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What is COBRA?

What is COBRA? COBRA stands for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which was implemented as an amendment to ERISA (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974). In most circumstances, COBRA entitles workers and other covered individuals to the option of continuing to receive their employer-sponsored group health insurance coverage for a limited time […]

Ask the Expert: Can We Force Sick Employee to Take Unpaid Leave?

Our non-exempt employee has no sick or vacation days left and has accrued absentee attendance points close to termination. Because of this, the same employee is coming into work while sick. We don’t want the health of other employees to be at risk because of his/her presence. Can an employer force a sick employee to […]

8 Succession Planning Fundamentals

Succession planning allows companies to not only retain key talent, but also to have someone at the ready when a critical position becomes vacant. This helps ensure smooth transitions and minimal disruption to business, all while retaining more of your high performers. Each organization faces unique challenges in succession planning. There’s no universally-applicable succession planning […]

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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 […]

E-Verify: What Employers Should Know Before Enrolling

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increased employers’ Form I-9 audits by 60% in the current fiscal year. Consequently, many employers are considering enrolling in E-Verify, which could assist them in verifying their new employees’ employability and decrease the risk of an audit. You should involve legal counsel in the decision-making process, however, because […]

May I Refuse to Hire a Pregnant Applicant?

Yesterday’s Advisor discussed interviewing candidates with disabilities; today, more on disabilities and pregnancy, plus an introduction to an extraordinary collection of pre-written job descriptions. Pregnancy and the Interview During the interview, do not ask candidates about whether they are pregnant, whether they have any pregnancy plans, or what their plans are for a family. But […]

Assessing the indirect costs of employee turnover

It’s no surprise that employee turnover involves a huge cost to any organization. But what is frightening is that the number may even be underestimated. Organizations routinely fail to include the “soft” costs of employees. Things like the value of relationships and the level of productivity compared to other employees could push the cost of […]

Walking the Tightrope of He Said/She Said

There’s not much trickier than investigating "he said/she said" accusations. The key to dealing with these situations, says attorney Rebecca Speer, is to do everything reasonably in your power to uncover "corroborating evidence," that is, information that would support the complainant’s—or the accused’s—version of events. "In my experience," Speer says, "Even the most starkly seeming […]