Archives

Association Discrimination: New Lawsuit Trend

We’ve all heard of employees having an advantage in corporate America because of “who they know.” Whether that’s true or not, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has noted that there is a trend of employees getting ahead in discrimination lawsuits because of “who they know.” Most of you know you can’t treat employees differently […]

EEOC: ADA Allows You to Discipline the Disabled

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued a comprehensive question-and-answer guide addressing how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to a wide variety of performance and conduct issues. According to the new guide, employers can apply the same performance standards to all employees, including those with disabilities. It also points out that the […]

Court Rejects Government Worker’s Age, Gender Suit

Jeffery Akers was a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). He sought a promotion but didn’t get it. Instead, a younger woman was given the position. Akers believed that his age and gender prevented him from getting the promotion, so he filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission […]

Ford Revolutionizes the Workplace

On October 1, 1908, Ford Motor Company introduced the Model T, generally regarded as the first affordable automobile and the car that industry experts say “put America on wheels.” The first Model T, produced for the 1909 model year, was assembled by hand and sold for $850. The demand for the cars was so high […]

Correctly Classifying IT Employees As Exempt or Non-exempt

by Kara Shea I’m often asked to give advice about whether employees are exempt from the overtime requirements of federal law. I have to say that it’s a pretty easy call about 70 percent of the time. But then there’s that troubling 30 percent of jobs that give my clients (and, truth be told, yours […]

Your HR Department Survey 2.0

Last Friday (Oct. 10) we discovered we had some significant technical problems with the survey on Your HR Department that caused us to lose many of your responses. So we’re going to try this again. The survey is the same. We’ve gotten the technical problems resolved. Now we just need you to take the survey […]

How Do I Deal with a Disabled Worker’s Attendance Problems?

Q: We’ve been going through the interactive process with one of our employees (we’ll call him Mike). As a result, we’ve been accommodating him with unpaid leaves for the last year. It’s been tough, and Mike’s supervisors have told me more than once that they need to terminate him and move on. According to them, […]

Baby in the Office: A Slippery Situation

Litigation Value: Currently, $0 My stomach still hurts from laughing. This week on The Office, Michael Scott prepared for the birth of his make-believe baby by having Dwight Schrute, pant-less and on Michael’s desk, give birth to a buttered-up watermelon, all the while screaming about secretly marking the baby so no one could steal it.  […]

‘Our senior leaders just don’t get it!’

By Brian Jones Just My E-pinion “Our senior leaders just don’t get it!” This refrain is heard all too frequently, especially during discussions regarding an organization’s leadership development efforts, says Brian Jones, today’s guest columnist. We all want our senior leaders to “get it”—to support, participate, and buy in to the organization’s leadership development initiatives. […]

Time to Terminate At-Will Disclaimers? No! Says Expert

In today’s we-want-to-be-the-employer-of-choice world, isn’t it counterintuitive to be telling each new employee, “We can fire you for any reason or no reason”? In the face of the numerous exceptions to employment-at-will status (see yesterday’s Advisor), why would any company bother with at-will statements? Even though it may seem wrong from a morale standpoint, and […]