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Play-or-pay factor: Affordability safe harbors

By Martin Simon If an employer covered by the Affordable Care Act play-or-pay requirements decides to play by providing health insurance coverage, it could still be hit with penalties if the coverage is “unaffordable.” Coverage is unaffordable if one or more of the employer’s full-time employees receives a premium tax credit because he or she […]

How Videos Help Training

Hilton Garden Inn (www.hgi.com) has found out just how effective training videos can be. The hotel brand teamed up with Root, Inc. (www.rootinc.com) to create compelling internal training videos to support company initiatives. Two of their videos recently were named winners in the 34th annual Telly Awards. Hilton Garden Inn’s “You Can Count on Us […]

Performance Matters—Creating Organizational Alignment: Strategy, Culture, and Talent

By Lynda Silsbee, CPT, SPHR After countless client projects involving strategy formulation and execution, I have learned many things—one of the most important being that having a strategic plan does not mean the strategy can or will be executed. Failure to execute the strategy is the reason strategy fails but the most important lesson is that […]

Oklahoma joins states limiting social media access in hiring

by Philip Bruce Oklahoma has joined the ranks of states that limit employers’ ability to require access to applicants’ and employees’ social media accounts. Governor Mary Fallin signed the law on May 21, and it will go into effect on November 1, 2014. The law prohibits almost all employers from requiring employees or prospective employees […]

Downton Abbey: Handling an employee resignation with class

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 […]

‘It Wasn’t Me, It Was ChatGPT’ Doesn’t Fly as an NLRA Violation Defense

In case you were looking for another chatbot cautionary tale, the latest comes from a decision issued by an administrative law judge analyzing a company’s arguments in defense of a National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) Section 7 charge. Employer Confesses, in Writing, to Unlawful Motive for Firing The facts underlying the charge are simple enough. […]

Equal pay issues gaining attention

by Gesina (Ena) M. Seiler The concept of equal pay for equal work is receiving attention from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), President Barack Obama, and the 2016 candidates for president. That means there’s no better time than the present for a review of what “equal pay” does and doesn’t mean, recent amendments to […]

Recognizing the Olympians in your workplace

by Dan Oswald While watching the opening ceremonies of the 2014 Winter Olympics, I was struck by the many similarities between a country’s Olympic team and a company’s employees. It might seem odd to draw that particular comparison, but let me explain and see if you also notice the correlation between the two. At the […]

What Do Women Think of Your Company, Really?

Using the hashtag “MeToo,” women have spoken out on social media about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault. The issue is far more pervasive than many people (men) realized—and the workplace is often the scene of such behavior.