Author: Stephen Bruce, PhD, PHR

Holiday Premium NOT Part of Regular Rate (and Other FLSA Anomalies)

Yesterday’s Advisor featured attorney Ted Boehm’s tips for handling tricky wage and hour issues. Today, his take on difficult deduction issues, plus an introduction to Wage & Hour Self-Audit Guide: Practical Solutions for HR. Boehm, an associate in the Atlanta office of law firm Fisher & Phillips, LLP, offered his tips at a recent webinar […]

Fashion Disasters

Spring is here and seasoned HR pros know that in some workplaces, as the temperature rises, so do employee dress code violations. According to a BLR® poll, the most common warm-weather fashion faux pas is flip-flops (51 percent), but wearing the beach footwear to work seems tame compared to these fashion disasters. Slumber party attire—An […]

Expert’s Secrets of Social Media Candidate Sourcing

Just for example, says Dingee, do an advanced search on LinkedIn, say, for an HR manager near ZIP 06475 in banking. Here’s the search: Dingee’s tips came at the Advanced Employment Issues Symposium in Las Vegas. (Info on this years’ symposium here. ) Here are some of the results: Dingee recommends paying for enhanced service […]

Applicants for Trip to Mars in for Dead-End Job?

According to BBC News, Mars One, a Dutch organization, is seeking adventurous applicants to work on a trip to the Red Planet. Those who apply must be “resilient, adaptable, resourceful, and work well within a team” One hitch—the trip is one way! Applicants must pass a rigorous physical and mental selection process—think The Right Stuff. […]

How Can Learning Opportunities Improve Customer Service?

As Empathica, Inc. (www.empathica.com) looked for ways to make its core product more mobile, its software developers went out to talk to clients in their restaurants and retail stores. “We sent small, collaborative teams into the field to see how people wanted to use this,” says Gary Edwards, executive vice president of Client Services. ‘Walk […]

Can You Forbid Discussions of Salary and Pay?

Much as most employers would like to impose a ban on discussion of pay—not to suggest that there are embarrassing inequities in your pay structure—it’s not legal because the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board) says it interferes with Section 7 rights.

FLSA Compliance: Dispelling the Great Myths

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is a tricky statute that creates a landmine for unwary employers, says attorney Ted Boehm, and it’s made worse by a number of misconceptions and myths commonly believed by employers. For example, says Boehm, there’s the misconception that employers may provide “comp time” in lieu of overtime compensation. For […]

Performance Appraisals 2013–What’s Happening in the Real World?

Please participate in our brief survey and see how what you are doing stacks up against what other successful companies are doing. We’ll get answers to these questions and more: What do your performance appraisals measure? Which employee groups receive what types of appraisals? Do you use performance management software? If so, what software really […]

Typical Platitudes Aren’t Enough for Your Compensation Strategy

You need something more than platitudes to get and retain the people you want, says Csizmar, who is founder and principal of CMC Compensation Group. What Are We Talking About? When we talk strategy, we’re talking about “a plan, method, or series of maneuvers for obtaining a specific goal or result.” It’s a guideline or […]

On-the-Job Training for Off-the-Job Safety

As we pointed out yesterday, fewer workers are injured or killed at work than away from work. And they do incur costs, such as finding and hiring replacement workers, production slowdowns, and morale downturns. So, it’s a good idea to emphasize off-the-job safety when providing training in activities likely to be engaged in away from […]