying taxes on everybody’s suspicions.

When it comes to complex decisions, it may be better to toss the pros and cons spreadsheet and switch on autopilot. Recent research shows that many of our best decisions are made in the absence of conscious thought.

Web sites don’t last forever. Some changes can be accomplished with simple maintenance, but patching can take you only so far. Here are five signs that it’s time to revamp your site.

You’ve tried sending out memos, putting up posters and issuing gentle reminders, but nothing keeps employees from leaving their extra papers behind at the copier. You feel like a den mother, constantly cleaning up after everyone. What’s the best way to get people to change their habits? Change their environment.

A CEO held six big town-hall meetings with employees to present the new company strategy. Everybody seemed to be paying attention. Yet, now nothing was happening. The reason? A survey of employees showed that 70% understood the strategy, only about 60% agreed with it and more than half didn’t have a clue what they were supposed to do next. To avoid getting tuned out like this, take these steps:

Q. We have an employee who has blood clots in her legs and whose doctor says she can work only 40 hours per week. She knew overtime was required when she was hired. Do we have to let her work a reduced schedule of just 40 hours?

Cordia Harrington owned three McDonald’s franchises when the company asked her to sit on its bun committee in 1992. She quickly realized opportunity was knocking. Here’s how she seized it:

Even if someone else in the management hierarchy actually terminates an employee, a supervisor who’s seemingly had it in for the employee can still cause a world of legal headaches for the employer. This is the so-called “cat’s paw” legal theory, which holds that employers are liable if they approve a recommendation that is based on illegal motives such as retaliation.

Some employees have minor medical conditions they claim make it impossible to perform some aspect of their jobs. They want accommodations, assuming they will meet the ADA disability definition. If you want to challenge such a disability claim, check to see whether the employee is working elsewhere.

Employees who have been injured may try to return to positions for which they are no longer qualified because they still suffer limitations on the work they can do. Employers are free to deny reinstatement if the employees’ new limitations mean they can’t perform the essential functions of their jobs, even with accommodations.

Most companies employ a broad range of workers with varying backgrounds. Those who are well-educated will have no trouble reading and understanding an application or employee handbook. Others may have a harder time understanding what they are reading. Still others may not speak or read English. That’s why it’s important to use plain language when drafting any documents your employees need to read.

When an alleged sexual harasser is a supervisor, employers aren’t liable if there was no tangible employment action taken—the harassed employee wasn’t fired, demoted or otherwise punished—and the harassment was stopped promptly. But it doesn’t always work out so neatly in larger organizations.

According to the EEOC, Pittsburgh-based Lifecare Hospital showed a remarkable lack of compassion when it fired business manager Diana Altieri-Hand, who had cancer at the time. Saner heads prevailed once hospital officials contemplated the prospect of a hospital justifying to a jury why it mistreated a cancer patient.

Chip away at a paper pile by first flipping the stack upside down, so the oldest material is on top. It’s easier to toss out old things. Break down a large pile into one-inch piles. Attack the first one-inch pile by reviewing each piece and asking these four questions:

Roadblocks can spring up anytime, particularly in the current economic climate. When you encounter an obstacle, employ these tactics:

Leaders find business lessons every where, even from a shirtless guy at a music festival. See the Youtube video that went viral, and find out why two top business gurus believe that, when in doubt, good leaders just jump in with both feet.

A taste for risk, it’s becoming clear, is an important part of the gene pool. We may owe our furious pace of innovation, not to mention the survival of our species, to crazy adventurers. Now scientists find that a taste for risk is hard-wired in about 10% of us, with thrill-seekers making up a small fraction.

People tolerate superaggressive leaders if their visions are exceptionally strong, but it’s a dicey proposition. Experience shows that bullies, even when considered “visionaries,” tend to go too far.

 My wife, the healthy food blogger (www.thewholegang.org), and I played hooky from work last Friday afternoon and went to the 1:10 pm showing of the new movie, Julie and Julia. (We were there with all of the retired folks and I concluded that that looks like a pretty sweet gig.)  Anyway, it’s a great movie – two thumbs way up from both of us. Anytime you have Meryl Streep (as Julia Child) and Stanley Tucci (as her husband Paul Child) acting together you’re well on your way to a great movie.

In this recession, how can anyone feel upbeat? Experts say the secret is to stop trying to fill your days with moments of pleasure. For example, spend $20 on an experience rather than an item. Here are more tips for being happier:

You can do more than yoga to work “mindfulness” into your routine. It’ll calm your brain and help you focus like a hawk. And you’ll have more fun. Here are five simple tricks:

If your organization is limping through the economic downturn, you’ve no doubt considered cutting down your labor burden to save money. Before you resort to radical surgery—in the form of layoffs—consider a more benign cure that increases the odds of a full recovery. Furloughs—requiring staff to take unpaid time off—can reduce payroll costs without inflicting long-term damage.

Attitudes have changed for the better in many offices, where the fear of layoffs still runs high. But what happens when employees become so busy kissing up to the boss that they stop pulling their weight at work? How are you supposed to deal with a kiss-up, do-nothing co-worker?

In case you have any trouble explaining your role as a board member, here’s a metaphor you can use. The board helps set—and set into motion—the organization’s aims, identity and direction. It’s like standing on a balcony above a dance floor ...

Last year, U.S. employees filed a record number of legal complaints claiming they suffered discrimination at work. You know that U.S. anti-discrimination laws require managers to treat all applicants and employees equally. But what, specifically, do the laws require of supervisors and managers? Here’s a rundown:

1. Still shying away from Twitter? Almost a third of senior executives now use the social-networking tool ... 2. Gauge reactions to a controversial announcement before you deliver it to a group ...  3. Seek a new hire with integrity, intelligence and energy, advises Warren Buffett.

You’ve been hearing a lot about creating value at work, especially lately, right? Being an intrapreneur is one way to do it. Intrapreneurs create a new process, product or service where they currently work. It’s like being an entrepreneur, but without venturing off to start your own business. It’s what Google famously allowed its employees time to do.

It’s not just players who can change the game. Leaders can, too. Take Zack Greinke, one of the hottest pitchers in baseball. Four years ago, Greinke hated pitching so much that he had to play little mind games to stay engaged. In desperation, he went to his bosses, general manager Allard Baird and manager Buddy Bell, who told him to go home and stop thinking about baseball ...

Robert Wright, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, has come up with a theory about globalization that might help you do business. He has studied Paul of Tarsus, who went around persecuting the followers of Jesus until he literally saw the light on the road to Damascus. Paul spent the rest of his life spreading Christianity by championing love and brotherhood.

A decade ago, the professional world floated high with the idea that you could quit the rat race and pursue whatever your heart desired. Then the bubble burst, and now all the other bubbles have burst. Still, you want to love what you do ...

In light of the H1N1 virus pandemic scare, now's the time to make sure your organization has an effective pandemic plan in place. As public health officials prepare for a vaccination campaign this fall, here are 13 steps you can take to deal with H1N1.

Why is “small” big? Small companies can better win the trust and confidence of recession-weary customers. No matter what the size of your company, here’s how you can imitate what small companies do well:

New terms for business start-ups have sprung up a world away from the cash-burning dot-coms of yesteryear. “Ramen profitable” is one, “LILO” (a little in, a lot out) another. They refer to new ventures that run on no more than the founder’s living expenses. Working best right now, venture capitalists say, are concepts that either make customers money or save them money.

When an employee announces she’s pregnant, it’s important for HR and supervisors to know what they must do—and what they can’t do (or say) under federal anti-discrimination and leave laws. Most employers must comply with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the FMLA. The ADA may apply if pregnancy complications arise.

The price of admission to today’s marketplace is continual reinvention. Organizations regularly hit “refresh,” or “restart,” so they can develop contingencies before the next crisis hits. But this organizational reinvention can happen only if leaders reinvent themselves. How?

Retaliation claims brought by unhappy employees—or really, really unhappy former employees—continue to trouble employers nationwide. There are numerous laws under which employees can raise such claims, and the circumstances that can give rise to liability are almost limitless and frequently complex.

 

It’s no smooth ride being a leader in an economic downturn. Here’s what three CEOs on Fortune magazine’s most-admired companies list had to say about sleepless nights and what they’re doing about it.

As an employer, you’ve probably learned to ignore apparent disabilities because you could end up violating the ADA if you inquire about disabilities. That doesn’t mean, however, that you’ll run afoul of the law if you do something as simple as offering assistance to an applicant who is having trouble navigating stairs or getting on the elevator.

Since employees began using checklists in Michigan hospitals, the infection rate has gone down by two-thirds. Could a checklist help you reduce errors or streamline a recurring task?

You must grant “reasonable” work accommodations to disabled employees. But what if the person’s disability could actually create a safety threat in the workplace? Must you still keep him in that job?

Few boards and managers nurture a stable of successors. Yet the need for top talent is high, as more executives step down. At DuPont, they know the value of a good succession plan. Earlier this year, they executed a seamless transition. Here’s how to employ their tactics:

When Vivek Ranadivé began coaching his daughter’s basketball team of 12-year-olds, Ranadivé decided they would play a full-court press full time. They were not very skilled. But playing a nonstop press, they ended up at the national championships. How did this David-and-Goliath story come about?

With the diminishing time and attention you have to communicate, it’s a good idea to tighten your communications and say everything that needs to be said in half the words. With thought and discipline, you can do great things in small spaces. Here are some tips from Brady Dennis, who as a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times wrote a series of profiles in just 300 words apiece.

We all know the “basics” when it comes to computers, right? Not necessarily. One person’s everyday shortcut may be another person’s “Cool! I didn’t know you could do that!” Try these nine keyboard and mouse tricks right now.

Don’t come down too hard on your employees, but confronting the situation is important. Jim Turley, CEO of Ernst & Young, understands that managing people means talking to them personally when things go wrong, knowing that it does more harm than good to ignore flubs.

You’re never too young or too old to benefit from the advice from a mentor. From her corner office, Karen Quintos, vice president of marketing for the global public business unit at Dell, mentors other women at Dell. Here’s what she tells them.

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch entered the 1980s the same way as his competitors—as a publisher who understood publishing—but left that decade as a lover of business itself, reports columnist Michael Wolf. By contrast, the folks at Dow Jones ended the 1980s as they began it—as newspaper people. Stated this way, it’s easier to see how Murdoch helped destroy his competitors.

Wear your heart on your sleeve: Emphasize with customers’ deep-seated concerns by moving from passion to compassion in marketing ... Educate managers with faster, more specific training: The trend is to pick up tailored programs offered by consultancies ... Move beyond traditional risk-management to lead your company through faster times.

Q. What kind of documentation can an employer request to verify a worker’s contention that he suffers from a learning disability that requires accommodation? Must we pay for the evaluation?

Do you have a manager who wants to discipline an employee who just requested a reasonable accommodation under the ADA? Before you approve the discipline, make sure the manager can document past problems or that the discipline is warranted based on a serious rule infraction that has happened since the request.

Q. I know the ADA limits when and how an employer can ask medical questions of applicants or employees. If I require a pre-employment medical exam, can I require the applicant to pay for it?

Employees who can’t come to work at all because of a disability can’t perform the essential functions of their jobs. Someone who is so incapacitated they cannot work can be discharged.

Even though employers must maintain confidentiality when a disabled employee receives ADA accommodations, other employees are bound to notice. For example, they might ask how the employee got a good schedule or even if she has a disability. That doesn’t amount to disability harassment.

Employees who cannot drive a motor vehicle due to a physical or psychological reason don’t automatically qualify for ADA protection. That’s because driving is not a major life activity. Therefore, an employee who claims that she panics when she has to get behind the wheel isn’t entitled to transfer to a nondriving position as a reasonable accommodation.

The EEOC has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Florida Institute for Neurological Rehabilitation of violating the ADA when it refused to accommodate a disabled employee’s request for training assistance.

Employers don’t have to provide a disabled employee with an indefinite leave of absence when the employee has a medical emergency and doesn’t know how long it will take to return. As long as the employee isn’t covered by the FMLA (in which case, she is entitled to 12 unpaid weeks of leave), you can terminate the employee without violating the ADA.

Here’s a common mistake that even the most experienced HR pro could make: An employee submits an ADA reasonable accommodations request that lists a serious-sounding condition as the disability that should be accommodated. Without further investigation, you start talking about possible accommodations. If that’s your approach, you’re missing out on an opportunity to delve deeper into whether the employee is, in fact, disabled under the ADA.

In today’s competitive and troubled economy, employers may have to demand more of employees. But that can take a psychological toll on employees who don’t handle stress well. Employers need to be aware that additional burdens heaped on employees may actually trigger new disabilities that in turn have to be accommodated.

Employers enter a legal minefield when they inquire about the health of applicants or employees. State and federal laws—such as the North Carolina Workers’ Compensation Act (WCA), the ADA and the FMLA—overlap, and any misstep can cause a litigation explosion.

Relatively few lawsuits—including discrimination and employment-related cases—are actually tried in a courtroom. In most cases, the parties reach a private settlement. But what happens if the parties reach a settlement and the employer holds up its end of the bargain, only to have the employee have second thoughts and bring another lawsuit?

Kelly Slater is a world-class surfer with nine titles under his belt. He knows that obsessing on an outcome will only hinder his performance. “When you’re not worried about the outcome, that’s when you can discover things about yourself. You trust your gut,” he says.

It’s tough to admit that your plan isn’t working and hand the project to someone else. But don’t be afraid to delegate to skilled employees who think differently than you do. It can be the greatest sign of leadership to know when to step aside.

Q. Carlos, a longtime Latino employee, frequently complains that he is paid less than his white, non-Latino counterparts. He blames this pay discrepancy on a previous supervisor who allegedly denied him several promotions in the late 1990s because of his national origin. I have heard about the Lilly Ledbetter Act. Could it affect us in this case?

These common slips-ups were formulated for salespeople, but they apply equally well to CEOs and other executives. For starters: Not seeing the world through your customers’ eyes—that’s most of the game right there ...

New research shows that people who feel powerful possess an illusion of personal control even over random events, suggests a London Business School study, in conjunction with Stanford and Northwestern. Here’s how it works:

New bosses are popping up lately, as more offices streamline staff. If that’s the case in your office, cast yourself in the best possible light—quickly. Follow this advice from executive recruiter Jay Gaines and executive coach Licia Hahn.

Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, stood in front of his staff, knowing there was not much chance he could hang onto all 8,000 of them. He’d already briefed them in an e-mail about the dire situation. “I want to run an idea by you that I think is important,” Levy said. Then he asked for ideas on saving money. In the end, the center reduced layoffs from 600 to 150.

How to reverse a bad situation? Practice three-way respect: 1) Respect yourself. 2) Respect your colleague. 3) Respect the problem. Jack and Mike had been college buddies, and now Jack had inherited his dad’s manufacturing business. Feeling that the business had languished, Jack had some new ideas...

Q. I recently heard that employers must now use a new I-9 form for new employees. Is this true?

Let’s say you’re good enough to lead your team to success. On top of that, let’s say you’re lucky enough to be recognized for it. This is a case for humility and an opportunity to deflect praise with humor. Here’s how Pete Carril did it.

Health care CEOs know better than anyone what you’re supposed to do in stressful times: Eat right and exercise. But they also have a few other de-stressers to share. For example, when Jim Casanova, CEO of Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee, stresses out, he thinks of a refrigerator magnet he received that consists of a mirror and the words: “Control what you can.”

Jack Stack led an employee buyout of International Harvester’s remanufacturing division in 1982 and grew the company to 22 subsidiaries and sales of $150 million by 2000. He laid out his ideas in The Great Game of Business and A Stake in the Outcome, his manifestos for open-book management. Today we would call his career a drive for financial transparency.

As a 48 year old, I am too young to have a first hand recollection of the role that former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara played in shaping the Vietnam War.  As a student of leadership and history, I’ve been fascinated to read the many different obituaries, articles and editorials that have been written about the man since he died earlier this week. They range from sympathetic (as an example, see this interview with George McGovern on Politico ) to reflective (for instance, David Ignatius’ column in the Washington Post to angry (Bob Herbert’s column in the New York Times is one example).

Of all the articles I’ve read on McNamara, the most comprehensive is the front page piece by Thomas Lippman in the Washington Post. With respect and acknowledgment to those who experienced Vietnam as young adults, here are a few lessons that I’ve picked up from the life of Robert McNamara that I think leaders should keep in mind.

Asked to look back over 30 years in the context of our tumultuous times, Jim Collins, author of the best-sellers Good to Great and Built to Last, offers these thoughts about where we find ourselves and how to proceed.

If you operate a business that is open to the general public, you’re legally obligated to make the premises accessible to disabled people. Similarly, you might update the facilities for disabled employees in your office. At least you can salvage some tax benefits when you modify the building: Build your renovation plans around the “disabled access credit.”

Serial innovation might be a good way to get ideas flowing again. Two strategies: 1. Cultivate ideas with an “Idea Factory” intranet site. 2. Test new ideas by partnering with other organizations.

Odds are that many forms of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are already thriving in your workplace. As an employer, it’s best to make a conscious decision about how to address social media issues with your employees. Proactively develop a policy so you don’t get stuck doing damage control—perhaps becoming the latest talk heard ’round the virtual water cooler.

Misty May already was a volleyball legend in the early 1990s when Kerri Walsh, a high school rival, asked for her autograph. In 2001, the two became partners in beach volleyball and this past August were the first team in Olympic history to win back-to-back gold medals in the sport.

When dashing off your next memo, report or e-mail, cut right to the core points. HR directors from half of the 120 major American corporations polled in a recent study said they consider writing ability when making promotions. "You can't move up without writing skills," one HR director said.

It’s an asset to take risks yourself, but a good leader is secure enough to encourage risk-taking among employees ... The Pathmark supermarket chain uses what employees call a “turtle award,” named from a saying that “a turtle only moves forward when it sticks its neck out.”

Given the high cost of health care, many employees worry about what they would do if they lose their jobs. Experts offer this advice: Use it before you lose it; sign onto your spouse's plan; look into COBRA.

“Even if we’re not born well equipped to deal with stress, we can change,” says Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University, who has compared “totally insane son-of-a-bitch” types who lash out under stress with nice-guys-finish-first types who stay cool and pick battles they can win.

Under the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, each paycheck that unfairly pays a worker less than it should is a discriminatory act. Now is the time to audit your pay policies. Involve your attorneys—to take advantage of attorney-client privilege protection while you correct any discriminatory practices you uncover.

Innovation never rests, despite the down economy. Designing applications for mobile phones is the latest way to make money hand over fist. Consider the Bloomberg app, which tracks finances. Consider Mint and Wesabe, which track your finances. Consider Ocarina, which lets you play your phone like a flute.

Attorney Alison West thinks every HR pro should keep a pen and paper with them at all times. “It will help you get into the habit of documenting,” she said at the SHRM Conference in New Orleans. West believes documentation is crucial to keeping a workplace running right—ensuring fairness, promoting good performance and, most important, winning in court if an employee sues you.

Everyone in the financial world is stepping back and asking, “What am I supposed to be learning from this?” So says Scott Eblin, who interviewed financial-sector leaders in March for a senior executive client. The leaders had taken away four lessons ...

Prepare for media interviews by reviewing what the reporter has published or aired before. Ask the reporter for draft interview questions in advance. Most of all, know what you want to say and rehearse it. Follow these six tips to get the main idea you want to convey into an understandable story.

Sooner, rather than later, might be the time to think about possibly needing to negotiate a severance package, if you don’t have one. The landscape has changed, so here’s what to have in your back pocket.

Q. If an employee constantly calls in sick because of migraine headaches, how can we verify the real reasons for the absences? Can we ask for information each time the employee is absent?

In 1970, the CEO of Tektronix, a firm based in Oregon and renowned for its measurement and monitoring technology, sat at a desk in the main workspace. When needing privacy, he and any other staff members could use a small, glass-windowed office in full view. His approachability helped the team click.

When making decisions, pay attention to the factors that lead people to make bad ones: relying on past experience, making prejudgments that turn out to be wrong and being swayed by attachments to people, places or things.

Your co-worker gets handed a pink slip, and now you feel awkward. So awkward, in fact, that you’re tempted to do nothing. But that’s the last thing you should do. Here's how to deal with the situation:

If discrimination has always been a head-in-the-sand issue for you and your organization, it’s time to get serious about your policies and practices. Discrimination complaints of all types—race, sex, age, etc.—have climbed as steeply in the past year as the economy has fallen. Don’t get caught flat-footed.

Despite their discomfort with new web tools—like YouTube, blogs and Facebook—some executives are finding value in them. Not only is it a cheap way to communicate, it’s where young people are, says James Schiro, chief executive of Zurich Financial Services.

A comprehensive document management system can help your business boost productivity, improve the bottom line and stay out of legal trouble. Here are three ways to organize files for easy retrieval, establish a record retention schedule and tame your wild email inbox.

Lately, the least able CEOs are getting all the attention. But what about the CEOs who have starred in the best turnaround stories of recent years? What can we learn from them? Consider Fiat, Hewlett-Packard and Boeing.

When you think your task is monumental and that you’ve been doggedly persistent, remember Julia Morgan. After the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, Morgan rebuilt much of the city, including stores, churches, offices, hospitals and the Fairmont Hotel. Perhaps her most famous project was the ranch and guest houses commissioned by William Randolph Hearst in San Simeon.

New evidence shows that if you speak up, people will consider you a leader as long as you say something—anything—even if you’re wrong.

As part of the Frugal Family Challenge, Food Network Magazine paired Maile Carpenter with a family of four from Hoboken, N.J., to help them spend less on groceries. Here’s how the family is keeping their grocery bill low:

After his first tour of duty in Iraq, featuring a no-holds-barred, kill-and-capture approach, Army Gen. Raymond Odierno was the last guy anybody thought would come back for his second tour and start pushing almost the opposite approach.

Q. My company provides health care services. Recently, a deaf client said we had to pay for a sign language interpreter. Is that true?

Treating disabled employees differently than others raises all kinds of red flags that disability discrimination may be afoot. For example, setting higher standards for disabled employees than you do for others is a surefire way to end up in front of a jury, as the following case shows.

Q. I recently heard that employers are now required to use a new I-9 form for new employees. Is this true?

If your organization uses progressive discipline to enforce your attendance policy, caution supervisors against making exceptions for some employees unless it’s clear the absence shouldn’t have been counted against them (for example, the absence was an FMLA-related reason or part of an approved ADA accommodation).

A federal jury has awarded $74,000 to Melissa Brown, a former food service director at Plymouth House nursing home in Plymouth Meeting, after the contractor employing her dismissed her when she sought maternity leave. But that was just the beginning ...

Employers that “regard” people as disabled and then discriminate by firing them or refusing to hire them in the first place will face lawsuits—even if it turns out those applicants and employees aren’t actually disabled. That’s a key part of the ADA.

The ADA protects disabled employees from discrimination, but it’s up to the disabled employee to come forward. Employers can’t be expected to be clairvoyant. Smart employers find a way to track those disclosures. Here’s an example of why that’s important:

A New Jersey court has held that e-mails employees send to their attorneys via work computers are not protected by the attorney-client privilege. The court’s willingness to rule that an employer’s right to control how employees use its computer equipment trumps attorney-client privilege is significant. The decision makes it clearer than ever that employers should carefully consider the language they use in their employee handbooks.

Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Airlines, knows that anger sends the wrong message and can deflate your authority. “Everything you do is an example, and people take a signal from everything you do," he says.

The EEOC recently said that employers should not require employees to take health-risk assessments in order to obtain health coverage through the employer. Such tests could violate the ADA’s rules against disability-related inquiries.

If you have an employee who seems constantly exhausted, take note: He or she may suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). And under the newly revised Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), that person could be deemed “disabled” and entitled to reasonable work accommodations ...

You know a presentation is going badly when audience members start tapping on their BlackBerrys. These days, especially, it isn't easy to capture and hold a group's attention.Keep your presentation clear and effective with these PowerPoint tips:

Face tough issues early to avoid being viewed as a lie-back-and-wait leader ... Rein in marketing budgets and spur creativity with a competitive “jump ball,” as Wal-Mart is doing ... Take efficiency to a higher level by tapping the expertise of your managers ... Use a threat to gin up innovations.

Despite the daily economic lamentations, some employers are still hiring. Employers that are hiring may think they are in the catbird seat because they may have hundreds of applicants for each position. But a bonanza of applicants is no excuse for shoddy hiring practices.

It may feel like the sky is falling, but if you use emotionally charged words in front of your team members, you will only heighten their fear and panic. Contain the fear by crafting a message that sounds realistic but not hopeless.

Like McGyver, you probably have a trick or two that you deploy when you don’t have the exact items you need for the job. Maintain your reputation as “the one who always finds a solution, no matter what,” by using these low-tech solutions for common gadget problems:

When John Akers ran IBM in early 1989, he began a campaign to focus on customers. To emphasize that goal, he invited Donald Keough, a client and president of Coca-Cola, to speak at an IBM meeting. Embarrassingly, when pictures about IBM were presented, one slide showed senior executives with a bottle of Pepsi ...

Q. I am very concerned about the H1N1 flu outbreak, especially if it flares up again this fall. Are there are steps I should take to prepare my business if an employee contracts the illness?

You've scrupulously avoided office gossip, but that isn't protecting you from being the subject of this week's chitchat. Wanting to jump quickly to your own defense is a normal reaction, but it might exacerbate the situation. Follow these steps to salvage your reputation and stop the gossip.

It’s important to create a cohesive values system people believe in. Donna Vandiver, CEO of her own marketing firm, believes in the values statement, particularly as a way to get her team excited about company goals.

The only way to be a great leader is to establish trusting relationships and ensure that your words carry some weight. “You can’t lead if you don’t have trust,” says Steelcase CEO Jim Hackett ...

Even after tremendous highs and lows, most people drift back to their natural set point for happiness. And as with your weight or the temperature in a room, you can reprogram your level of happiness to a new set point. It pays off, too. Over a lifetime, happy people make $750,000 more than dour people.

Business professors report two kinds of failure: “sinking the boat” with poor decisions or “missing the boat” by letting opportunities pass. These days, most leaders are standing to the side, paralyzed by the thought of a decision that will sink them. That’s what makes this a Kellogg moment.

Cushy government jobs, but a lot of headaches await the successful applicants for two key government jobs. Years of political infighting may be coming to an end soon, as President Obama has sent two names to Congress for confirmation to become members of the National Labor Relations Board.

Q. If an employee constantly calls in sick because of migraine headaches, how can we verify the real reason for the absences? Can we ask for information each time the employee is absent?

Nearly half of U.S. workers say they’re afraid and stressed about their ability to provide for their families’ basic needs. So it’s no surprise that workplace fatigue, depression, headaches and other stress-driven symptoms are on the rise. Here are four techniques for turning fear into courage, according to psychiatrist and author Judith Orloff.

When hiring a new leader for your team, it’s essential to interview his or her direct reports so you can smoke out any nasty surprises. People learn what they want in a leader by finding out what they don’t want. If you encounter any of these responses, probe around:

Sometimes, people don’t realize the language they are using may be offensive to members of a protected class. That can happen when a term has been in use for decades or even centuries and has become separated from its original meaning or context. Consider a recent case involving usage of the term “tar baby.”

Given the economic crisis, do a quick audit of the financial people working for you to see who are best equipped to operate in a pressure-cooker. Consider their disposition toward others and their ability to lead, not just their proficiency with spreadsheets.

Macy’s CEO Terry J. Lundgren knows it’s valuable to see your business the way your customers do. So he spends time each week walking Macy’s floors as a customer would. The experience allows him to get a feel for the shopping experience in a particular store and to take any issues or concerns back to management.

There’s been plenty of buzz about what former Yankees manager Joe Torre supposedly called player Alex Rodriguez. Apparently, it was A-Rod’s teammates and clubhouse attendants, not Torre, who dubbed him “A-Fraud.” Real enlightenment comes in the way Torre actually describes the third baseman and slugger in his new book, The Yankee Years  ...

Q. We’re aware that tuberculosis is on the rise. Can we ask applicants—and employees—to take a TB test? What about interns and volunteers? (We operate a substance abuse center.)

The best way to cultivate passion in your employees is to exude it yourself. If you love what you’re doing and express your enthusiasm, others will follow your lead.

Lead your team through changes by following these four guidelines:

Jim Steen looks like your absent-minded professor, losing track of his eyeglasses and forgetting to eat. He wears flip-flops to work. Appearances can be deceiving. Steen is so laser focused on the members of his swim teams at Kenyon College that they say he can read their minds and finish their sentences. A sampling of Steen’s simple truths:

Steve Steinhilber, vice president of strategic alliances for Cisco, says that half of all strategic alliances fail. So why has he made a career of them? Because customers expect products that are well integrated, but you need to focus on what you do best. Here are nine ways to think about and plan alliances.

Do you have employees who are required to drive as part of their duties? What should you do if they start taking prescription painkillers? Do you have to still let them get behind the wheel in order to avoid an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) claim? Or can you fire them for not being able to perform the essential functions of the job?

Ford’s new chief executive, Alan Mulally, was mocked in 2006 for gathering more than 400 bankers into a ballroom and asking them to mortgage the company’s assets to pay for an overhaul of the carmaker. The cash, he said, would give Ford “a cushion to protect for a recession or other unexpected event.” Here are some take-away lessons from this forward-thinking leader:

If you’re still grumbling about joining Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, know this: Social networks are good for business. “It’s very well documented that businesses that focus on marketing during tough financial times can actually improve,” says Karen Quintos, a vice president at Dell.

You don’t need to pay nonexempt employees for their commuting time to and from the workplace. That’s simple. But what if such employees occasionally travel off-site (or even overnight) for work reasons? When to pay nonexempt workers for travel baffles many employers. Mistakes can spark anything from mild complaints to class-action lawsuits—a black eye for you either way.

Consider questions in your workplace as a way to think about things differently and explore options, rather than as an annoyance that needs instant resolution. Your employees will feel recognized if their suggestions are taken seriously, and you may uncover some valuable ideas.

Anybody can lead people who are hardworking, pleasant, thoughtful, respectful and fun. The true challenge is whether you can handle PITAs, which stands for either Pains In The Ass or Professionals Increasing Their Awareness, depending on how kind you are. Here are a few types of PITAs and how best to lead them.

When you’re giving feedback, neither constant praise nor endless criticism is any good. Many leaders fall silent when something is done right. Even worse, unrelenting criticism undercuts morale and kicks up anxiety, killing any joy that people take in their work.

Ben Smilowitz, a student at the University of Connecticut Law School, never figured he’d start an organization monitoring disaster relief. That’s what happened, though, after he volunteered to help Hurricane Katrina victims and witnessed large gaps in response firsthand.

If you’re a manager, spawn more golden nugget moments for your team by creating informal learning opportunities: mentoring, on-the-job training, brainstorming and good, old-fashioned trial-and-error. Encourage employees to tap into blogs, discussion forums and wikis.

Even though it’s a cliché, our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses. For Thomas Jefferson, his strength lay in trusting people, but—especially when it came to financial matters—he trusted them too much. To use the signature phrase of a much later president, Ronald Reagan, Jefferson needed to “trust but verify.”

Robert Kiyosaki, entrepreneur and author of the “Rich Dad” book series, believes that taking risks and failing gave him the greatest opportunities for growth. Here are his three steps for transforming failure into success:

Chicago-based United Airlines agreed to settle a disability discrimination suit stemming from practices at San Francisco International Airport. The case involved a United policy restricting overtime for workers who had been placed in light-duty assignments.

The people around you shape your own potential, so choose them wisely. Ask these questions: 1. Do they always show good character? 2. Do they have influence? 3. Are they too much like you? 4. Will they provide expertise, skills and wisdom? 5. Are they peacemakers?

Ask your employees to focus on razor-thin, challenging targets, and they might fail or do something unethical. Instead, use this 10-point checklist when setting performance goals for others:

Test your knowledge of recent trends in employment law, comp & benefits and other HR issues with our monthly mini-quiz ...

Experts say Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, will bring a pragmatic perspective on employment law to the High Court if she is confirmed. Here's a rundown of employment law decisions she has rendered from her current seat on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 1972, Joan Winston was a key organizer of the first Star Trek convention, which attracted 3,000 fanatics to New York. With no “information superhighway” yet in place, Winston picked her way through an information jungle, creating an industry.

On June 27, 1931, an 8-year-old playing with sparklers accidentally dropped one on a display of fireworks outside Otto Bjornstad’s drugstore in Spencer, Iowa. By the end of the day, 36 buildings—more than half of Spencer’s businesses—were destroyed. Two days later, a commission met to plan a new downtown that would be as modern as they could make it.

Does your organization allow or tacitly condone it (by ignoring it) when employees criticize a co-worker who associates with members of a different protected class? If so, you should be aware that disciplining that employee can bring on a lawsuit.

If you’re forced to imagine something you’ve never seen, or do something you’ve never done, the possibilities for creative thinking shoot way up because you’re no longer relying on experience. The result: new neural pathways.

That’s the advice Marilyn Carlson Nelson received from her dad when she was 13 years old. Today Nelson, owner of the $40 billion Carlson Cos., is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and philanthropists.

PGA golfer Kenny Perry loves cars, golf, his family and his hometown of Franklin, Ky. His dream was to win at the Ryder Cup for Team USA. Perry got exactly what he wanted, and here’s how:

What does an Oreo cookie cream filling have in common with administrative professionals? Everything! Without that cream, there’s no magic center that holds it together. You’re left with two chocolate disks sitting there waiting for something special to happen. The special ingredient: you.

Online shoe retailer Zappos has gotten a lot of attention lately for its knockout customer service. But Tony Hsieh, founder of the billion-dollar company, says his secret of success is really about his employees. “Our belief is that if you get the company culture right, most of the other stuff, like great customer service, will just happen,” he says.

Employees do the darnedest things, and it’s often up to HR to clean up the resulting mess. Better to have prevented it in the first place. Two recent news stories point out problems that could have been stopped with simple policies on use of technology in the workplace. With the right handbook lingo, much corporate embarrassment could have been avoided.

Don’t wall yourself off from employees. Instead, make yourself an accessible member of the team like Japan Airlines CEO Haruka Nishimatsu. He's even removed the walls from his office so that anyone can stop by without an appointment.

Take steps to ensure that you knock this year’s performance review out of the park. Normally, says workplace expert and former HR executive Liz Ryan, only a small percentage of employees invest time in preparing. “But in 2009, performance reviews will matter—a lot,” Ryan says.

At PCL Construction in Denver, employees decide which wellness programs the organization will offer. Employee-run wellness committees at each corporate location focus on physical, financial and community wellness, as well as team building.

Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, didn’t get there on his own. He has relied on his friend and co-strategist, Charlie Munger, who views business from a different angle.

Trust your people’s instincts to avoid hamstringing them ... Tap new ideas with a “hack day,” where you allow customers to help you innovate ... Get more from people by clarifying expectations ... Rely on your team when times are tough, rather than calling the shots and executing all the plays yourself.

Does your company have a mentoring program? About 70% of Fortune 500 companies do. Even if you don’t have a formal way to seek out a mentor, consider doing the legwork to find one on your own.

Some conditions aren’t serious enough to constitute disabilities, but some supervisors wrongly assume they do. That’s a major problem: By assuming a condition is disabling, they’re “regarding” the employee as disabled—something the ADA prohibits. Thus, the ADA protects even employees who aren’t disabled.

Employers ask for trouble when they ask workers to violate doctor’s orders. Train supervisors to honor medical restrictions. It will help the company in workers’ comp cases as well as ADA and FMLA situations. The following case illustrates the perils of playing fast and loose with physician certifications recommending light duty.

In an unpublished 11th Circuit decision, a court has sent an ADA case back to a lower court to determine whether the Seminole County School Board discriminated against Marilyn Woodruff when it did not move her to less physically demanding jobs available in the district.

A federal court has ruled that Ohio employees who want to sue for disability discrimination can’t add on an additional claim of wrongful discharge under the so-called public policy of the state of Ohio. Employees have to use the federal ADA and the state disability discrimination statute instead.

What should you do if you learn that an employee who is out on FMLA leave will not be able to return when her 12 weeks of unpaid leave are up? If you are absolutely sure that she can’t claim she is disabled under the ADA, you can terminate her. But you still must continue providing any benefits she was receiving while on FMLA leave, such as medical premium payments.

Employees who take leave because of a disability may be entitled to a reasonable accommodation when they return to work. But, as an employer, you have the right to decline an employee’s return if you genuinely believe she won’t be able to perform her job. But if the employee proposes undergoing a medical or psychological exam to prove she is fit to return, cooperate.

Nine companies headquartered in New York have made Fortune magazine’s 2009  “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. Seven of the firms are based in New York City. Two Rochester companies also made the cut.

Don’t think it’s the end of the story once you have offered an ADA accommodation to a disabled employee and put it in place. Disabilities change, equipment fails and technology improves, making the accommodations process a continual one. Here’s what you risk if you make an accommodation and walk away without ensuring the accommodation actually works.

Watch out! Some tests you use to see whether employees or applicants are suitable for a job could screen out individuals with disabilities. You could wind up in court defending against an ADA claim.

The federal court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania recently ruled that UPS’ policy of requiring injured employees to be fully healed before they can return to work constitutes discrimination under the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act.

Sometimes, immediate supervisors want to be helpful when a valued employee asks for disability accommodations that seem reasonable. Instead of having HR handle the ADA process, they just make the accommodations themselves. That’s a scenario for trouble down the line.

Football Hall of Famer Joe Montana bookended his football career with two spectacular failures. Both times, his passes were intercepted. Montana—who wrapped up his 16 years in the NFL as the only three-time Super Bowl most valuable player—offers these two exercises so you can overcome failure in a low-stakes environment.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have for years predicted that a virulent influenza outbreak could kill tens of thousands, hospitalize hundreds of thousands and sicken millions. Regardless of how the swine flu crisis plays out, it should be a wake-up call for employers. If you haven’t already, now is the time to undertake pandemic planning efforts.

Seeking radical change in your organization? Be revolutionary. While managers believe in distributing information, rebels realize that emotions of pride and anger can move a group of people forward.

In a small shop, public relations is just the kind of “other duties as assigned” that often falls to HR. Don’t wait until a reporter calls to develop a basic communications strategy. Six tips can guide you through the sometimes intimidating process of interacting with the media.

It won’t surprise you that most companies plan to spend less on training this year. Rather than lament the fact that there’s less money in the budget for traditional training, consider this: Less-formal training might be more effective than formal training, and it still allows you to develop your career.

A new EEOC document spells out the best practices employers should follow to avoid discriminating against workers who care for ill family members, an issue that's especially critical in a down economy. Follow our links to download your copy of this important EEOC guidance.

Financial firms could have avoided some public backlash if they’d done some early PR, says Adam Hanft, CEO of the marketing firm Hanft Raboy. Here's how to avoid a “greedy” image:

Employees do the darnedest things, and HR and managers frequently wind up trying to undo the damage. Our newest webinar — Today's Most Bizarre Recent Workplace Cases: How to Prevent Outrageous Workplace Behavior (May 28) — tells tales of outrageous employee behavior ... and the lawsuit against the employer that followed. Here’s our take on the topic, with cases pulled from the pages of our HR Specialist newsletters.

Everybody knows iconic individuals who have branded themselves: national domestic advisor Martha Stewart, for example, and real estate hotshot Donald Trump. Lower lights do it, too, and we can learn from them.

The FMLA grants 12 weeks of unpaid leave to handle a serious medical condition. Military family caregiver leave rules provide for 26 weeks off. But what happens when an employee can invoke both, for example, when she must care for a wounded military spouse while she is pregnant?

Listeners, and even questioners, often don’t notice answers that sidestep questions. It’s called “conversational blindness.” Two Harvard researchers found that listeners don’t hear answers critically and even prefer speakers who answer the wrong question well over those who answer the right question poorly.

Recently, workplace expert Tory Johnson was interviewed about how women can succeed in a challenging job market (smartblogs.com/workforce). She talked about what she believes is the biggest challenge for female managers, but the advice could easily apply to anyone. Here’s what she said:

Ethan Stock, co-founder of web search company Zvents, began with an idea for an entertainment search engine. Before long, Stock discovered that retail owners wanted to submit events to his database, and his social project was transformed into one that could acquire ad revenue.

Q. To accommodate out-of-state applicants, we want to conduct medical exams when workers interview on-site for jobs. The test results would be sealed and would be reviewed only if an applicant were offered and accepted a conditional offer of employment. This would reduce the number of trips an applicant would have to make before starting work. Would such an arrangement violate the ADA?

When Benjamin Franklin began to put together a public library in Philadelphia, he needed the help of many friends. Instead of claiming the idea, he presented it as a collaborative effort, expediting the process. Franklin emphasized this simple strategy for leadership: Don’t worry about who gets credit.

Last year, U.S. employees filed a record number of legal complaints claiming they suffered discrimination at work. You know that U.S. anti-discrimination laws require managers to treat all applicants and employees equally. But what, specifically, do the laws require of supervisors and managers? Here’s a rundown.

Dick Fuld saved Lehman in the late 1990s, following the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management. Ten years later, he probably thought he’d do it again. What causes a good leader to make bad decisions?

With more talent chasing fewer jobs, especially in the financial sector, it can’t hurt to freshen up your résumé and look around. For starters, brace yourself: MBAs, to give one example, are flooding the market. Recruiters receive 50 to 60 résumés per opening where they used to get 10 to 20, so concentrate on showing how you contributed to the bottom line.

In his latest New Yorker article, “How David Beats Goliath,”  Malcolm Gladwell tells stories of how outmatched underdogs beat their much larger, more experienced competitors. He begins with the story of an inexperienced 12 year old girls basketball team that went all the way to the national championship game by running a relentless full court press every game.  He moves onto the story of David slaying Goliath and cites some fascinating research by Harvard political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft who studied every war fought in the last 200 years that pitted strong and weak opponents against each other.  On the whole, the underdogs won 28% of the time. When they recognized their weaknesses and adapted their strategies to compensate for them they won 64% of the time.

Pretty stunning, huh?  Gladwell’s article got me thinking about what leaders need to learn from underdogs.  Over the past seven months, as the Federal government has taken a much more active role in stimulating the economy, reviving the financial services sector and restructuring the auto industry, we’ve been regularly reminded of Richard Nixon’s observation in 1971 (and Milton Friedman’s before that) that, “We are all Keynesians now.”  As we move through the downturn and into recovery, perhaps leaders need to adopt the mindset of, “We are all underdogs now.”  With that in mind, here are three success rules of underdogs that can help leaders facing long odds.

It’s sad enough when an employee becomes seriously ill. What makes it tougher is that work doesn’t stop. Responding to these challenges requires tact, sensitivity and flexibility. Mistakes can mean not only hurt feelings but also potential legal liability problems. The key is balance ...

Attorney Mary Sullivan thought her strong midwestern accent was holding her back from making her best possible cases in court. Sullivan signed on with a voice coach, a serious commitment in both time and money. Apparently, it’s a trend.

A common story in the current economic environment is this: One day, you notice signs that your company might be in trouble. Soon after, the company begins layoffs. Rather than wait for the ax to fall, prepare yourself at the first signs of trouble.

The last time Chrysler found itself in deep peril, in the mid-1980s, Lee Iacocca hired turnaround artist Steve Miller to jump-start the company. Miller recounts meeting a Japanese-American, Reiko McKendry, who wanted to help defuse anti-Japanese sentiment in America and make Chrysler competitive again ...

Despite the daily economic lamentations, some employers are still hiring. Those employers may think they are in the catbird seat because they may have hundreds of applicants for each position. But a bonanza of applicants is no excuse for shoddy hiring practices. You must make sure they comply with state and federal laws.

On Jan. 29, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which may be the most important change in anti-discrimination laws in decades. It applies to all pending compensation-related lawsuits, but limits back pay to two years. Employers can look ahead to many years of legal wrangling over the interpretation of the seven key words of the act: “a discriminatory compensation decision or other practice.”

New FMLA regulations went into effect in January. Now is an excellent time to offer everyone in management a refresher course in what the FMLA requires. If managers remain ignorant of the new rules—or the old ones still in place—you increase the risk that an employee will charge them with willful violations.

When Admiral Mike Mullen was promoted to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he received this piece of advice: “Congratulations—just remember one thing: From now on you will always eat well and you’ll never hear the truth again.” To get away from the Pentagon bubble and into the real world, Mullen travels straight to the troops ...

One of the best ways to come up with creative ideas is to hold a “greenhousing” session where ideas are nurtured before they’re judged, says Dave Lewis, who runs ?What if! The Innovation Company.

Shumeet Banerji, chief of the reformulated consulting firm Booz & Co., says, “I don’t believe that leadership is innate, and neither does the firm,” he says. “We believe it can be learned."

It’s just too tempting to make your words purposely unclear. You might allow underperformers to stay on the payroll without ever telling them what you want or expect. You might even pat them on the back. But that kind of dishonesty hurts the whole enterprise.

Reject your first thought ... Hire people who are better than you, and be sure to give them credit ... Tie senior leaders’ compensation to innovation goals to reach them more quickly.

There’s leadership magic in a company that turns kitchen helpers into millionaires. The evidence is in Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s, a compendium of simple wisdom by Paul Facella, who started working at Mickey D’s as a teenager and retired as a regional vice president.

Business consultant Gayle Lantz wants the rest of your year to be bullish. For starters, remember that the downturn won’t last. Remind your employees that in business, as in life, it has never made sense to follow the herd, whether it’s doom-and-gloom thinking or “irrational exuberance.”

For two Little League teams in New Jersey, two different managers varied in how they encouraged their baseball-hungry 12-year-olds to shoot for the top: the Little League Word Series in Williamsport, Pa.

Wisdom: a finely calibrated balance of knowledge and understanding accumulated along life’s journey. It plateaus somewhere from middle age to age 75, some research reports. Good news: You don’t have to wait until old age to develop wisdom. Bad news: It’s still rare.

You’re already doing your part to be “green” at the office by printing on both sides of paper, recycling and steering clear of bottled water. Now, what can you do to inspire your less-green co-workers? Tips from Tim Sanders, author of Saving the World at Work:

If Angie Fuller hadn’t discovered the Standard Operating Procedure manual her predecessor left, she wouldn’t have known how to do her job. Once she’d settled into her new position, she began updating the SOP manual to accurately reflect her evolving role. Follow Fuller’s tips to create an SOP manual for your role.

The top qualities you can develop as a leader, says a former commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, are decisiveness, integrity, respect, diversity, trust and performance.

If you find yourself muddled in crisis, shake off the shock, orient yourself and start looking for solutions—fast. Here's how:

If your organization sells products or services on credit, take note: August 1, 2009, is the deadline to comply with the identity theft requirements in the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. (Note: These rules were set to take effect on May 1, but the FTC pushed them back by three months.)

Test your knowledge of recent trends in employment law, comp & benefits and other HR issues with our monthly mini-quiz ...

After the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw was impressed with this young guy covering it for CBS. Brokaw invited Brian Williams for a drink and asked if he would consider coming over to NBC ...

Cut back on workday spending ... Keep your mind primed for work by clearing away the cobwebs ... Know the right way to vent to relieve stress ... Think “ABB” or “always be briefing” ... Uncover wasteful spending with creative thinking.

Good news when it comes to disciplining disabled employees for breaking behavioral or dress code rules: You can and should hold the disabled to those rules, along with everyone else.

The ADA requires employers to reasonably accommodate disabled employees and applicants. To decide what those accommodations will be, both sides are supposed to engage in an interactive process. If that process breaks down, a court will try to determine who was responsible for the impasse—and good records are key to winning that fight.

Don’t jump to the conclusion that, just because a sudden illness or condition requires emergency medical care or even surgery, the employee who falls ill is disabled. The standard ADA test still applies.

Some employers unknowingly misclassify some of their employees as independent contractors. In doing so, they risk suffering severe consequences. By becoming familiar with the following tests, you minimize the chances of misclassifying an employee.

Sometimes, disabled applicants and employees try to insist on a particular accommodation. They expect employers to blindly agree to their suggestions without considering the expense or inconvenience. Don’t fall into that trap.

Some employees mistakenly believe that, just because they have been diagnosed with a serious condition, they are disabled and entitled to an accommodation. Employers can and should analyze the claimed disability to see whether it really substantially impairs one of the employee’s major life functions. The diagnosis alone is not enough. It’s just the starting point.

Q. Several recent hires have suffered work-related injuries shortly after beginning their employment. As a result, our workers’ compensation premiums have soared. The company’s CEO, in an effort to avoid this problem, has directed that only “careful” workers be hired in the future. Is this legal?

The California Labor Code prohibits potential employers from asking about marijuana possession convictions more than two years old. But sometimes, federal law overrides state law—and that’s the case for employers that are hiring potential employees to work in pharmacies.

The downturn has hit California hard. Many stable California employers find themselves for the first time contemplating reductions in force in order to survive. If you’re considering a large-scale layoff, be prepared to familiarize yourself with California’s version of the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act.

When planning a reduction in force, it’s natural to decide who should stay and who should go by ranking employees based on the skills you’ll need after downsizing. Before managers start ranking employees, make sure they understand not to use temporary medical problems and their consequences as a reason for deciding to terminate an employee.

Trying to explain why your company or industry is a mess? Spare them the “perfect storm” metaphor.

Q. One of our employees recently developed a condition that makes it difficult for her to perform the essential functions of her job. She has asked to be transferred to a job she can perform. Are we obligated to do this?

True leadership is less about raw talent than expertise. So says Malcolm Gladwell, the business and science guru. Here’s his take on expertise: Real leaders aren’t just “naturals.” They are masters who have slaved at their craft for 10 years. “And what’s 10 years?” Gladwell asks. “Well, it’s roughly how long it takes to put in 10,000 hours of hard practice."

Following two short-lived CEOs, Nicholas Chabraja found himself at the head of defense contractor General Dynamics in 1997 with plenty of cash but weak sales. Chabraja changed that. He acquired 50 companies and multiplied revenues 10 times over.

Sooner or later, everybody’s got to adapt to a changing economy. This means thinking creatively about how you can stay on top. Be resourceful enough to seize opportunities.

Who doesn’t hate performance reviews? They destroy morale and teamwork, says Samuel Culbert, a management professor at UCLA, and they hurt the bottom line. The alternative: Instead of a one-side-accountable, top-down review, consider a both-sides-accountable performance preview.

Looking for some clear lessons in productive ways to receive feedback?  Or, conversely, some excellent examples of how not to receive feedback?  Well, if you are, there’s this TV show that runs on Tuesday nights that is full of examples on both sides of the equation.  You may have heard of it.  It’s something I like to call American Idol.

OK, before you bail on me and think I’ve become a total pop culture bubblehead, let me explain myself.  Yes, I will acknowledge that Idol is one of my guilty pleasures. (After all, man cannot live by the Harvard Business Review alone. )  That said, if you watch it with a bit of a leadership development lens on, you can actually learn a lot about what talented people do or don’t do with constructive feedback.

I’ve identified at least six models for receiving feedback from watching the show.  Two of them are worth emulating and four need to be avoided at all cost.  Interested in which one might apply to you or some of the people on your team?  Read on.

You probably know that a diverse group is likely to yield the most creative work. But you may not realize just how diverse a team should be, particularly if it needs to come up with new, innovative ideas. Your team needs diversity in three areas: job function, age and gender.

Whatever you do, don’t cancel a meeting because of a tightened budget. Employees and customers need to see the leadership team standing in front of them, sending a “we’re in this together” message.

While cleaning out his attic, a British business leader stumbled upon some notes on leadership from the ’50s. The notes were handed out at Eaton Hall near Chester, England, during his military officer training. Dated in tone but clear, concise and purposeful, the notes transcend their original military context.

If you’re one of the 11 million account holders who have more than $120 billion invested in tax-free Sec. 529 plans for a child’s or grandchild’s college education, we’ve got good news about investment options. A new IRS ruling allows you to change your investment mix up to two times during the 2009 calendar year.

It was a humdinger of a finish to the New York Giants-Cincinnati Bengals football game last fall, particularly at the two-minute warning. What you would not have seen is the leadership that brought the scene to your TV. Back in a windowless production trailer making it happen was CBS crew director Bob “Fish” Fishman.

Jean Henri Dunant arrived in Solferino, Italy, on a business trip in 1859 and found himself in the middle of hell. About 38,000 soldiers lay dead and dying, casualties of a battle to push Austria out of Italy. That moment inspired Dunant to launch the International Red Cross. The Geneva Conventions also came out of his work.

It’s a popular idea that teams work better than individuals, but sometimes leaders must intervene ...

Collaboration works, until it starts to resemble groupthink. That’s when healthy dissent evaporates, self-defeating tendencies surge and negative emotions corrode the group’s work. Make sure your team is working more like the Manhattan Project and less like Enron.

It hasn’t been much fun at a whole lot of workplaces lately. Half an hour into a meeting, one CEO asked, “Are we having fun yet? In the past 24 hours, who’s had the worst business experience?” As they joked about each horror story, the tension lifted.

Each year, new employment laws go on the books and courts write thousands upon thousands of decisions interpreting old laws. Yet, year after year, many HR professionals reach up onto a dusty shelf to hand new employees the same old employee handbook someone wrote years ago—too often without a second of consideration whether the contents still pass legal muster.

One thing is for sure about living in 2009. You don’t have to look very hard to find examples of what happens when people lose their grip on the boundaries that previously brought order to their lives.  Let’s take a look at a few examples that range from the seemingly ridiculous to the very serious to see what the common denominator lessons might be.

In a crisis, it can be hard to decipher what should have been done differently. Your job is to avoid the situation altogether.

Say a deadly listeria outbreak is traced back to a food plant you own. How do you handle the crisis? CEO Michael McCain of Maple Leaf Foods faced that challenge when an outbreak of listeria led to several deaths. Despite the grim events, McCain was named CEO of the year for 2008 by the Canadian Press.

You’d be forgiven for expecting Shaun White to become a shill after winning a gold medal in snowboarding at the 2006 Olympics and more gold in skateboarding at the 2007 Summer X Games. Instead, the “Flying Tomato,” with his wild red hair and southern California style, took control of his image.

She may look all sweet and spritely, but comedian Tina Fey also happens to possess a Teutonic will. That’s why former "Saturday Night Live" colleague Colin Quinn calls her “Herman the German.”

As time has passed, the North Carolina Persons with Disabilities Protection Act has evolved to cover more disabled North Carolinians. For example, the first version of the law excluded “working” as a major life activity, thus preventing coverage for those who might not be able to work without substantial accommodations. In 1999, the Legislature added “working” as a major life activity ...

You might prefer a sharp stick in the eye over an afternoon of networking, but in tough times, you can’t afford not to cultivate a robust network. The larger your circle, the better off you’ll be. Here are a few tips from the pros.

You have to wonder what they’re thinking when directors snap up CEOs with records of spectacular failure. Robert Nardelli from Home Depot to Chrysler; Don Carty from American Airlines to Virgin Airlines; and George Shaheen from Webvan to Siebel. All went down in flames, yet ejected unharmed.

Employers have two important HR duties to add to their to-do lists this week: 1) Ensure that this week’s payroll reflects more generous federal income tax withholding levels mandated by the economic stimulus law enacted in February; 2) Start using the new Form I-9 on Friday, April 3 ...

When business takes a bad turn and anxieties mount, keep the message clear, the delivery swift and your priorities right. One example of a business that delivered the right message: Dupont.

Are you a situational leader or an emotional leader? Situational leadership depends on the kind of direction and support each of your followers needs. Emotional leadership is situational, too, but based more on the theory of emotional intelligences than on the level of your involvement ...

Picking protégés is like investing, say two psychology professors. You choose carefully because you have limited resources and want a decent return. Before you commit to mentoring, learn what you can about your potential protégés, work with them informally and get to know them better.

Even with a big goal, small changes early can create excitement and instill confidence, as shown by Charlie Mae Knight, a new school superintendent in California who faced a seemingly insurmountable task.

The world was simpler when Shelly Lazarus went to work for ad agency Ogilvy & Mather in 1971. Today, as chairwoman and CEO of the behemoth that employs 15,000 people in 125 countries, Lazarus tries to keep things simple. That’s what she did in China.

When your organization faces obstacles, don’t leave employees in the dark. Your team will work better if everyone knows the specific issues and why a certain course was chosen to correct it.

The highly publicized “bailout law” passed last year—the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of  2008—extended a number of tax breaks that had officially gone off the books. But other tax changes in the new law have flown under the radar. Alert: Be aware of new modifications in the rules for casualty and theft losses.

Capt. Chesley Sullenberger made his leadership clear when he landed a plane intact on the Hudson River in January, saving 155 lives. While “the miracle on the Hudson” did seem miraculous, it was mainly the result of preparation and a cool head. Lesson: Stretch as far as you can to prepare to lead when disaster strikes.

If you’re serious about staying ahead of the curve, a regular assessment of your strengths and weaknesses is valuable. But don’t trust your own judgment—seek advice from colleagues familiar with your work who will give you a candid review.

David F. D’Alessandro, former chairman and CEO of John Hancock Financial Services, knows that simple things, like respect for employees’ lives outside the office, make a difference.

When it comes to sales lead generation, Alan Bayham, president of Bayham Consulting, believes sales representatives must tailor their approaches and messages based on a buyer’s behavioral type. According to Bayham, buyers fall into one of four categories:

It’s tempting to stay with a familiar strategy, particularly if it has served you well. However, reluctance to stray from old practices can spell disaster. Look at General Motors ...

Trying to build a business in these perilous times? You can generate free publicity even without fancy public relations. Follow these tips:

Dealing with a labor union has its headaches, but figuring out how to deal with disability accommodations isn’t one of them. The fact is, having a collective-bargaining contract in place can make that easier.

Alonzo Mourning knows how to make tough calls. The NBA center started young. When he was 10 years old, he knew it would be better not to live with his parents, so he placed himself in foster care ...

Vivek Paul was a senior executive at GE Medical in the 1990s, in charge of the company’s $150 million technology division, Wipro. Faced with fierce competition, Paul employed three tactics: face reality, instill confidence and think long-term.

Asked for the best advice her dad ever gave her, Susan Black-Beth says: “Don’t make decisions when you’re too mad, too glad or too sad.”

If you manage other assistants, you may be craving higher productivity from your team. If you’re a savvy people manager, though, you don’t want to saddle your strong performers with an extra layer of stress. Consider these three approaches.

Everybody craves the stable leader, the steady hand, the reassuring voice. People view calm individuals as less neurotic than jumpy ones, which is a function of genetics. But you can cultivate an even temperament.

In a common-sense decision, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that former employees who are disabled cannot sue their former employers under the ADA to recover retirement benefits that were reduced because they received Social Security disability payments from the federal government.

Sometimes, employees suggest telecommuting as an accommodation if they have temporary disabilities. Telecommuting may be possible for some kinds of jobs. But in other cases, the job itself may make telecommuting impossible.

While just calling in sick without further explanation may not trigger an employer’s obligation to see whether an employee needs FMLA leave, the more details she provides, the better the chances that the information constituted FMLA notice, which would require the employer to follow up.

Employees with disabilities may be entitled to transfer to open positions that they are qualified to hold. Remember, that means jobs they could do with or without an accommodation.

Q. We have an employee out on FMLA leave and have just learned that she will not be able to return to work when her FMLA entitlement expires. Should we go ahead and send her a termination notice now?

Genuine whistle-blowers are protected against retaliation under the Minnesota Whistleblower Act even if the retaliation occurs years later. Caution management to avoid any action that smacks of punishing an employee for instigating or cooperating with a criminal investigation of alleged company wrongdoing.

Employers may be in for a nasty shock if they assume that an employee who can’t return to work full time after taking FMLA leave doesn’t have the right to reinstatement. If they can perform the essential functions of their jobs on a part-time basis, then employers may have to agree to a reduced schedule.

Many disabled applicants choose not to reveal their disabilities during the selection process and don’t reveal the need for reasonable accommodations until after they have been offered a job. Don’t ignore that request, or you could wind up in court for violating the ADA.

Luckily for Pete Sampras, he realized early in his tennis career that his opponent wasn’t beating him. Sampras was beating himself. It wasn’t just that he’d played badly, Sampras says now. “I also played without heart, which is a greater sin.”

E-mail and other data keeping you isolated? Your virtual absence sets an example not to focus on interaction with colleagues. This undermines employees’ understanding of how they’re doing and puts everyone at risk for miscommunication.

Although the workplace seems like an optimal place for speed, having a little patience goes a long way. A good executive understands that not everyone is moving at the same speed.

Imagine two employees, both working for a difficult boss. One gets yelled at by the boss and leaves his office looking calm and unruffled. The other flees to the bathroom in tears or kicks the wall. The difference?

Foster more connections among employees by playing “switch-a-seat” ... Become known as a more inventive leader by using the future-leaning word “will” more often ... Never waste a crisis ... Stay tuned to market and cultural trends ...

Few employers win ADA cases by using a business-necessity defense. That’s probably because few employers take the time to really lay out why their business cannot accommodate a particular disability. Now the 11th Circuit has decided a business-necessity case that can serve as a blueprint for employers that want to use it effectively.

Hawaiian banana farmer Richard Ha came close to packing it in last year. Ha hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d converted a $300 investment into one of Hawaii’s most successful farms, producing up to a third of the state’s bananas. He’s a careful businessman who watches expenses. And that’s where the problem lies ...

In her 23 years at Coca-Cola, Mary Minnick was pretty much never satisfied. Maybe her whipsmart approach was too much for the genteel board of the Atlanta-based corporation. Minnick, Coke’s former head of marketing, strategy and innovation, shook things up.

You might wonder: How the heck are we supposed to innovate during these horrible economic times? It’s hard enough to keep running in place. Well, you can innovate.

Rick Pitino, coach of the University of Louisville basketball team, still remembers his greatest comeback. It was back when he coached the Kentucky Wildcats, during a 1994 game against Louisiana State.

As a group CEO of Italy’s UniCredit Bank, Roberto Nicastro is fairly young, at fortysomething, to hold such a position. In recent years, Nicastro helped the bank embark on an aggressive international expansion. But he also realized that he felt as though he were riding a roller coaster and might be sacrificing his life to the company ...

Help your eco-minded boss travel with a green conscience. Steer him toward these goods, perfect for packing.

Regular attendance is a key job function for most of your employees. But while you are free to set and enforce attendance rules, you must also comply with key federal laws, including the FMLA and the ADA ...

Take this quiz if you want to assess your fitness at the top job. By answering yes or no, you can pinpoint your strong or weak points and make improvements.

Texan oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, the 80-year-old who made a fortune on huge gambles, is placing his biggest bet yet. The trillion-dollar Pickens Plan would break U.S. dependence on foreign oil by developing wind and natural gas as native sources of energy.

Leading is not about personality—it’s about action, say leadership researchers James Kouzes and Barry Posner, who have analyzed the work of thousands of leadership experiences. Almost every case of leadership follows the same five practices.

As if computer solitaire wasn't enough of a distraction for daydreaming office workers, March Madness is about to make working hard even harder. But that's not all bad, according to one expert: The morale boost may make the NCAA tournament a good bet for employers. Here are some of the rules of the game for HR.

Yale psychologists, back in 1990, found that the ability to think dispassionately about your own passions is linked with success. This finding opened up a whole new field: emotional intelligence.

What makes the Internet useful is also what makes it so undeniably distracting: There’s no end to what you can find online. Luckily, a few browser add-ons that work with Firefox can help make web surfers more productive (all available at addons.mozilla.org).

The current economic meltdown underscores this reality: We’re never too far from a crisis. Before a crisis causes things to blow up, train your office for first response.

Sydney Brenner, a founder of molecular biology who shared a Nobel Prize for his achievements in 2002, keeps zooming around the world past age 80, still opening up new fields of research. Here's how he does it.

Although it’s easy to overlook, common courtesy toward employees is a sure way to increase morale and create an environment of respect. Coming out of the office and interacting with employees on an even plain lets them see the group as a cohesive whole.

Even though it’s messy, sometimes it’s important to remove people who are not doing an acceptable job. Wayne Downing, who ran the U.S. Army Special Forces as a four-star general, says that putting the right people in the right positions can sometimes be uncomfortable but will ultimately make a difference.

It pays to give more than lip service to the Web 2.0 trend, with its emphasis on trust and openness. Just look at Cisco Systems. All decisions at Cisco used to be made by the top 10 people in the company, says CEO John Chambers. Today, he is spreading the company’s leadership and decision-making far wider than before.

While employee handbooks are not required by law, they can prove essential — especially for small business owners that can't afford to lose a harassment or discrimination lawsuit. The employee handbook has become an essential tool in the employer’s arsenal to defend against liability for employment decisions.

Collaboration works, until it starts to resemble groupthink. That’s when healthy dissent evaporates, self-defeating tendencies surge, and negative emotions corrode the potential of the group’s work. Make sure your team is working more like the Manhattan Project and less like Enron. Three team management tips:

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that someone who isn’t disabled under the ADA also isn’t disabled under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. The fact is, the NJLAD is far more generous in its definition.

James Andrews is a stealth force in sports, making (or saving) teams billions by mending their players, including 62 Hall of Famers. Aside from his skills as an orthopedic surgeon, Andrews has made his own fortune by pressing an extreme form of customer service.

You may have heard this old chestnut: Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans. Yes, plans do go awry, and those screw-ups often require apologies. Here are the rules for apologizing.

North Carolina law has long protected disabled North Carolinians from discrimination. The North Carolina Persons with Disabilities Protection Act was originally called the Handicapped Persons Protection Act and became law in 1985. The act is broad in scope, and many of its protections apply directly to employment matters.

An old blog post about greed really pointed the way to the condition the economy is in right now. Almost two years ago, when the rest of the business world was still go-go-go, the Slow Leadership movement founded by retired corporate executive Adrian Savage warned against short-term decisions driven by greed.

Identify and groom future leaders for higher positions where they can succeed and help your organization succeed. One way to develop people’s characters is to put them in tough situations so they can grow. An extreme example is the U.S. Navy SEALs ...

The popularity of Internet blogs and social networking sites such as MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook and Friendster is causing confusion and concern for some employers. Is there any harm in using information published on the Internet to screen applicants? At a time when it’s easy to search the web for information on just about anyone, what steps should a reasonable employer take to investigate the background of an employee?

When Roslyn Hill bought a dilapidated building at a tax-lien sale, her friends thought she was nuts to buy an empty building on a slummy street in Portland. She borrowed most of the $26,000 and fixed up the place with her own hands. When she couldn’t find a tenant, Hill decided to open a coffeehouse. Sound like a recipe for disaster?

In his new e-book, How to Sell More in a Down Market: The Leadership Secrets of Dynamite Sales Results, Randy Goruk neatly sums up what leaders know ...

The three leadership skills required now are agility, communication and decisiveness, says Clarke Murphy, who heads the CEO search practice for Russell Reynolds.

Corporate innovation requires seamless collaboration across departments. Unfortunately, at many companies, silo mentality resists cross-functional cooperation. That’s one reason Sony can’t catch up with Apple in delivering supercool gadgets.

An employee who has been on temporary disability leave and whose leave is about to expire may be eligible for reasonable accommodations under the ADA. A smart employer will try to ease the return process by proposing a solid return date to the employee and inviting him to contact the company with any questions or concerns.

Q. With the change in the seasons, an employee who claims to suffer from seasonal affective disorder wants to put up a special lighting fixture by her desk that she says will provide natural-spectrum light. Some employees complained last year when she put up this light that it was bothersome and distracting to them. Do we have to let the employee use the light? What do we tell other employees?

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff gave Susan McBride, a Detroit Planning and Development Department employee, approval to proceed with her lawsuit over a co-worker’s perfume.

For years, employers tried to argue that an employee who received federal Social Security disability payments couldn’t claim she was also covered by the ADA and entitled to reasonable accommodations.

Former state Sen. Wayne Bryant, once one of New Jersey’s most powerful politicians, was convicted of bribery and pension fraud for taking state jobs for which he did no work and steering state business to cronies in return.

Your organization, like many, may have embraced a wellness program to help employees quit smoking, lose weight, exercise more or participate in screenings for high blood pressure or cholesterol. You may have even thought about requiring employees to participate. But that's a controversial practice that is likely to step on laws ranging from HIPAA to the ADA ...

Test your knowledge of recent trends in employment law, comp & benefits and other HR issues with our monthly mini-quiz ...

Joseph C. Wilson, the man behind the first Xerox copier, created an industry from scratch because he was willing to ignore market studies and act on faith.

When you’re hiring people, ask their bosses, mentors and co-workers. How they see their world is probably how they’ll see yours.

Changing the perception others have of you at work can take up to 18 months, according to Barb Krantz Taylor, a licensed psychologist and executive coach at the Bailey Consulting Group. But there are ways to speed things along, however. Taylor offers four ideas on how to do it.

HR Law 101: Since 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act has provided eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year for the birth, adoption or foster care of a child; caring for a child, spouse or parent with a serious health condition; or convalescence after an employee’s own serious health condition ...

If you know an employee is suffering from depression, don’t be so quick to accept his or her hasty resignation, a new court ruling shows. Instead, you may need to identify this person as “disabled” under the ADA and, therefore, engage in an interactive process to find a work accommodation.

The best way to make a decision is to shut off emotional triggers and become a Vulcan, like Mr. Spock, says Baba Shiv, a marketing professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Planning your next move in the current chaotic environment may seem futile, but it’s necessary if you hope to learn anything as you go along. Here’s an overview of “theory-focused planning,” which simply means building a theory and testing it.

An analysis of the biggest business failures of the past quarter century, conducted by two consultants, reveals that nearly half of them could have been avoided. In most cases, the culprit was flawed strategy, not inept execution, which usually gets the blame.

Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, provides a concise account of how we got into the economic mess in Portfolio magazine. In the middle of his story, Lewis offers insight on how, if you want to understand it, you have to be persistent in asking questions—even the same question, over and over.

The trouble with that New Year’s resolution to declutter your desk is that it didn’t stick. It’s back to its old cluttered self. “You want to create new habits that last more than a week,” personal coach Miranda Kennet says. Five habits worth adopting:

Frequently changing your message can lead to the “flavor of the month” problem: People don’t act because they figure that if they wait a few days, the message will change. Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley is a master at keeping marching orders “Sesame Street simple” and repeating them over and over.

Even in his youth, Ulysses S. Grant picked his battles. Arriving at West Point to study, he decided against arguing with the adjutant about his own name (actually Hiram Ulysses) and accepted the name given to him in a mix-up, realizing it would serve him better than the initials H.U.G.

When it’s time to reinvigorate your company, what do you do? Whose ideas do you listen to? How do you know whether your customers will stick with you through change? Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is in the process of using customers’ advice to update his recently battered brand ...

HR Law 101: The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities who can perform a job's essential functions with or without reasonable accommodation. All employers that have 15 or more employees must comply with the law ...

Upon becoming chief information officer of the NBA in 1999, Michael Gliedman found unconnected pockets of IT all over the NBA. Now his shop runs the league’s digital video archive and web site. He’s helping the NBA’s 30 teams capture data on their fan base. He’s also constantly evaluating new technologies.

It’s one of the biggest debates in corporate governance: Does it pay for companies to consider sustainability issues, such as climate change and health risks? A recent survey of international executives reveals that do-gooder companies far outperform those that do not.

More pink slips are on the horizon ... While you can’t control the job market, you can control the impact you make at work every day. “It’s important for your own survival to do what you can, as opposed to backing into a corner and waiting for the ax to fall,” says Deb Bright, a longtime executive coach, of Bright Enterprises. 

In four years, the Gainesville Health and Fitness Center became the first and only health club to receive the top honor awarded by the Wellness Council of America. Plus, the club retains 77% of new members, compared to the industry average of 60%. Here's how Joe Cirulli did it.

Chris Gardner went from rags to riches, chronicling his story in The Pursuit of Happyness. His career began modestly with a stint in the U.S. Navy followed by a job as a medical supply salesman. Then came a pivotal moment. In a parking lot, a man driving a red Ferrari was looking for a space. Gardner wanted to be that guy and took the necessary steps.

The latest research reveals that new insights come from—you guessed it—new environments. To prompt your brain to think differently, you need a novel stimulus to jolt it out of predictable patterns.

Until his death this fall at age 93, Robert Furman’s leadership in building the Pentagon and developing the atomic bomb remained virtually unknown. “He was the guy who actually handled all this stuff,” writes one historian. “He was extremely young, and he had extraordinary power.” Here’s what this one guy accomplished.

Take this simple test to see whether what you’re telling your people about the economy is way over the top — adapted from “How to Tell If Your CEO Is Clueless.”

Corporate social responsibility “pays.” Demonstrate concern for the environment, human rights and employee welfare, and your firm will grow profitable. Right? Not quite, says David Vogel, author of The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility.

The turnover rate is high at your company. You’re even conducting exit interviews with every departing employee to find out what’s going on, but nobody talks. Chances are you’ve got some bad bosses. Maybe even some bullies. Only recently have scientists started looking at why cruel bosses thrive.

If every employee who got depressed or anxious after receiving a poor performance review or trying to satisfy a demanding boss could sue, the courts would have little time for anything else. That may be one reason that courts have been rejecting ADA cases based on stress and anxiety brought on by work conditions.

Avis Budget Group has announced that it plans to close a call center in Wichita Falls, in addition to a claims processing facility in Orlando, Fla., as part of its efforts to cut 2,200 jobs worldwide.

For many HR pros, the clock is their biggest adversary. Finding enough time in the day to complete every necessary project can be difficult. But the old adage of “work smarter, not harder” is based on the concept of managing the minutes in your day more efficiently. Here are six tips to help you work toward that goal.

Effective April 3, 2009, employers in the United States are required to use a revised version of the I-9 form. Here are the details, plus a Q&A from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ... 

Whether or not you’re actively looking for a job, it pays to ratchet up your professional image outside your office. (After all, you never know who might google your name.) For that, the e-portfolio can be your most powerful tool.

Hall of Fame football coach George Allen was all about positive thinking. In 12 years as a head coach in the National Football League, Allen never had a losing season.

India’s business leaders have aimed a laser-like focus on workforce development, rapidly making the country a global R&D hub in several industries, despite the fact that it has a much smaller pool of highly educated graduates than the United States. Here are a few of India’s best practices.

Serving on a board of directors, advisory panel or school board is a responsibility that ought to bring satisfaction. After all, it’s your choice to be there. Here’s how to make the most of it, especially if you head the board.

Having more senior-level women in your midst may be a competitive weapon: Research in Europe and the United States shows that companies with several high-level women tend to perform better financially. Yet women make up just 9.4% of the highest titles in corporations, according to Catalyst.

We think the economic downtown will yield a silver lining: better customer service. Here’s a case in point out of Microsoft a few years back. ...

Errors can turn into disasters. Your job as a leader is to wipe the veneer of shame away from mistakes so employees can speak openly and learn from them.

Not everybody is ready to step up, so congratulations if you have done so. Here are a few guiding principles on building loyalty and trust.

As nations wrestle with managing their natural resources to produce food and energy, agricultural firms have come in for some big changes. These shifts—including environmental issues and rising food costs—demand leadership. Minnesota-based agribusiness Cargill is trying to rise to the occasion.

The latest trend in workplace training may be “in the moment coaching.” It challenges employees to stay focused so they don’t leave meetings or conversations wondering what just happened. Staying in the moment keeps our minds from drifting, so we can really listen and retain critical information.

Your boss’s gender can affect just how much pain he or she seems to inflict. Researchers at the University of Toronto compared men and women working in one of three situations: (1) for a lone male supervisor, (2) for a lone female supervisor, or (3) for both a male and a female supervisor.

Wyoming has the best tax system, and New Jersey the worst, for “business friendliness,” reports the Tax Foundation’s 2009 State Business Tax Climate Index.

Anticipate how your operation might be hijacked by a sociopath. After 9/11, the French bank Société Générale made detailed plans to thwart a terrorist attack but, one bank official says, “We never thought about a single guy who could put so much money at risk” ...

The same tactics you use at work can help you get everything done at home. Some people, however, leave their work skills at work. What they should be doing, experts say, is setting goals, outsourcing tasks and reviewing performance, just like a workplace manager.

“One word expresses the pathway to greatness: voice,” says author Stephen Covey. Find your voice, and you’ll inspire others to find theirs. Fail to find it, and you’ll be swallowed up by the voices and priorities of others. Leaders can find their voices by answering four questions.

In Life Beyond Measure, a book addressed to his great-granddaughter, groundbreaking actor Sidney Poitier traces the thin line between cowardice and courage.

One of the problems with businesses in long-term decline, Wilbur Ross says, is that they develop a loser mentality. When he asks them what’s wrong, they blame outside forces. Instead of dealing with things they can fix, they sit around sulking about things outside their control.

Employers have a number of immigration compliance issues to track in 2009, affecting the Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9, business travel, no-match letters and employment authorization documentation.

John Wang, chief marketing officer at HTC, the Taiwanese company that manufactured the first Google phone, and his 60-person team, “Magic Labs,” generate hundreds of ideas daily and kill most of them. Only breakthrough ideas survive. Here’s how to replicate their magic.

“I have some difficult news that affects you and your position with the company.”  Hearing those words is enough to send anyone into panic mode. But landing a new job after a layoff, downsizing or company unraveling takes thoughtful planning. Here’s how to rebound from a job shake-up.

When you move up and out, should you take a valued protégé with you? It all depends. Here are a few factors to consider.

Climbing the career ladder requires the appropriate gear, say executives in a recent survey. Executives were asked, “To what extent does someone’s style of dress at work influence his or her chances of being promoted?”

Money can buy happiness, as long as you spend it on someone else, according to recent studies. One of the studies has implications for leaders striving for happier employees ...

You may feel like holing up with your organization’s top minds to strategize your way out of tough times. But to draw creative thinking and deep examination from a group, stay mum.

Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric, says his favorite failure was a product called Nuvel, a countertop material. If you dropped a coin on it, he says, it would leave a mark that required sandpaper to remove. What did Immelt do once he recognized his company’s blunder with Nuvel?

The American Family Association (AFA) ended a five-month boycott of Oakbrook-based McDonald’s after a company executive resigned his seat on the board of the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

When you’re looking for honest answers about the goings-on in your workplace, one winning strategy is to pose questions to employees gathered in small groups. Not only will the group setting create an open forum for discussion, but the relative anonymity of a group response frees people to raise issues.

The rocky financial markets are keeping many people up at night, especially if their retirement looms. Worried minds begin to wonder: Have I saved enough? Am I overexposed to the stock market? Before you hit the panic button, though, take a closer look at two of the biggest “warnings” you’ll hear in the retirement-planning world right now.

Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs announced this week that he'll take a leave of absence until the end of June for health reasons. The news raised serious questions about the company's succession plan -- and provided a good lesson for your organization ...

Ever wonder whether your boss is looking over your shoulder as you write e-mails? Your boss just might be. Forty-three percent of employers store and review employees’ e-mail messages, reports the American Management Association. Here’s how to e-mail without worry.

Here’s a primer on common surprises that new chief executives face, starting with: No. 1: You don't actually run the organization ...

The 111th Congress wasted no time signaling its intention to enact employment law legislation that dramatically favors employees, quickly passing both the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. They promise equal pay for equal work. Find out why business and HR groups oppose both measures.

What are the best online tools to help you get things done smarter and faster? Gina Trapani, lead blogger for Lifehacker.com and author of Upgrade Your Life, is an expert at helping people master modern technology. Here’s how everyday Joes and Janes can be like master geeks, she says.

Mimic something that works in another industry to fix something that doesn’t work in yours. Irwin Gotlieb did that in advertising sales. Now he’s the most powerful ad man on Madison Avenue.

At least 30 states require organizations that offer health benefits to employees’ dependents to include children up to age 30—and the number is growing. They are reacting to the growing number of young adults who do not have health insurance.

When President-elect Barack Obama chose Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, he did what a senior executive does when choosing an assistant: He selected a person who would help him get things done. Are you like Rahm Emanuel?

Handling the sudden needs of aging parents is likely to be a major workplace disruption in the next few years. Why? The senior population in need of daily care is set to rise nearly 40% in the next decade. Here’s how to prepare for the crisis.

Erin Primmer, former producer of “The Montel Williams Show,” has increased the amount of her disability discrimination lawsuit against CBS by a whopping $3 million. Primmer claims she was wrongfully fired after she collapsed from a brain aneurysm in 2007 ...

Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull exemplifies the greatest form of leadership: He resists the limelight and instead empowers others to achieve the extraordinary. For proof, look no further than Pixar’s nine blockbuster computer-animated films, beginning with “Toy Story” in 1995 ...

The year that the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) predicts will carry “the most sweeping HR-related changes in 30 years” starts with a bang this month as HR pros must adapt to important changes to two key employment laws: the FMLA and the ADA.

Who Moved My Cheese?, a simple parable about change, is celebrating its 10th anniversary and is now the best-selling business book of all time. What exactly is it about this slim volume that a basic reader can swallow in 45 minutes?

What does it take to land on one of those “best places to work” lists? According to Randstad’s World of Work survey for 2008, here are the top three traits of the ideal company.

Planning an out-of-town meeting? Here’s how to deal with delays, cancellations, shutdowns, mergers and other airline industry woes.

At your small company, the buck stops with you. So how can you handle an angry employee's complaint and resolve his or her problem without adding more stress to your day? Use the following six A's to deflect anger without taking the blame.

It’s no secret when leaders lose their mojo, yet somehow it just keeps happening. Here are the causes that tend to stand out.

The global financial meltdown has workers fearful and downright angry. If you plan on surviving the recession, your managers must acknowledge the fear and anger employees may feel. Don't let these seven gripes pollute your workplace.

Train new employees for four weeks, then offer them $1,000 to quit? Sounds like a crazy way to run a business. The bribe is one way online shoe retailer Zappos ensures that its employees have the commitment and energy needed to make this customer-obsessed organization succeed.

Only one in 10 workers looks forward to work, and most say the lack of leadership is why, according to a Maritz Research survey last year. That doesn’t have to happen. Here are seven ways to get across your vision, values and mission.

What’s more frightening to parents than terrorism and violent video games? Paying for college, reports one recent parent survey. Whether you’re a parent who has been saving for years or are just starting, says money expert Jean Chatzky, take these three steps to prepare.

Kathy Walters made many sideways moves, sometimes running different functions for three or four years at a clip. “All this so I could really understand the trade-offs you make in leadership,” says Walters, an executive vice president at Georgia-Pacific.

Q. An employee with severe hearing loss refuses to use his hearing aid. He works in a loud environment with forklifts and other hazards. Can we force him to wear the hearing aid or otherwise remove him from the floor? We think he’s endangering himself because he can’t hear someone warning him about a hazard.

False urgency equals busyness: It’s stressful, exhausting and unproductive. True urgency feels powerful: It’s relentless, steady and purposeful. To sort out the truly urgent from mere distractions and get on with it, John Kotter offers four practical suggestions.

Before a crisis causes things to blow up, train yourself for the first response. Heed these lessons from Detective Kevin Barry, who spent 16 years as a bomb-squad technician in the New York Police Department.

Independent contractors aren’t covered by the ADA, as the following case shows ...

Effective Jan. 1, 2009, employers with 15 or more employees have a new set of ADA rules to contend with. President Bush signed off on a law significantly amending the ADA in September, greatly changing how employers must handle disabled applicants and employees.

If you don’t have up-to-date job descriptions, you are asking for legal trouble the next time an employee asks for reasonable accommodations under the ADA. Without a current job description, the employee will come up with her own—quite possibly minimizing the essential functions she can’t perform.

Sometimes, employees work with several supervisors, all of whom provide input on that employee’s performance. But courts generally won’t view differing evaluations by more than one supervisor as evidence of discrimination

Generally, someone whose condition qualifies as a disability under the ADA is probably also entitled to FMLA leave when that disability flares up. But the reverse is not always true.

Employees have the strangest ideas about what constitutes a disability and whether they are entitled to a reasonable accommodation. For example, many people have minor phobias—let’s say a fear of spiders. That doesn’t mean employers have to provide a spider-free workplace.

Sweeping new ADA legislation passed earlier this fall will completely change the way employers manage disabled employees. The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 overruled four U.S. Supreme Court decisions defining disabilities under the ADA, thereby broadening the definition of disability ...

Q. May an employer provide an employee’s medical information to a collection company?

Act fast if you require employees to furnish medical certification for requested time off. Delaying sending the forms may in itself constitute interference with an employee’s right to take FMLA leave.

When IBM’s Robert W. Moffat Jr. led the company’s personal-computer business, he had an unusual leadership tool: a “reverse mentor,” Inhi Cho, a rising midlevel manager.

Beginning this month, the new amendments to the ADA take effect. Among those rules is one that says employees are disabled even if they can mitigate the effects of that disability with medication or other aids ...

During the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt connected with people by tapping into new technology. His “fireside chats,” delivered by radio, allowed him to talk directly to citizens during one of the nation’s lowest economic points. Today, you can borrow from FDR’s playbook and connect with people through Web 2.0.

In response to numerous performance-related questions from employers, the EEOC released a detailed guide to help employers apply performance and conduct standards to employees with disabilities. Here’s a summary of the EEOC’s recommendations.

The year that the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) predicts will carry “the most sweeping HR-related changes in 30 years” starts with a bang this month as HR professionals must adapt to important changes to two key employment laws—the FMLA and the ADA—and replace their I-9 forms.

The British Empire in the 1920s was losing its grip on India. Winston Churchill and F.E. Smith, aka Lord Birkenhead and the secretary of state for India, keenly wanted to hang on. So Birkenhead came up with a counterintuitive idea ...

Well-rounded leaders don’t need to know a lot about technology. Still, if you try really hard, you can mess things up. Here’s how.

What do the nation’s top 25 small business employers (those with 50 to 250 employees) have in common? Great communication. The top 25 put into play an “open communication” concept, says Deb Cohen, chief knowledge officer at the Society for Human Resource Management.

What are the best online tools to help you get things done smarter and faster? Gina Trapani, lead blogger for Lifehacker.com and author of Upgrade Your Life, is an expert at helping people master modern technology. Here’s how everyday Joes and Janes can be like master geeks, she says ...

In workplaces where ideas grow, there are many more ideas than time to harvest them. If that’s not true in your shop, or if the ideas are not as tasty as they could be, check out CEO Philip Newbold, who, at age 60, champions innovation at a hospital in Indiana ...

The 9/11 terrorist attacks, the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the current fiscal crisis all were predicted years ahead and could have been prevented, says Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “We have an inefficient system for managing risk.”

Every workplace has managers who love to hand out nicknames to employees and co-workers. It’s all good fun until an employee in a protected class—age, sex, race, religion, disability, etc.—takes offense ...

Singer and artist Tony Bennett counted many musicians among his friends and advisors, including fellow crooner Frank Sinatra, whom Bennett considered his mentor. But it was bandleader Count Basie who advised against caving in to pressure from a record company that wanted Bennett to add rock music to his act ...

Q. I have had a number of questions about recent amendments to the ADA. Can you provide a brief explanation of what the changes mean?

Q. Our restaurant has a written requirement that waiters be able to lift, transport and carry objects weighing from 25 to 30 pounds up to 20 or more times per shift. An applicant for a server job has informed us on his application that he has a condition that prevents him from lifting more than 10 pounds and that there are no accommodations that could be made so he can perform all of the job duties. Are we going to be in violation of the ADA if we deny a job to this applicant?

When your boss moves up and out, should you go along with him? It all depends. Here are a few questions to ask yourself ...

You need both common sense and humility to send your people into the unknown. Adapt this 10-point checklist to keep them moving forward:

Any organization, regardless of size, will do better in most instances by cultivating leaders from within. Employees who are properly engaged, developed, promoted and compensated will be poached less often, and if they’re well trained, they will have knowledge and instincts no one from the outside can match ...

To build a positive workplace culture, you must deal with negativity and energy vampires head on. CEO Dwight Cooper dealt with the negativity problem by creating a company policy he called “The No Complaining Rule.”

If you didn't jump on the iPhone bandwagon, it doesn’t mean you can’t have a phone with oodles of bells and whistles. How? With widgets: small applications that appear on your phone’s menu pages.

Do you want a brainstorming session to generate one great idea or several above-average ones? A new study looked at two different models for generating ideas: by a group of people and by individuals working on their own. Who came up with better ideas?

You may know the pride and thrill of playing with OPM—other people’s money. In 2008, Freddie Mac and its former CEO, Richard Syron, gave an example in how not to play the game--and a lesson in leadership...

A recent study on hotel towels may have implications for the office. Researchers found that guests were more likely to hang up and reuse their towels if the little cards in their bathrooms focused on the actions of other guests ...

As the leader, you need to take your team through uncertain situations by absorbing uncertainty for them. People facing an uncertain future go into “frozen in the headlights” mode: Nothing happens while they wait for more information.

The free breakfast, lunch and dinner that the Google cafes offer the employees may seem like an excessive perk, but in the mind of Google’s VP for people operations, the strategy does more than satiate techs’ rumbling tummies ...

Start with the idea that you can change the world. Think about what inspires you, says consultant Alan Gregerman. Flex your curiosity. Now get ready to turn your curiosity into action ...

The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 will become effective on Jan. 1, 2009. Now is the time to prepare for the impact. The new law effectively broadens the scope of protection offered by the ADA, which Congress found to have been narrowed in recent years by various U.S. Supreme Court decisions and EEOC regulations.

Vision can be tough to come by. You need to know where you’ve come from, whom you admire and what you value. What matters most and what are you determined to accomplish? Meet these criteria and you’re there.

Employees who want their employers to make reasonable accommodations for their disabilities must let their employers know they need accommodations. But some employees don’t want to provide a lot of medical information and may stall the process while they make numerous accommodation suggestions ...

Government employees who want to sue for such things as defamation have to let the state know before they file suit. It gets trickier, however, when the employee amends a previous suit ...

Q. My company would like to administer personality tests to job applicants. Does this practice violate the ADA?

As a child, Helen Greiner became captivated with R2-D2 in “Star Wars.” When she discovered that the little robot was only an actor in a can, she vowed to make it come alive. Greiner has kept her vow with iRobot, the company she co-founded that supplied PackBots to search the World Trade Center ruins and later to detect bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Q. We are a large company and are dealing with a situation with a sick store manager. He has used up all his FMLA leave and is still not able to return to work. Can we safely terminate his employment now?

Q. I own my own business, and controlling my insurance costs is my biggest challenge. Recently, I learned one of my employees has been tested and has the genetic makeup likely to develop into a very serious illness. While I feel sorry for the employee, this disease is likely to cost our company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Can I fire the employee?

The key to a sound discipline policy is equal treatment for all who commit similar offenses. You can’t decide to treat some employees more leniently than others without very good reason. And you’d better nail down that reason at the time you make the decision—not months or years later, after another employee has sued.

Four women who once worked at Hawaiian Tropic Zone—the Times Square restaurant that The Gothamist says “makes Hooters look like Chuck E. Cheese”—have filed a $600 million lawsuit claiming supervisors forced female employees to have sex.

You don’t have to ignore a sudden and shocking deterioration in an employee’s performance and behavior. You can and should ask for a fitness-for-duty exam. Just be prepared to discuss possible accommodations if it turns out the employee is disabled.

Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna was both loved and loathed, famous and infamous. In war, he proved courageous and tenacious, yet many of the people he conquered described him as vindictive, despotic, rash and vain. He dubbed himself the “Napoleon of the West”...

When it comes to delegating, e-mail often is the last thing a leader lets go of. Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, believes you can remove yourself from the inbox entirely to gain valuable time. Here’s how he does it.

Employers sometimes forget that just because a condition has a name and can be serious, it doesn’t always mean it’s a disability. In one recent case, an admitted alcoholic who had undergone inpatient treatment was deemed not to be disabled under the ADA and therefore not entitled to reasonable accommodations ...

Many interruptions come from decision-averse people, or people who think they don’t have the power to make decisions. Stem the tide of interruptions by adopting a military tactic: Train your people to make their own decisions.

Employers routinely require applicants to whom they have extended job offers to take tests for illegal drugs. If they pass, they get the jobs. If they don’t, employers can legally rescind the offers. But here’s a case in which an employer completely mishandled this everyday procedure, and now will probably pay a high price.

Imagine building a product used by 150 million people and relying extensively on volunteers and individuals outside your company walls to create it. That’s what Mozilla Corp., maker of the web browser Firefox, has done for the past 10 years, under the helm of Mitchell Baker.

Scores of organizations are looking for the next big thing. But in a survey of 247 senior executives, only 50% believe their organizations are “top in class” in innovation. How can you drive higher levels of innovation? For starters, look toward experts in the field ...

It’s important to understand the tax difference between “repairs” and “improvements.” Expenses for repairs can reduce your tax liability for 2008. But there’s little tax incentive to rush into improvements. Here's why ...

“My co-worker makes me crazy. At least half the time, when I walk past her desk, she’s surfing the Web, and it doesn’t look work-related ... I’m on the verge of talking to my manager about her. Should I?”

Robert Orben wrote speeches for President Ford and jokes for Jack Paar, Red Skelton and Dick Gregory. Now he advises business people, entertainers and politicians on inserting humor into their talks. Here are a few situations in which you can use his gems.

Odds are, if you haven’t yet allowed employees to work remotely, you will soon. Former HR executives at Best Buy and authors of Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It believe it’s a good start. What they’d like to see, though, is a workplace that measures output rather than hours ...

The Lincoln-Douglas debates 150 years ago, which strongly influenced a U.S. Senate race, a presidential election and the Civil War, offer lessons on how leaders should explain important issues. Here's a thumbnail sketch ...

In case you were clinging to the idea that leaders fly solo, new evidence indicates they don’t. Research shows that leadership teams are four times as important as individual leaders in developing strategy.

The ADA requires employers to provide disabled employees with reasonable accommodations if those accommodations allow disabled employees to perform the essential functions of their jobs. Flat-out ignoring an accommodation request is the absolutely wrong thing to do. Instead, carefully consider every request ...

Both the ADA and the FMLA have strict requirements for how employers must handle employees’ confidential medical information. HR professionals need to know these rules to comply with both acts—and to avoid expensive legal liability for failing to do so.

No federal or state law requires employers to use job applications. But if you do require applicants to fill them out, know the legal do’s and don’ts of what questions to ask. Here's the topic-by-topic guidance you need, along with relevant records-retention rules.

Google at age 10 still fans the flames of creative fearlessness. Here are a few morsels from the bosses who drive innovation.

As baby boomers prepare to retire, offices are left to figure out: “How do we make sure all their know-how and institutional memory are left behind?” Here are a few tips for capturing admin knowledge before it walks out the door, and making sure it sticks with younger generations ...

Most leaders think strategy drives leadership. “The fact is, culture eats strategy for lunch,” says Dick Clark, who took over the pharmaceutical firm Merck in 2005 and discovered an insular, ivory tower culture ...

The story of Dee Ward Hock is proof that you can use a life lesson to fuel your rise. As a 25-year-old married father of two with a third on the way in the 1960s, Hock had fallen deep into credit card debt ...

“Implementation” is the name of the game when negotiating an agreement. These five approaches can help you and your negotiating team understand that you’re not dealmakers as much as people who are trying to get something done ...

Q. May we require male employees’ hair be a certain length, or is that discrimination? Also, may we prohibit beards? ...

On Jan. 1, 2009, the newly enacted ADA Amendments Act of 2008 (ADAAA) will go into effect. The law clarifies the ADA definition of disability and overturns certain U.S. Supreme Court decisions and EEOC regulations that narrowly interpreted the ADA ...

For most American workers, a sinking economy and job security are at the forefront of their minds. How do you shore up employee motivation at a time like this?

Some disabilities get worse with time. An accommodation that allows an employee to perform the essential functions of her job today may not work as well in six months or a year. That’s why it’s important for HR to stay on top of the employee’s disabling medical conditions ...

Under the ADA, employees who aren’t actually disabled can nonetheless sue employers if the employers erroneously perceive them to be disabled. But there’s good news on this arcane ADA front ...

More than 200 Muslim workers walked out of the Greeley plant of meat processor JBS Swift & Co. in September to protest the company’s refusal to allow prayer breaks at sunset, a required ritual during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. More than 100 were fired for walking off the job and not returning ...

Greg Brenneman prefers to work for “sick” companies, or the ones in need of the most leadership. His corporate turnaround strategy sounds deceptively simple ...

The ADA Amendments Act of 2008, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2009, is designed to restore protections for the broad range of individuals with disabilities, as originally envisioned by Congress. The amendments were also meant to reverse several U.S. Supreme Court decisions that limited the ability of individuals to qualify as disabled ...

Although it may seem like the far-fetched excuse of an employee hoping to take a few days off from work, a condition known as “sick building syndrome” (SBS) is real. Some employees suffering from SBS have brought claims under the ADA. Others have sought recovery under state workers’ compensation laws ...

Energize employees by helping them understand your company’s mission. “If [you] have a clear vision, it resonates with your employees,” says Michele Peluso, CEO of Travelocity.

Bill Glynn was palling around with his friend Dave when Dave pointed to a tree and called it a “leaner.” Bill didn’t know what that meant, so Dave explained that it was likely to fall over and hit a house. Result: Bill and Dave set out to become the Kelley Blue Book of installed landscaping and to create a whole industry of landscaping appraisals, insurance and warranties.

William Myron Keck watched his first oil strike from a Baltimore & Ohio train where he was selling sandwiches. The founder of Superior Oil, Keck exploited every new discovery in science to find oil, and the strength of the company was that it discovered two barrels for every one it pumped ...

Chiefly, you learn how to make decisions by doing. But you can also learn, says Michael Useem, director of Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management, by approaching people who are good at it, watching how they do it and asking them to reconstruct the process.

Everyone’s stressed these days—whether from financial worries or just the looming holidays. Some thrive on stress, but for others it’s an emotional and productivity drain. Here’s a simple self-assessment you can do to gauge your stress level—and do something about it.

Both the ADA and the FMLA have strict requirements for how employers must handle employee’s confidential medical information. HR professionals must know these rules to comply with both laws—and to avoid expensive legal liability for failing to do so. Here are the details you need.

You expect your managers to possess basic values, communicate clearly and act like responsible adults. But sometimes, you get a bad apple. If you’re regretting a management hire, first judge the degree of badness. A “continuum of badness” has been developed to help you.

Leadership requires hard work, daily practice and a willingness to stumble and haul yourself back into the game. Here are three component parts of leadership from established trainers.

The most significant provision in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 for small businesses as well as individuals is the one-year alternative minimum tax (AMT) “patch,” which will have very important budget impacts for small businesses. 

You may not recognize the difference between satisfied employees and loyal employees. Satisfied employees are productive, content, fired up. Loyal employees are all that plus more. They won’t even consider taking other jobs. How do you win this kind of loyalty?

A recent federal appeals court decision shows how risky it is to ignore the interactive accommodations process spelled out in the ADA. In Talley v. Family Dollar Stores of Ohio (6th Cir.), the court held that the breakdown of the interactive process can, in and of itself, constitute a constructive discharge of an employee.

The ADA requires employers to accommodate the disabilities of their employees and customers. We thought we’d heard about every kind of potential disability—until this one ...

Teams often succumb to the perils of one-upsmanship. Imagine, then, the rigors of coaching a Ryder Cup team. Paul Azinger, captain of this year’s 12-member U.S. team, used a group-dynamic philosophy to pull the best performance from each player.

The best way to prevent lawsuits is to carefully document every employment decision. HR professionals and supervisors should be able to show exactly when a decision was made, who made it and what the basis for the decision was ...

Terminations are the spark to many employment lawsuits. And for each of the six kinds, there are some common steps employers can take to make sure they defend themselves if the termination is challenged in court ...

Q. One of our managers who hires for his division has started passing around the résumés of possible candidates to other managers. He wants to get their opinions on the candidates. Does passing along résumés to these people violate any privacy laws?

Many commentators have noted uncanny similarities between the Wall Street panics of 1907 and 2008. But one big difference stands out: In 1907, there was no Federal Reserve System or U.S. government presence. Into this vacuum stepped J.P. Morgan ...

You can learn a lot about the power of persuasion from social-psychology research. Example: In one experiment, waiters delivered candy along with the restaurant bill to see how it affected tips. Here are the results.

Keep emotionally toxic people from ruining your mood, at home and at the office. Here are actions you can take to keep the unpleasant moods of others from dragging you down.

Alexander Bondarenko, a letter carrier, sued the U.S. Postal Service for constructive discharge and disability discrimination. The Postal Service argued Bondarenko wasn’t disabled because his back bad did not substantially limit a “major life activity,” as the ADA requires. Bondarenko disagreed. He said the back injury left him unable to have recreational sex ...

An Elkhart employer is off the hook for retaliatory discharge for now—but maybe not for long. Lisa Lubarsky was reportedly a good employee of INOVA Federal Credit Union in Elkhart. But then she sued in a South Bend federal court for retaliatory discharge under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ...

Q. We have an employee who is clearly disabled. The employee has a very difficult time walking and is unable to stand for extended periods of time.  While the employee has never complained or asked for any form of accommodation, it is clearly affecting both him and his performance. We want to help him, but we are afraid to approach him and suggest he needs help. What can we do? ...

Leadership guru Warren Bennis has strong words for top executives who fail to accept responsibility but who excel at placing blame elsewhere. When Lehman Brothers’ CEO Richard Fuld Jr. testified before a congressional panel about the bank’s downfall, he claimed to take “full responsibility” for his actions—but then he passed the buck ...

Rather than flaunting the privileges that come with power, flaunt the fact that you don’t have a “what’s in it for me” mentality. Follow the lead of chief executive A.G. Lafley.

On Sept. 25, President Bush signed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, providing greater protection to disabled employees under the ADA. The amendments, which passed the House and Senate with broad bipartisan support, dramatically expand the class of people who are entitled to protection under the ADA.

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor (DOL) has ordered Lebanon-based Pennsylvania Counseling Services (PCS) to pay $196,477 in back wages to 203 mobile employees who were improperly classified as exempt from overtime ...

Employers must reinstate employees following FMLA leave if a doctor says they are ready to return to work without restrictions. That’s true even if the serious health condition was a serious psychiatric problem. Fortunately, if the employee goes on to injure another employee, the medical release will protect the employer from negligent supervision claims ...

Having trouble persuading managers and supervisors to report ADA accommodations requests? Tell them they may be held personally liable for disability discrimination under Ohio state law, a much harsher fate than they would meet under the federal ADA ...

Small, luxurious, boutique hotels offer an ideal setting for a “boutique business meeting,” where attendees feel appreciated and pampered. Is a boutique hotel or inn right for your next off-site meeting?

Q. We employ fewer than 50 employees. What’s our obligation under the FMLA or the ADA to bring back an employee who has missed lots of work? We want to lay her off. Can we?

With exposure to catastrophes increasing, researchers are looking at ways to sharpen our response mechanisms, activate our leadership abilities and increase our odds for survival. During a disaster, survivors say almost nothing happened the way they would have expected. Here’s what we can glean from their experiences.

When a big tech company raised the monthly price of its day care program by nearly 75%, employees wept. If the current economic slump is leading you to rejigger your company’s perks, consider this advice ...

Americans believe that women have what it takes to be leaders, says a new survey by Pew Research Center. Respondents say that women are superior to men when it comes to honesty, intelligence, compassion, outgoing personality and creativity ...

No matter how careful employers are, they still can be sued. Recognizing the risk, more employers are choosing to protect themselves with employment practices liability insurance (EPLI), which covers your organization if it’s hit with an employment lawsuit. But it’s important to know which coverage is right for you ...

The popularity of Internet blogs and social networking sites such as MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook and Friendster is causing confusion and concern for some employers. At a time when it’s easy to search the web for information on just about anyone, what steps should a reasonable employer take to investigate the background of an employee? ...

The fourth quarter is here, and if your company’s sales reps are behind on their numbers, it’s make-or-break time. Luckily, it’s not too late to turn things around. To win the sales revenue game, business owners must respond “like football coaches whose teams are behind at the start of the fourth quarter,” says George Ludwig ...

When Gen. David Petraeus took command of the U.S. and international forces in Iraq early in 2007, the four-star general promised to communicate with both the president and his critics in Congress. Relinquishing the reins in mid-September, he’s now Commander, U.S. Central Command.  By fall of last year, it was time to communicate in person. Here are highlights from how he handled it ...

By forcing top military and civilian leaders to resign this spring, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates showed that he’ll hold people accountable for fixing serious problems.

To make customers feel practically giddy about your company, begin by serving employees. That’s the philosophy of Colleen Barrett, president of Southwest Airlines, a company whose feel-good approach to customer service is legendary.

From his childhood on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota through his career in baseball, Charles Albert Bender developed various pitches (maybe even the game’s first slider) and a reputation for dependability in the clutch. Bender never let anyone see him sweat ...

Leadership thinker Steven Little performs a test during hotel stays. He asks room service for a milkshake. If he’s told it’s not on the menu, he walks employees through the list of ingredients to see if they have everything. Here's why ...

Q. One of our employees hurt her back lifting boxes. She has been off work for several weeks. We have been counting her absence against her FMLA entitlement. She was scheduled to return to work recently, but she now tells us the healing will take longer than expected. December is our busiest time of the year! Must we continue giving her leave?       

At Toyota, James Farley rapidly became a star in marketing, first selling the Scion, then the Tundra, then Lexus. Farley eventually jumped ship last year, stunning the industry as he left a sure thing at Toyota for the unknown at Ford. Look at Farley’s words for examples of how to talk about a turnaround.

You like your company and your co-workers, but you’re bored. Chances are you’ve reached a plateau. Solution? Step out of your comfort zone.

Irvin and Pamela Trotman Reid learned this year what it’s like to work as both the president of a higher-education institution and also as the president’s spouse. Here’s some advice they prepared for presidents and their spouses.

Test your knowledge of recent trends in employment law, comp & benefits and other HR issues with our monthly mini-quiz ...

You’re in a staff meeting when suddenly someone asks for your opinion. Or you’re in the elevator with an exec you’d like to impress. And you’re at a loss for words. Learn to improvise in any situation by using these tips from the Upright Citizens Brigade.

US Airways ranked last in on-time performance among major airlines last year. This year, so far, it’s No. 1. How did the airline manage to turn things around?

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA) grants service members re-employment rights when they notify their employers of their intent to return to work after being released from active duty. But what happens when an employer finds that its business needs have changed while the employee was on active duty? ...

It doesn’t have to be lonely at the top, says leadership guru John C. Maxwell. Sure, you might be lonely there. So are people all along the organizational chart. Loneliness comes from personality, not position. To illustrate, here’s a story.

This tale is about a racehorse and its owner, but it offers a lesson for leaders with doubts about the capacity of their people.

Conventional wisdom might be keeping you in a rut. That’s what befell officials at the Everett Public Schools in Washington state. School officials assumed that students failing in one course were failing in all of them. That is, until they actually looked at the students.

Employment terminations fall into several categories. Whether the situation involves new hires who didn’t work out, firings for cause or performance issues, or voluntary resignations, terminations often lead to litigation. For each type of termination, there are some common ways employers can make sure they can defend themselves if challenged ...

What can you learn from a Boy Scout? (No, not knot-tying.) Three lessons from Chief Scout Executive Robert Mazzuca:

Anyone who does research on the web is familiar with this routine: Point, click, wait. Point, click, wait. But If you use the browser Firefox, you can tap into two amazing tools that make online research easier and faster.

According to GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt, all good leaders: Accept personal responsibility, simplify constantly, understand breadth, depth and context ...

Carl Sagan’s passion for the universe was so huge that the moment Johnny Carson saw him on a Dick Cavett special, he wanted the scientist booked on “The Tonight Show.” Sagan delivered “a cosmological crash course,” explaining the connection between the history of the universe and the development of life on earth.

When an employee announces she’s pregnant, her employer had better be aware of the federal pregnancy discrimination law, state maternity leave laws and the employee’s right to FMLA and pregnancy disability leave.

Demonstrating best-practices leadership means finding new ways to reinvigorate your team and boost their performance. Here are four techniques for boosting your team management skills and maximizing your team’s performance.

Congress gave final approval on Sept. 17 to legislation that will bring more Americans under the umbrella of “disabled” under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). President Bush said he’d sign the bill. The bill reverses several court rulings from recent years that had limited the scope of ADA protections ...

Asked for the best advice her dad ever gave her, Susan Black-Beth says: “Don’t make decisions when you’re too mad, too glad or too sad.”

When a valuable employee is injured on the job, what you do—and when you do it—can determine not only when the employee will return to work but also whether he or she will return at all. Why? The longer employees stay out on workers’ comp, says the Workers Compensation Research Institute, the less likely they will return to their current employers ...

Gossip and nonwork chatter that spread via e-mail, instant messages (IMs) or texting can easily be captured and saved, possibly for a jury to see someday. The solution: Don’t let workplace-related gossip spread unfettered. Establish a reputation as an open-door HR department, and become a “news creator” rather than constantly responding with damage control to squash rumors ...

Stepping into a role occupied for many years by another leader can feel like a real challenge, even to skilled leaders. Take Robert Brennan: As a newly appointed CEO, he follows an exec who ran Iron Mountain for more than 25 years. His biggest challenge?

Imagining something can make it so, recent studies suggest. Researchers at Vanderbilt University proved that what we see in our mind’s eye strongly influences our perceptions.

HR can waste lots of time and energy hounding supervisors to complete their performance reviews. Choose the best mix of incentives and penalties to inspire managers to do reviews right and on time ...

An employee handbook can be the foundation of employee performance and a shield against lawsuits—or it can be a ticking time bomb that confuses employees and strips away your legal defenses. It all depends on how well it’s written and put to use.

According to New Age business consultant Barrie Dolnick, these three steps can help your intuition become more active at work.

You’ve been meaning to make a doctor’s appointment/reorganize the shelves/have the oil changed, but you keep putting it off. Sound familiar? If you occasionally procrastinate, these simple measures will help you take a more proactive approach.

Final approval of a new I-9—plus the government's recent decision to back off on new rules for handling no-match letters—brings to a close a busy fall season in which employers’ role in immigration enforcement has been in the spotlight. What does it all mean for HR?

HR Law 101: Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act, new employees must provide to employers proof of identity and employment eligibility with documents listed on the I-9 Form ....

Congress gave final approval on Sept. 17 to legislation that will bring more Americans under the umbrella of “disabled” under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Here's what the bill means to HR professionals and U.S. employers ...

The problem with standardized reward and recognition programs is that they are completely impersonal processes. Instead of thinking about the specific people involved, the company provides the same generic awards to everyone. But when an element of fun and play is added, the experience becomes personalized and much more memorable for the award recipient, without additional financial expense ...

HR Specialist will be covering the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 in depth. We'll catalog all our stories on this page. Consider bookmarking it so you can check back regularly to see what's new.

The former president of South Africa who ended apartheid there, Nelson Mandela, has an African first name, Rolihlahla, which translates literally as “pulling down a tree branch.” What that actually means is “troublemaker.” Mandela’s life means many more things: warrior, activist and statesman. Here are his rules of leadership.

The ADA Amendments Act of 2008—signed by President Bush Sept. 25 and taking effect Jan. 1, 2009—will require HR professionals to thoroughly review all policies and practices involving employment of people with disabilities. Here's a run-down of the major changes under "the new ADA."

If you were a Major League Baseball (MLB) team with lagging revenues, what would you do? Build a bigger stadium with more revenue-producing seats? In the business of baseball, bigger isn’t always better.

Sadly, most people settle for boring, black-and-white choices. It’s the usual process of inspecting the pros and cons, then picking one. The alternative process—combining both elements of either/or—is called integrative thinking. Here’s basically how it works.

Ask customers what they don’t want when conducting a survey.

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that employees who want to sue for most kinds of employment discrimination under Texas state law must use the provisions of the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act. They can’t sue under the Texas Whistleblower Act in an effort to sidestep the CHRA’s rather complex procedures or miss its short filing deadlines ...

Employers that wrongly regard injured employees as disabled by refusing to consider them for any open positions may be setting themselves up for “regarded as disabled” litigation. The ADA makes it illegal to discriminate against employees by assuming they are disabled when they are not ...

Q. We use a full-service employee leasing company. Are we exposed to liability for employment claims brought by leased employees? ...

Lorena Ochoa is an unlikely “servant leader.” Yet, that’s the role she plays as the top-ranked woman golfer. Dominating the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour after a series of wins this spring, Ochoa would have every right to start acting like a big-deal golf pro. She doesn’t.

Impulsivity and intuitiveness—placing and winning big bets—marked GM’s early history. The question today is whether GM has the doggedness and grit to win. There is hope. GM points to Apple Computer, a tech company that had been lying on death’s door until its iPod hit the market. Here are a few things going for GM.

What if someone said he’d rather eat manure than do business with you? On the air. Would you flip? Not Gary Hirshberg, who calls himself the CE-Yo of organic dairy Stonyfield Farm. Years ago, he faced that very situation.

From their unique vantage point working with rocket scientists at NASA, two budding managers learned how to handle luck, good and bad. Here’s their take on optimizing your chances for good luck and minimizing the effects of bad luck.

For most employees, regular attendance is a key job function. But while you are free to set and enforce attendance rules, you must also comply with key federal laws, including the FMLA and the ADA.

HR Law 101: The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), signed into law in May 2008, prohibits employers with 15 or more employees from discriminating against job applicants or employees based on their genetic information in hiring, firing, compensation or any other terms of employment.

“Of the top 100 U.S.-based industrial companies listed in Fortune magazine in 1965, only 19 remain in the top 100 in 2005,” write the authors of a research paper published by the Stanford University School of Business. One of the authors is none other than Andy Grove.

Sometimes the biggest leaders tell the biggest lies. They may have a talent for it, too. But as William Shakespeare once said: “At the length truth will out.”

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the threshold for retaliation is much lower than for discrimination itself, employees who have filed discrimination complaints are finding that by charging retaliation, they get a second chance to drag their employers into court. That’s why it is absolutely crucial for HR to train supervisors and managers on retaliation ...

Chances are, you’ve got at least one diabetic employee in your workplace. What would you say if that person asked for an altered work schedule so she could eat regular meals, check her blood or exercise? Are you required by law to grant such requests?...

The alphabet soup of federal HR laws—ADA, ADEA, FMLA and so forth—comes with a side order of compliance headaches. But some of those laws apply only to some organizations. Don't waste your time worrying about compliance if you don't have to. Here's the skinny on which laws you might be able to ignore—and which you absolutely must not ...

AT&T Corp. and BellSouth Corp., based in Atlanta, have been hit with a class-action unpaid wage and overtime lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Northern District. The lawsuit seeks back wages for time worked before and after shifts and during meals and rest breaks on behalf of employees in call centers in several states ...

It stands to reason that a manager who thinks enough of an applicant to hire her won’t turn around and fire her a few months later in a fit of discrimination, especially if the applicant belonged to a protected class. That’s why it makes sense to have the same people who made the hiring decision be part of the termination process if the need should arise ...

HR Law 101: One of the toughest problems for employers is figuring out which law applies to a particular condition: the FMLA, workers' comp or the ADA. The relationship between the FMLA and other federal and state statutes is clear: The law that provides the greatest benefits to the employee applies ...

Disabled employees who receive ADA accommodations expect those accommodations to continue even after an unrelated minor injury. If you suddenly remove the accommodation, you may find yourself facing a “regarded-as-disabled” lawsuit ...

The ADA makes it illegal to discriminate against applicants or employees with disabilities. Typically, only permanent conditions count. But not always. Some temporary medical conditions also can constitute disabilities if they are severe enough at the time the condition exists ...

The Bullard-Plawecki Employee Right to Know Act gives employees the right to review their personnel records. The law requires employees to make written requests to look at the files before they seek legal redress. Keep a clear record of all requests ...

Balancing time off with reasonable accommodations can be tough if one of your employees is covered by both the FMLA and the ADA. You must be especially careful if a disability means an employee needs to take her 12 weeks of unpaid FMLA leave, but can’t quite return to work without an accommodation ...

Fortunately for employers, not every temporary physical restriction is a disability under the ADA. Before you entertain accommodations, look at the claimed disability and decide whether the problem will resolve itself within a reasonable time frame or if it permanently impairs a major life function ...

It’s tough balancing the rights of disabled employees and the rest of your staff. It’s great to be able to offer accommodations that allow a disabled worker to stay in the labor force. But you don’t have to go to such extremes that your other employees have to pick up considerable slack left by the accommodation ...

Sometimes, supervisors are the last to know an employee wants an accommodation for a disability. Instead, the employee may be making her own accommodations by asking co-workers for help. Of course, the help may end up keeping them from doing their own jobs. What should you do when you find out? ...

For the first time since it became law in 1993, the FMLA has been amended. President Bush signed H.R. 4986 in January. The law grants FMLA-protected leave to workers who care for injured soldiers and families of reservists called to duty ...

You’ve probably got an ADA policy that extends reasonable accommodations to any disabled workers. That’s good. But are your managers following through? If your paper policy is the only thing granting accommodations, a court could make you pay the price … big time. As in punitive damages...

When employers make employment decisions based on sex stereotypes about caregivers or favor employees who don’t have family responsibilities, affected employees can successfully sue for family responsibilities discrimination (FRD) ...

Q. When making demotion decisions—especially those involving employees in protected classes—what factors should an employer take into consideration to avoid legal backlash? ...

Good news for employers: Employees who claim disability discrimination can’t sue under both state and federal laws. They have to choose whether to sue under the ADA or the North Carolina Persons With Disabilities Protection Act ...

Q. A worker who was injured on the job but now is better is refusing to return from leave. What can we do? ...

The ADA requires employers to engage in an interactive process to determine whether an applicant or employee is actually disabled and what, if any, accommodations are possible. But the law doesn’t expect employers to be clairvoyant ...

Employees who take their 12 weeks of FMLA and California Family Rights Act leave don’t lose the right to reinstatement once their time off expires. In fact, additional time off may be a reasonable accommodation under both the ADA and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. What’s more, that additional medical leave would have to be accompanied by the right to reinstatement ...

When an employee needs time off due to a mental or physical impairment, he or she potentially could have rights under both the ADA and the FMLA. You must first determine whether one or both laws cover the employee. From there, you’ll know which rights the employee has. And any decision you make must take these rights into account ... 

Q. An employee takes intermittent leave to care for his parent. Do situations like helping his mother move to a new location qualify as FMLA leave? — B.D., Nevada ...

Some retail and service establishments strive to create an authentic experience for their customers. That may mean they seek out employees who can best create that experience. That “cultural authenticity” may be a bona fide occupational qualification, and rejecting applicants who don’t fit the mold may be legal. But don't go overboard and eliminate everyone who doesn't look or act authentic ...

Florida is second in the nation in encouraging start-up businesses, a study by the Fraser Institute has found ...

It takes more than a trip to the family doctor, a diagnosis and a prescription to establish a disability and qualify for protection under the ADA. Employees who say they are disabled must be able to show that they are substantially impaired in a major life function. And taking medication may mean an employee is not disabled because it can reduce the effects of even serious illnesses ...

It’s important to carefully track each and every step of the promotion process, including the relative qualifications of those vying for open spots on the corporate ladder. Here’s why: Employees who claim they were unfairly passed over have to show that they were “clearly better qualified” than the chosen candidate ...

While workplace bullying certainly has existed for as long as mean people have worked alongside others, only recently has it emerged as an issue for the courts to handle. As awareness of “workplace bullying” arises, so does potential litigation and liability for employers ...

Q. If a worker complains that he or she is depressed and needs time off, do I have a duty under the ADA to give the worker leave? ...

Do you want to see how your state ranks in terms of business tax competitiveness? The Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index ranks how“business-friendly” the 50 state tax systems are, providing a road map for state lawmakers concerned with keeping their states tax-competitive and businesses looking for tax-friendly locations.

No doubt about it, the workers’ compensation system is a headache for employers. It’s full of frustrations and surprises. Consider, for example, the fairly common scenario of a retired employee receiving workers’ comp payments. Seems like retiring would end workers’ compensation payments, right? Not necessarily, as the following case illustrates ...

You would think it’s common sense, but apparently it’s not. While viewing pornography may be perfectly legal in one’s home (with some exceptions, such as that containing images of children), such viewing has absolutely no place at work. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals consistently has ruled “the mere presence of pornography in a workplace can alter the ‘status’ of women” and may be objective proof of a hostile environment ...

Free speech protections don’t apply to on-the-job speech, a U.S. District Court judge ruled, ending round one of Debbie Almontaser’s legal bid to regain her job as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn ...

Businesses must stay abreast of an alphabet soup of federal laws—ADA, ADEA, FMLA and so forth—each with its own requirements. Further complicating matters, most states have their own laws that override the federal requirements. To comply, you first must know which laws apply to your business, based on the number of people you employ ...

How can you cut operating expenses down to size? Using more independent contractors might be the answer. But you can’t simply label workers as “independent contractors” when it suits your needs. Stick to your guns for legit arrangements. In a pinch, you might rely on “Section 530 relief” to bail you out.

The ADA protects job applicants from discrimination based on disability, and one of these protections is the right to be free from medical tests or examinations as part of the initial selection process. An employer can ask an applicant to undergo a job-related medical examination only after it has made a job offer ...

Starting in 2008, Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, began applying a monthly surcharge of $100 to the family health insurance premiums of workers who use tobacco or whose insured dependents do. Employees who kick the habit through the company’s smoking cessation program lose the surcharge ...

Q. Our business has recently started staying open on certain national holidays, including Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. One of our employees was adamant that he was entitled to “holiday pay” for the time he worked on Thanksgiving, which he maintained was equal to 150% of his normal wage, even though he was not entitled to overtime that week. Do we have to pay a premium wage to employees who work on a federal holiday? ...

Both the ADA and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination make it illegal to retaliate against disabled employees who engage in what the law calls “protected activity.” Filing an EEOC complaint, testifying against an employer or cooperating in a government investigation are protected activities. So are more informal activities, such as discussing accommodations with a supervisor or HR ...

If you’ve never had any formal psychiatric training, maybe it’s time you put your business plan aside and register for Psych 101. Why? A recent court ruling shows how the FMLA can require you and your supervisors to play psychiatrist, too ...

Q. Can FMLA leave be extended beyond the 12 weeks specified in the law? What if the employee is disabled and can’t return to work right away or can come back only part time? ...

Here’s a test that measures your broad knowledge of the HR field. From the FMLA to comp and benefits to employee behavior you’d rather not know about, we’ve got the questions. Do you have the answers?

For the first time since it became law in 1993, the FMLA is on the verge of being amended. The House and Senate approved broad leave protections for the family members of miltary men and women, and the president is expected to sign the legislation into law. Will the amendments open the floodgates to further changes? How will that affect employers?

Some employees claim they are ultrasensitive to scents commonly found in detergents, perfumes, deodorants and other products. It’s not clear how far employers have to go to create a fragrance-free environment, but smart employers are willing to take at least some measures to help employees bothered by the scents of co-workers ...

The FBI and the CIA scrambled to defend their screening practices after discovering that one of their agents was an illegal immigrant with ties to Hezbollah. Officials at the FBI and the CIA insisted the agencies conducted thorough background checks ...

Harman Corporation, a vinyl supplier based in Rochester, hired Jeff Cole to work in its print shop in 1993. He later transferred to production and, finally, to maintenance. In 2005, one of Cole’s supervisors, Randy Fox, showed Cole nude pictures of Fox’s wife ...

Many serious conditions aren’t disabilities at all under the ADA. It all depends on how the condition affects the person’s daily life. That’s why it’s important to gather as much information as possible before you concede that an employee is disabled. Many times, the claimed condition just doesn’t measure up ...

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear an important employment-law case, Huber v. Wal-Mart Stores, that will decided whether disabled employees who are returning to work are entitled to a preference for open positions.

With health insurance premiums outpacing inflation for what feels like the hundredth year in a row, employers are looking for innovative ways to cut costs. Many are taking a fresh look at wellness programs. So is the EEOC.

The FMLA and the ADA may seem as though they overlap, but that’s not always the case. A disability under the ADA is almost always a serious health condition under the FMLA, but not every serious health condition is an ADA disability. Here’s why ...

Alcoholism may be a disability under the ADA and a serious health condition under the FMLA, but that doesn’t mean employers have to tolerate employees who come to work drunk. In fact, being under the influence at work can be misconduct, disqualifying the employee from getting unemployment payments ...

A South Florida man may be the first U.S. employee to lose his job over methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—a highly contagious and potentially lethal, drug-resistant bacterial infection also known as MRSA ...

If, like many employers, you would rather avoid litigation by relying instead on arbitration to settle workplace disputes, you probably know that employees still may take their claims to the EEOC. That’s because the agency claims an interest in knowing whether employers are following the nation’s anti-discrimination laws. But it’s perfectly legal to force an employee into arbitration over those same claims ...

It’s not always easy to calculate exactly how much FMLA leave an employee has coming. Rest assured, though: If you make a mistake, you can fix it. Just be sure to fix it as soon as you discover the error so your mistake doesn’t harm the employee ...

Q. Can an employer ask a job applicant whether he or she can meet the company’s attendance policy? ...

What would you do if an employee came to you saying that your company’s official anti-discrimination policy wasn’t actually keeping discrimination out of the workplace? That’s what happened to CEO Raymond W. Smith of Bell Atlantic.

A recent survey found that potent scents ranked #4 on the list of employees’ workplace pet peeves. Yet for some who suffer from multiple chemical sensitivity, strong odors aren’t just an annoyance—they’re a real health concern. Is it serious enough to warrant ADA accommodation?

Q. I run a bike messenger service in downtown Newark. Recently I discharged one of my messengers who was rendered a paraplegic in a freak accident. We did not participate in the interactive ADA accommodations process, but I think all parties would concede there is no reasonable accommodation that would allow her to ride a bike again. We are aware of liability for failure to provide a reasonable accommodation, but is there a separate cause of action in New Jersey for failing to engage in the interactive process? ...

The IRS has announced it’s stepping up audit efforts with a renewed emphasis on examining returns of small business entities. Watch out for these five danger signs that could lead to IRS inquiries.

A reader of the Forum section of our free HR Weekly e-letter posed this question: “An employee was taken from work by ambulance with chest pain. For privacy reasons, we didn’t give any details to staff. Some were upset they weren’t informed or updated. Did we handle this correctly?” Here’s how some HR professionals replied ...

Despite passage of a federal bill that would make discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation illegal nationwide, don’t expect it to become the law of the land any time soon. That doesn't mean you're off the hook for anti-gay discrimination: It's against the law in many jurisdictions. Prevent discrimination against gays—and protect yourself from liability—with a strong anti-discrimination policy.

It’s happened to most HR specialists—a supervisor calls and says an employee claims he’s disabled so he can’t work the night shift or lift anything heavier than a ream of paper. Plus, the employee wants extra breaks beyond those everyone else gets because his disability tires him easily. How do you respond? ...

Jason Hall, of Malvern, who worked for two months in 2006 at the North Wales Best Buy store, has filed a suit over unpaid time spent by employees undergoing security searches and working through breaks ...

Advances in genetic research have renewed attention on the workplace implications of genetic testing. Genetic research has many potential benefits. But there is growing concern that employers with access to genetic information may use it to discriminate ...

The federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) requires employers to reinstate employees who take military-related leave. It also prohibits job discrimination against military or ex-military personnel. But a lesser-known USERRA provision deals with how employers must handle soldiers who return from active duty with injuries or other disabilities. USERRA is similar to the ADA ...

The U.S. Labor Department, the agency that administers the Family and Medical Leave Act, recently collected 15,000 public comments on the law’s effectiveness. A top employer complaint: productivity problems caused by employee use (and abuse) of intermittent leave. Managing intermittent leave can be vexing, but the law does give employers some tools to combat FMLA leave abuse ...

Employees who can’t tell their employers they have serious health conditions may still put their employers on notice—and trigger their FMLA rights. “Unusual” behavior alone can be enough to notify a reasonable employer that an employee may have a serious health condition. That unusual behavior can include shouting at a supervisor, a panic reaction or other sudden emotional outbursts ...

Some employers use personality or psychological tests to screen applicants and employees being considered for jobs or promotions. Proponents say personality tests are an economical way of screening employees. However, critics argue that these tests might not accurately reflect an individual’s honesty, integrity or other personality traits. Others say the tests violate the employee’s privacy ...

That old stalwart of HR paperwork—the I-9—finally got its much-anticipated face lift. On Nov. 7, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a new version of the Employment Eligibility Verification Form (Form I-9). Start using it now!

Even as America’s waistline expands, employers can take some comfort in knowing that obesity, by itself, does not constitute a disability under the ADA. Unless an employee’s obesity substantially limits his ability to perform a major life function, he isn’t covered by the ADA ...

Florida’s minimum wage rises to $6.79 per hour on Jan. 1, 2008. Florida law requires the Agency for Workforce Innovation to adjust the minimum wage annually to reflect changes in the U.S. Consumer Price Index for urban wage earners and clerical workers in the South. The index rose 1.85% in the year ending Sept. 1, 2007 ...

Employers sometimes find themselves in tricky situations: An employee who has exhausted FMLA leave cannot return to work yet, but might be able to after more time off as an ADA accommodation. In effect, the ADA may extend leave if the employee is disabled. But a new case shows that an employer’s quick action may stop the clock ...

The general manager resigned and the head golf pro was fired at Egypt Valley Country Club in Ada after a former assistant golf pro filed a $100,000 lawsuit over sexual bullying ...

Michigan employers must comply with Michigan’s Persons with Disabilities Civil Rights Act (PWDCRA) and the federal ADA. Although the laws are similar, there are differences employers need to understand ...

Q. I have an employee who is scheduled for surgery and will be going on FMLA leave. What forms will I need? There is a possibility that he will not return after the 12 weeks. How long will we be required to hold his position for him? ...

The city of Akron will have to sell bonds to cover a $985,000 settlement with two former workers in the permits and plans division. The employees sued after the city destroyed a cache of the women’s time sheets showing comp time owed for extra hours they worked ...

The FMLA gives eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year. Employers are free to discharge employees who cannot return to work after that time is up—that’s legal under the FMLA. But before you fill out that pink slip, consider whether the employee may be disabled under the ADA. If so, he may be entitled to more time off as an accommodation ...

Employees who have disabilities and may need accommodations don’t have to use their organization’s formal process to make requests. In fact, any statement that could be interpreted as a request for an accommodation should start the interactive accommodations process that the ADA requires. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals has said that an employer is on notice when an employee makes a request “in plain English.” The request does not have to mention the ADA ...

To help control significant health care cost increases, many employers are trying to regulate employees’ off-duty behavior when they believe that it creates health risks. Although motivated by legitimate economic concerns, are these employers overstepping the boundaries of individual privacy? ...

Q. I have a salaried employee who used all his vacation and sick time. He is allowed a total of 21 days and has used 22, but he wants to take more vacation in November and is always sick (so he’ll probably be out more). Can I deduct his pay if he’s out more? Or can I take days from next year? This may be an ongoing thing every year ...

Q. An employee of ours has a very distinct, offensive odor. I received several complaints about the smell, so I confronted the employee, hoping to rectify the situation. Unfortunately, he did not respond well and threatened to sue. Does he have a case? ...

Are you relying on company rules or the employee handbook to justify a disciplinary action such as a suspension or termination? If so, make sure you keep a copy of the handbook as it existed at the time of your decision. This is particularly important if you maintain the handbook in electronic form ...

Q. I have an employee who has a handicap, as that term is broadly defined under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (NJLAD). It would not qualify as a disability under the ADA. I know that a reasonable accommodation under the ADA can include a short leave of absence. In the absence of an ADA disability, do I have to provide a leave of absence as an accommodation for a handicap under NJLAD? ...

In May 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Inc., a case that limits the potential liability of employers in wage discrimination claims brought under Title VII. Although New Jersey state courts often look to federal decisions for guidance, it is uncertain how Ledbetter will be applied in a state court action involving the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination ...

You can’t expect employees to walk into HR and ask, “May I have a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990? Oh, and don’t forget to engage me in the required interactive process!” As the following case shows, blowing off that interactive process could be seen by the courts as “bad faith,” which gives the employee a direct admission ticket to a jury trial ...

The California Supreme Court has made it easier for employers to comply with the disability discrimination provisions of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). The court ruled that employees must prove they are qualified for the jobs they seek, not the other way around ...

The Family and Medical Leave Act entitles eligible employees to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year for their own “serious health condition,” care of a spouse, child or parent with a serious health condition, or for childbirth or adoption.The U.S. Labor Department recently collected 15,000 public comments about the pros and cons of the law. The department may use those comments to help develop regulations that clarify the confusing parts of the law, but no regulations are imminent ...

Q. We’re having tardiness and absenteeism issues with our employees. If we place an employee on probation for an excessive number of times tardy and days absent, can we require no absences at all during the probation period? —C.V., New Jersey ...

The FMLA provides employees with up to 12 weeks off to care for a child suffering from a serious health condition. But when the child is an adult, the rules change, making it much harder for employees to qualify for leave. Here’s why: FMLA regulations say that FMLA leave for children older than 18 is available only if the child is disabled under the definition in the ADA ...

Some employers use personality or psychological tests to screen applicants and employees being considered for jobs or promotions. Proponents say personality tests are an economical way of screening employees. However, critics argue that these tests might not accurately predict an individual’s honesty, integrity or other personality traits. Others say the tests violate the employee’s privacy ...

Q. When we discipline employees for behavioral issues, we typically tell them to meet with an employee assistance program (EAP) counselor. Can we require them to have at least one session, or does that violate the ADA? —J.M., Idaho ...

The ADA doesn’t cover all disabilities—only those that substantially impair a major life function. There are many conditions, though serious, that don’t qualify as ADA disabilities. One of those is partial blindness. As the following case shows, unless poor eyesight affects important aspects of daily life, it’s not a protected disability ...

The old adage “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” seems perfectly suited to employer-supplied references. If an employee is fired or quits in lieu of being fired, it’s a safe bet she will look for another job. It’s also a safe bet that her prospective employer will want to know what type of employee it may be getting. Don’t be in a rush to provide more than basic information for any former employee ...

The ADA is a tricky law. Not only is it illegal to discriminate against applicants and employees with disabilities, but it’s illegal to perceive as disabled those who actually aren’t. It’s no wonder many employers fear that making accommodations might backfire. So they put off agreeing to accommodations and wait until they're sure an employee really is disabled. But that’s the wrong response ...

Unless you take great care to document how you use Internet and university job sites, you may find yourself spending quality time with an EEOC auditor.

Plenty of companies use paid time off banks in lieu of rigid leave plans that designate a specific number of days for vacation, sick and personal time off. Now newer leave plans are going even further, doing away with the concept of tracking leave time altogether. Weigh the pros and cons when deciding whether unlimited leave is right for your organization.

Ohio is an at-will employment state, meaning that employees can be fired (and quit) for any reason or no reason as long as the employer doesn’t violate a specific anti-discrimination or other law. But employers and employees can change their relationships to a contractual one by agreement. If they do, then it becomes much harder to fire that employee without a rock-solid reason ...

Ohio has long recognized a common-law claim against wrongful discharge that violates public policy. For example, firing employees for filing a workers’ compensation claim would violate public policy. The same holds true for some claims that arguably would be covered by specific state and federal laws, such as the ADA and Ohio’s disability-discrimination law ...

The EEOC has issued new enforcement guidance concerning disparate treatment of workers with caregiving responsibilities—or “family-responsibility discrimination.” The guidelines are designed to help determine whether a particular employment decision is discriminatory. Family-responsibility discrimination is not a new type of discrimination, but rather an application of the existing discrimination laws to a situation that is drawing increasing attention ...

Unlike several other forms of discrimination—such as discrimination based on perceived disability—being mistaken for a member of a religious group and then being discriminated against based on that mistaken association isn’t illegal ...

Peter Giaccio Jr., a boilermaker for New York City’s Department of Transportation (DOT), sued the department for leaking the results of a random drug test that revealed marijuana use. Giaccio, being in a “safety-sensitive” position, was subject to random testing, which he failed twice ...

Millions of Americans have diabetes, and millions more have it but don’t know it. But with new medications and careful diet, most diabetics can control their condition and lead largely normal lives. That has implications for how employers handle their ADA obligations ...

Sometimes, it seems easier to just make an accommodation than argue about whether the employee requesting one is really disabled. But does making the accommodation mean you agree the employee is disabled? The answer is no. If the employee comes back asking for even more accommodations, you still can challenge her status.

The ADA makes it illegal to discriminate against employees because of their “association” with disabled people. But what about disciplining an employee for taking time off to care for the disabled person? According to a recent Pennsylvania case, that’s perfectly OK—as long as FMLA leave is not involved ...

Employers are looking for ways to cut health care costs, which continue to rise each year. One of the easiest ways to trim that expensive bill: Make sure each employee’s dependents are actually eligible for coverage. Here's how to conduct an eligibility audit.

When it comes to special consideration for parents, the FMLA and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act provide limited protection. Employees expecting a child or with child care responsibilities are entitled to unpaid FMLA leave, and pregnant women can’t be discriminated against because of pregnancy. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t require reasonable travel and punish those who refuse if they aren’t taking FMLA leave or don’t have any pregnancy complications that prevent travel ...

Q. My company would like to institute a policy of conducting medical examinations on out-of-state applicants when workers interview here for jobs. This would reduce the number of trips an applicant would have to make before beginning employment with our company. The test results would be sealed (so the information cannot be relied upon in making job offers) and would be reviewed only if we offered, and the applicant accepted, a conditional offer of employment. Would such an arrangement violate the ADA? ...

The ADA requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for disabled workers. That can mean modifying the employee’s existing job so he or she can perform the essential functions. But disabilities can change over time, and an accommodation that’s worked for years may stop working. If that’s the case, the disabled employee and his employer are both obligated to engage in another interactive accommodations process. However, if the discussions reveal that no amount of accommodation will allow the employee to do the job satisfactorily, it’s time to look for other solutions ...

Q. We want to run paid time off concurrent with FMLA leave so employees don’t receive more than 12 weeks off (paid and unpaid combined). What if an employee says she’s taking vacation time, but we know it’s for medical tests? Can we force her to get a medical certification so we can subtract the paid vacation time? —L.L., Georgia ...

Even if you aren’t positive an employee’s problems amount to a disability, don’t worry about offering an accommodation. You aren’t admitting the employee is disabled, nor are you “regarding” him or her as disabled. You can still challenge the disability without ADA liability ...

A hearing-impaired man filed an ADA suit against an Ann Arbor gas station after an attendant ordered the man to leave the store. According to the complaint, Robert Hurdley entered Golfside BP in Ann Arbor on June 6 accompanied by his service dog. Hurdley, who can read lips, claims the attendant told him to leave because dogs are not allowed in the store ...

Do you have ready access to your organization’s discipline records? Can you say with certainty that everyone charged with the same misconduct receives the same punishment? Or is there bias hiding in those records? The best way to check is to group discipline by type of misconduct and punishment and then compare employees’ sex, race, age and other protected characteristics against punishment for the same conduct ...

Carol Tamao had won a $6 million verdict in her Age Discrimination in Employment Act and ADA lawsuit after her supervisor implied her age was a factor in her termination. But a federal judge ruled the jury got carried away when it started handing out her former employer’s money ...

The Fair Labor Standards Act says employers must pay overtime to hourly employees who work more than 40 hours per week. Work time includes more than just the hours you put on the employee’s schedule—it also includes any time you “permitted” the employee to work outside the schedule. And therein lies a big overtime headache ...

Does your office look like the set for the latest sleep-medication commercial? You know, the one where employees drag themselves to work while their dreams come to visit them. These days it seems almost everyone is a bit sleep deprived. But don’t let bleary-eyed employees make excuses for tardiness. The fact  is, while insomnia can be a disability under the ADA, very few cases are severe enough to qualify as a disability.

Do you have ready access to your organization’s discipline records? Can you say with certainty that everyone charged with the same misconduct receives the same punishment? Or is there bias hiding in those records? The best way to check is to group discipline by type of misconduct and punishment ...

Here’s a trap for unwary public employers. Public employees can sue their agencies if they experience discrimination based on their association with persons of different races. That’s why it’s important to keep things professional and avoid any comments on an employee’s personal life or choice of associates ...

Florida employers were required to have smoke-free workplaces since the mid-1980s, but the state recently amended the Florida Clean Indoor Air Act to comply with the Florida Health Initiative. The law prohibits smoking in an “enclosed indoor workplace” with the exception of ...

While the ADA requires companies to make job accommodations for disabled workers, you don’t have to employ anyone who can’t perform the “essential functions” of the job. And on-time attendance is an “essential function,” right? Not necessarily, as the following case shows ...

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act has important implications for how employers treat pregnant women during the hiring process and after, once they become employees. Here are the EEOC's answers to some of the most common questions employers face.

A federal district court jury awarded a Subway restaurant employee $166,500 in a disability discrimination suit. After a trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the jury concluded that Bobrich Enterprises Inc., which operates Subway restaurants in Dallas, violated the ADA by harassing a hearing-impaired employee ...

You’ve no doubt heard the adage that ignorance of the law is no excuse. But what you may not know is that it’s up to employers to prove they took concrete steps to overcome that ignorance if the law in question is the Fair Labor Standards Act ...

It’s a doomsday scenario worthy of a movie: A virus spreads around the globe, killing millions and sending millions more to hospitals. Panic ensues, infrastructure breaks down and commerce comes to a halt. But this isn’t a scriptwriter’s invention. Many scientists believe this nightmare is only a matter of time—when the next influenza pandemic hits. What should businesses do to prepare for a pandemic? Employers must be proactive and consider how they will sustain their operation in truly trying times ...

You have the right to demand a drug-free workplace, but employees also have reasonable rights to privacy. That’s why drug testing and substance-abuse prevention programs carry big-time legal risks if they’re not managed properly. Employers can safely administer drug testing before hiring someone, during a fitness-for-duty test and after a preventable accident ...

The Indiana workers’ compensation system is designed to protect employees who are injured on the job by replacing lost wages while they recover. The Indiana Workers’ Compensation Board (www.in.gov/workcomp) administers the law. The system works as a no-fault guarantee ...

Under the Indiana Civil Rights Act, it’s unlawful to subject people to differential treatment based on race, religion, color, sex, disability, national origin or ancestry. The law prohibits discrimination in education, employment, access to public conveniences and accommodations, as well as real estate transactions ...

A federal jury has awarded a Tyson Foods supervisor $1 million, illustrating again that preventing racial discrimination is much cheaper than trying to litigate your way out of a preventable lawsuit. Take this opportunity to remind managers that what they say does matter.

The EEOC recently issued enforcement guidance declaring that disparate treatment of employees who care for children, parents or other family members violates federal law. “Disparate treatment” generally means an employer intentionally treated employees differently because of a protected factor such as race, gender, age or—in this case—their need to care for family members ...

Q. An employee recently told us he has a drug problem and would like to take several weeks off to participate in a rehabilitation program. May we deny his request? ...

North Carolina’s workers’ compensation system protects employees who are injured on the job by replacing lost wages while they recover. The state Industrial Commission (www.comp.state.nc.us/) administers the law ...

When it comes to recruiting and retaining, organizations don’t need to reinvent the wheel or create bold initiatives to attract and keep the best workers. Sometimes, simply doing the tried-and-true things right are all you need ...

A Detroit planning department employee has sued the city, claiming a co-worker’s perfume made it impossible for her to work. The co-worker, who transferred into the department a year ago, wore strong perfume and used a room deodorizer ...

It was a good case for the lawyers anyway. Demonstrating just how expensive an ADA case can be, a federal appeals court ordered fees to be paid to the attorneys who brought a class-action ADA case against Rent-A-Center. The case involved the company’s use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test to screen out applicants and employees with low scores ...

Citing the toxicity of secondhand smoke, Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed Senate Bill 500, the Smoke-Free Illinois Act, into law on July 23.  The law takes effect Jan. 1 and requires employers to provide smoke-free workplaces for all employees. The new state law does not mean employers can ignore local anti-smoking ordinances. Municipalities may still enact smoking bans that are tougher than state law, but all Illinois jurisdictions must meet the new state standards when the law takes effect ...

Unexpected and unexplained events can spark rumors that, if ignored by HR and management, will take on a life of their own. But there's an art to dealing with rumors and it involves timing. Here are four tips for managing the rumor mill before it manages you ...

Not everyone who has a diagnosed psychiatric condition is disabled and entitled to protection under the ADA. Before you authorize reasonable accommodations or allow a psychiatric condition to become an excuse for poor performance, decide whether the condition rises to the level of a covered disability ...

Many Indiana employers wisely use noncompete agreements to protect their legitimate business interests in their customer base and trade secrets. But will those agreements stand up in court? While some employers have successfully used noncompetes, others don’t believe they’re worth the paper they’re printed on. Depending on how the noncompete is drafted, either can be true ...

Chances are your employees are happier with the 14-year-old FMLA than you are.  A new U.S. Labor Department report says employees would like to expand the law to create longer leaves and paid leaves. But employers argue that the law’s vague wording (and employees’ ability to play games with FMLA) create legal and productivity nightmares. Here are the main problems employers have with the FMLA, according to Labor’s report ...

Q. I know the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gives disabled employees special rights. But I read that the law also extends to employees who aren’t disabled. How is that so? —N.L. ...

If you have signed up with a “professional employer organization” as a way to outsource your HR headaches but are thinking of ending the relationship, consider this: If you end the contract midyear, you may be liable for additional payments into the state unemployment insurance fund ...

When 10 companies asked small groups of employees to figure out how to flex their hours while improving their teams’ productivity, they jumped at the chance. Here are three creative solutions ...

Several states are debating legislation that would make “workplace bullying” an illegal practice, like discrimination or harassment. Passage of such bills would increase your liability risks and force you to referee personality disputes. Here's the status of the legislation, and how your organization should respond ...

The new federal minimum wage of $5.85 per hour means you need to put up new posters – even if your state's minimum wage is higher. We're making it easy to comply. You can download and print official U.S. Labor Department posters – for FREE – directly from the HR Specialist web site.

Employees who take intermittent leave cause the greatest disruption in the workplace, according to comments received by the U.S. Labor Department on proposed revisions to the FMLA. That includes employees with disabilities who seem to need an inordinate—and unpredictable—number of absences. If you suspect abuse, don’t jump the gun ...

Q. An employee recently has contracted a serious health condition for which she requests FMLA leave. The medical certification form, completed by her physician, does not indicate the probable duration of her condition. Can we suspend the employee for the physician’s failure to submit a sufficiently complete medical certification form? ...

If the ability to perform certain physical tasks is absolutely essential to one of the jobs in your workplace, tread carefully when it comes to medical evaluations. The ADA makes it illegal to “regard” persons as disabled ...

Lawyers who want to make a quick buck are capitalizing on recent overtime class-actions that have netted millions in unpaid overtime and penalties. In fact, overtime and other unpaid-time lawsuits have become a cottage industry in the 21st century ...