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Origin of the 40-Hour Week: Does This Structure Still Make Sense Today?

In recent years, many businesses—in fact, even entire countries have made significant moves toward the implementation of a four-day workweek. With so much interest in a shift to a four-day workweek in recent years, it’s worth considering how we got to our current status quo. What’s so special about five days and 40 hours? Has […]

Sexual Harassment: Art School Employee Depicted In Sexually Explicit Drawing Wasn’t Illegally Harassed

You take precautions to prevent workplace harassment by providing employees with up-to-date harassment policies, by training management on how to prevent harassment and by setting up an avenue for complaints. When an employee reports an instance of inappropriate behavior, you promptly investigate and respond following set procedures. But then an employee sues you, claiming a […]

IT

Protecting Data from Departing Employees (or Why I Love Auditing and Access Restrictions)

Countless formal and informal studies show that most employees retain at least some company data when they leave a job. The reasons vary from the benign (such as when an employee inadvertently keeps a work flash drive) to the more malicious (such as in the case of an employee’s deliberate theft of company trade secrets […]

Cross-Training Methods and Metrics for Your Organization (Part 2)

Here’s another cross-training method and some useful metrics for evaluating cross-=training results. [Part 1 of this article appeared in the previous issue.] Cross-Training Across Functions Develop programs that allow employees to see what leadership within their own department is like. Or develop a program that allows employees to discover whether they’d rather be a general […]

engagement

Help Employees Embrace Change with These 4 Strategies

Workplaces have changed a lot in the last decade, but in the last 2 years, the rate of that change has accelerated exponentially. In 2020, for example, we saw 10 years of technological change in just 10 months. After all, we’re in the midst of an era of change in the workplace known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. New tools […]

vacation

Vacation Rules! (All Work and No Play Makes Workers Leave Your Employ)

Do you ever find it interesting that some of the most tangled topics of HR administration primarily concern the hours when your employees aren’t at work? When employees are in the workplace, we have a pretty good idea of what they should and shouldn’t be doing and how to reasonably regulate their work-related behavior. But […]

disaster

How to Help Your Employees in the Wake of a Natural Disaster

When natural disasters such as Hurricane Dorian strike, work may not be the first thought for those hurt and those wanting to help, but it’s not far down the list of concerns. Getting back to work is an important part of getting back to normal for many storm victims. And those not in the path […]

How Does the Reasonable Accommodation Process Work?

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to not discriminate against qualified individuals with disabilities. It also requires that those individuals should be given reasonable accommodations (whenever applicable) to allow them to perform the essential functions of the job, as long as doing so does not create an undue hardship for the employer. Let’s […]

transparency

The ‘Power of Positive’: A New HR Method from Sports Coaches

When, earlier this year, Boston Celtics’ new addition Kyrie Irving (who was at the time a point guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers) stated during the course of a podcast that he is a firm believer that the Earth is flat, social media and news outlets went into a frenzy. Even middle school students began challenging […]