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overtime

Salaried Employees Can Be Exempt or Nonexempt—Clearing the Confusion

Determining whether to classify salaried employees as exempt or nonexempt can be tricky. We often think of salaried employees as being exempt from overtime. But salaried employees can fall into either the exempt or nonexempt categories depending upon several key factors. On the other hand, hourly employees are generally nonexempt with a few very specific […]

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How to Prepare Employees for Leadership Roles

How do you help your new managers succeed? The last thing you want is for a new leader to fail and let down other employees. Clearly, that situation is no good for anyone. But not all employees who take on leadership roles are prepared for what that means. Even for people who excelled in their […]

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Is Your Company Spending Too Much Time with Internal Reports?

A famous scene in the cult classic Office Space shows the protagonist Peter Gibbons being reminded by multiple colleagues and layers of management about a missing cover sheet for his “TPS Report.” The scene was meant to satirize both the superfluous levels of oversight within many organizations and the insignificance of many reporting requirements.

Halloween Costumes at the Office: Keep It Tasteful to Avoid Spooking Employees

Although warnings about Halloween costumes at work aren’t as common as the warnings about office holiday parties, what originally starts out as amusing can quickly turn into awkward or offensive. If someone is offended when a coworker shows up at work in an inappropriate costume, you can reduce the employment-related problems if you handle the […]

New Arizona law outlaws double-dipping unemployment benefits

by Dinita L. James A new Arizona law going into effect July 24 means employees who are let go with severance pay won’t be eligible for unemployment benefits right away. The law adds a new section to Arizona Revised Statutes § 23-621 to define severance pay, a term that was undefined in earlier legislation, which […]

FMLA and ADA Overlap

As employers we all strive to be in legal compliance, especially when it comes to federal regulations that protect our employees, such as the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). But it can admittedly get confusing when some legal regulations seemingly overlap or even seem almost contradictory to […]

Why Your HR Department Should Rethink its Open-Door Policy

After several years as a family therapist, I got a promotion in my organization. For the first time, I would be leading a team, which got me a free ticket to the Human Resources boot camp for managers. Designed to prepare me for my new organizational role, it was a crash course in the current […]

Job Interview Best Practices

Job interviews are obviously critical to getting talented new employees on the team, but they are also potential landmines. Both legal and tactical errors can easily be made during the process.

training

Yes, Your Employees Should Be Training Each Other

Training employees can eat up a lot of resources—time and money. But, this doesn’t have to be the case. One tactic many companies use to great effect is to leverage existing employees to teach their colleagues, whether those colleagues are new to the organization or have been around a while but could benefit from some […]

The 7 Hidden Reasons Your Employees Leave You

Nearly 90% of bosses think their employees quit to make more money. That means nearly 90% of bosses are wrong. Studies show these are the seven “real” reasons that retention isn’t better: Ask HR people their top issue these days, and it’s likely to be retention. That’s no surprise. The cost in dollars and disruption […]