Surveys of U.S. workers consistently show that employees want more than a paycheck from their jobs—they want to feel safe, secure and appreciated at work. Here are...
Question: “My boss recently confessed that he has “feelings” for me. I am happily married and definitely do not share these feelings. The situation is...
Q. Our company’s owner is tired of tardiness and has instituted a new rule that says anyone who is tardy will be fired, no matter the reason. Recently, some people...
Q. Are we required to call back an employee who’s been laid off? The person wasn’t a responsible employee and called off often. Are we obligated to call...
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...
Ford’s 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...
White Paper published by The HR Specialist, copyright 2009 ____________________ It happens to every manager: You sit down to prepare a staff member’s review and...
Q. We are about to enter contract negotiations. In the past, we have always paid the members of the union bargaining committee for time spent in negotiations. However,...
It’s common sense: You can retaliate only if you know about whatever it is you are supposedly retaliating against. If you can show you never knew an employee was...
A newly elected official may want to terminate those employees politically tied to his predecessor—and he often may ask HR how to handle the firings. Because such...
Q. I am a small employer. I invested a lot of money and time training a certain employee who just quit less than a year after I hired him. In the future, I...
In its 1998 collective-bargaining agreement, Caterpillar promised to provide retiree health benefits to its workers at no cost to them. By 2005, Caterpillar recognized...
Q. Our company works with proprietary and confidential information. We would like to protect ourselves from having that information get disclosed to competing companies....
Q. Is an employer required to keep a job open for an employee who is out on an indefinite leave due to a workers’ compensation injury? Does the employee have an...
Recently, we addressed the risks involved in misclassifying employees as independent contractors and explored the three federal tests for getting it right. Be aware that...
Some conditions aren’t serious enough to constitute disabilities, but some supervisors wrongly assume they do. That’s a major problem: By assuming a...
Q. An employee just asked for a week off to attend jury duty. Do I have to grant the request for leave? If I do, can I require the employee to use accrued vacation time...
Employers don’t have to blindly accept their employees’ medical certifications. The FMLA allows you to get a second opinion about whether an employee's...
The decision to outsource HR functions often means a lot of hard work. Hiring a consultant to sort through outsourcing options—whether for payroll, benefits...