Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
All our employees sign an at-will acknowledgment when they are hired. Doesn’t that mean I can fire an employee whenever I want, for any reason or no reason? I’m being told that I have to have documentation and justification. If they’re at-will employees, why can’t I just fire them? —Carl B., San Jose
It may sound cynical to say that bad news for job seekers is good news for employers, but in many cases, that’s absolutely the truth. The labor market, like any market, is based on supply and demand. When demand is high and supply is low, prices (wages in the case of the labor market) tend […]
Artificial intelligence (AI) is often cited as a source of employment risk by those afraid of losing their jobs to emerging technologies that can render them obsolete. However, some experts suggest that AI can actually have a potential upside for employees.
By using short message service (SMS), the official name for text messaging, and multimedia message service (MMS), messages that support short videos, single images or slideshows, and audio clips, recruiters are interacting with job candidates in ways that are proving convenient and highly effective.
By Hadiya Roderique Last year we reported on a case where a Canadian employer was ordered to reinstate an employee who had tested positive for marijuana following a verbal altercation with his employer. Why? Because drug addiction is considered a disability in Canada. And individuals who suffer from addiction are protected from discrimination under human […]
The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals—which covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin—recently issued a decision sending a race discrimination case back to the district court for trial.
Even before the pandemic, Zoom had proven to be a great tool for virtual training. But when the pandemic struck, suddenly, Zoom became a go-to tool for just about every form of business interaction imaginable—from regularly recurring meetings to colleague-to-colleague interactions to hiring to performance reviews. In short, Zoom and similar tools became the default […]
“Several times a year we meet with the contractors to get feedback about our ironworkers in the field,” says Randy Palumbo, apprenticeship and training coordinator for Iron Workers Local 48 in Oklahoma City (www.ironworkers48.org). “They tell us what they would like taught more in our classes, or taught less, and we build our programs accordingly.” […]
A federal district court in Louisiana recently heard a case in which a governmental entity tried to assert that it wasn’t liable as a joint employer of the individual who had accused it of discrimination and retaliation. Read on to learn why the court sided with the employee and allowed the claims to proceed to […]
Many workplaces seem to have one, a refrigerator thief. The coworker who believes that food in the fridge is there for the taking. While many victims simply vent to colleagues about their missing lunch, or start using Post-it® notes to ward off would-be bandits, there are others who feel the act is a crime—literally. Yes, […]