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How to Create a Winning Total Rewards Strategy in 2025

In 2025, companies aiming to stay competitive will need to transition from fragmented compensation and benefits programs to a unified total rewards strategy that aligns employee support and expectations with core business objectives. This strategy should cover every aspect of the employee experience—from employee well-being and compensation to career growth.   By implementing a comprehensive, […]

help

Helping Employees Stay Well During COVID-19

These are stressful times for everyone, and in a work environment where mental illness was already a rising concern for many organizations, the COVID-19 crisis is creating new concerns. Employees are anxious not only about their health and the health of their loved ones but also about the economy, child care, and their job security.

domestic violence

How to Respond When Employees Experience Domestic Violence

This morning, Valerie came in to work with a cast on her wrist and heavy makeup on her face. She told Susie, her supervisor, that she had an accident, but she’s fine now and able to work. Later, Susie overhears Valerie telling a coworker that she took out a restraining order against her boyfriend. Susie […]

#MeToo Mustn’t Ignore That Men Can Be On Receiving End of Harassment

We are all too familiar with the #MeToo movement and the countless stories that are a reminder of the continuing prevalence of sexual harassment in the workplace. The movement has done much to bring to light the pervasiveness of previously unreported claims during the decades since Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 […]

immigration

What to Do when ICE Arrives at Your Workplace

On Sunday July 14, immigration authorities began conducting raids targeting  undocumented immigrants ordered by courts to be removed from the country, which will center on these 10 U.S. cities: Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Orleans and San Francisco. We therefore thought it would be a good time to re-run […]

discrimination

Pretextual Failure to Promote Produce Worker Is a Recipe for Disaster

HR professionals are all too familiar with the McDonnell-Douglas burden-shifting standard for establishing discrimination from circumstantial evidence. Under the standard, an employee presents a prima facie (minimally sufficient) case that he belongs to a protected class and suffered an adverse action. The employer then presents a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for its action, and he in […]

Keeping the “I” out of “team”

by Dan Oswald I have the always desirable but elusive teamwork on my mind as I write this. The dictionary defines it this way: “cooperative or coordinated effort on the part of a group of persons acting together as a team or in the interests of a common cause.” There’s a lot in that definition. […]

leave

Does That Law Apply to Me? Sick Leave Laws Raise Questions for Out-of-State Employers

Maryland is now the ninth state to have enacted a paid sick leave law. Effective February 11, 2018, the Healthy Working Families Act became law as the result of a veto override, which understandably means there are still a few details related to the law’s enforcement and implementation to be ironed out. In fact, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan promptly created, by Executive Order, a Small Business Regulatory Assistance office to smooth the transition and help Maryland employers comply with the new law.

Using AI Chatbots for Employee Training and Development

There’s no doubt artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have gotten increasingly sophisticated in recent years, and there’s certainly no doubt that these mysterious and novel tools have garnered a lot of media attention for their growing capabilities, as well. For example, a Google software engineer named Blake Lemoine claimed the company’s AI chatbot LaMDA had become […]