Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
For the fifth year in a row, U.S. employees can expect to see a moderate 3.0% median base salary increase in 2016. With human capital concerns the number one issue top of mind for CEOs, the challenge in an era of cost constraints is to engage and retain talent without heavily relying on base salary […]
The results of BLR’s 2014 Policy Practices Survey are in; here are some highlights: 89.8% of participants have formalized policies. 77.5% have an at-will employment statement. Employee handbooks are the preferred method of distributing policies to employees for 49.9%. An internal website (intranet) is utilized by 29.3%. Social media background checks are conducted by only […]
You pay hefty premiums for liability insurance. So when a former employee sues your company’s president, you expect that your insurer will defend your organization. But as one employer recently found out, even if you think your insurance policy should cover employment-dispute lawsuits, it probably contains an employment-related practices exclusion—and you could be left to […]
First, employers must determine whether a nonexempt employee has accumulated enough hours worked to become entitled to overtime pay. Now, let’s assume that the employee has worked enough hours and the issue is how much overtime must be paid. Mastering HR Report: Overtime Count on me Normally, calculating overtime is a pretty simple mathematical exercise […]
According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, workplace violence typically falls into one of four categories. Customize the following information to the type or types for which your workplace is most at risk. Type I: Criminal intent In this kind of violent incident, the perpetrator has no legitimate relationship to the business […]
It’s summer, a time when you may have some new faces around the workplace. Eager college or even high school students are taking their place alongside experienced workers in the hopes that a summer of real-world experience will give them valuable insights into their chosen careers and maybe even give them a leg-up when they […]
When a company downsizes, it can feel like a civil war, with employees worried about whether they will be next on the chopping block. Such times can be hazardous for employers, which may find themselves tiptoeing through a minefield of explosive discrimination lawsuits. In the case below, recently decided by the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court […]
Although Downton Abbey focuses on the upstairs/downstairs dynamics of the fictional aristocratic Crawley family and their staff, there are still some lessons that contemporary employers may take from the show. For instance, in a recent episode, the staff dealt with the sudden resignation of second footman Alfred, as he was accepted into the Ritz cooking […]
The Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor caught the U.S. military completely off guard. Months after the bombing in Hawaii, the U.S. military was still reeling and on its heels. American citizens were shocked by their country’s vulnerability as the Japanese brought the fight to them.
A national car rental firm has just agreed to a whopping $8 million settlement for failing to pay overtime to employees improperly classified as exempt from the overtime laws. The agreement was reached after Agency Rent-A-Car was sued by 395 of its California managers and assistant managers who claimed back overtime and steep penalties.