There’s nothing humdrum about the Form 1040 you’re about to file with Uncle Sam. Thanks mainly to the economic stimulus law passed last year—the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—the ’09 return is chock-full of tax breaks for the well-informed. Here are 10 tax moves to wake up to this year:
Management Training
Management training isn’t just for newbies and novices – managers and supervisors of all levels and all ages need actionable management practices to bring to their department, division or company. Learn how to be the best boss you can be by expanding your management skills, managing change effectively and bring strong leadership into your everyday management practices.
One important way to judge your success as a manger is by the success of your employees. An effective manager isn’t just a boss who can extract the most productivity from his people, but the one who produces great future managers. How can you be sure that under your leadership managers will blossom?
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Join The HR Specialist in celebrating the first-ever “HR Professionals Week,” a five-day tribute to all that human resources pros do to make American workplaces more effective and American businesses more successful. From Monday, March 1 through Friday, March 5, we're offering a full week’s worth of free resources and activities available to all, including open-access podcasts and white papers on the critical issues shaping the HR profession.
As we enter a new decade, HR must pay more attention than ever to employment law issues. Reason: new laws taking effect, increased agency enforcement, more lawsuits spurred by a poor economy and an activist Congress. Here are 10 key trends and how to respond:
Some employers wrongly believe that when co-workers end what was a consensual sexual relationship, one employee can’t later claim sexual harassment for post-breakup conduct. The dubious assumption: Any subsequent unpleasant contact between the employees was probably based on jealousy or anger over the broken relationship rather than “on account of sex.” That’s not always true.
Take a (mental) picture of your workforce. What do you see? How many women hold management jobs? Are females prevented by some invisible force from entering executive ranks? The EEOC is extremely aggressive these days and a new $19 million settlement last week shows how the agency is targeting gender bias. As EEOC Acting Chairman Stuart Ishimaru warned employers, “There are still too many glass ceilings left to shatter in workplaces throughout corporate America.”
Since 2007, the EEOC has been engaged in a major push to stamp out race-based discrimination in hiring. Known as E-RACE, the initiative’s goal is to “eliminate recruiting and hiring practices that lead to discrimination by limiting an employer’s applicant pool.” When targeting employers for enforcement action, the EEOC often zeroes in on four recruitment and screening practices:
HR professionals must make sure that supervisors hear this message loud and clear: Don’t make any assumptions about what a pregnant woman can or cannot do. Voicing such presumptions and taking action based on them virtually guarantees a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit.
Here are two ways to use smartphones to make daily tasks easier: 1. Track your expenses with an iPhone application from Shoeboxed. 2. Map your way. Move over, TomTom. Phone-based navigation systems are becoming more popular, says Forrester Research.
Do you ever feel like you needed more help after accessing the Help section in Microsoft Office? Here are three tips and tricks to getting the right help fast, and getting you back to work:
Q. My son was laid off from his job in April 2009. Does he still benefit from the new extension for COBRA subsidies?
