Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
If a job applicant has a liver disorder that might be worsened by exposure to chemicals at work, or a back problem that would be aggravated by heavy lifting, you might wonder whether you can refuse to hire the person so you won’t be on the hook for future workers’ comp benefits. Now, in a […]
Our facility has numerous hazards; chemical, physical—you name it, we’ve got it. We train our workers on handling and avoiding them, but what about our visitors? I’ve been tasked with tightening up our visitor safety program. What suggestions do you have for me? — Caroline C., HR Manager in Los Angeles
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has released new guidelines interpreting and expanding on last year’s Supreme Court rulings on automatic employer liability for sexual harassment by supervisors. The new guidelines are a helpful benchmark for measuring whether your anti-harassment policies and practices make the grade.
The medical cases that are bad news to self-funded plans are also bad news to stop-loss insurers. So the latest report by stop-loss insurer Sun Life Financial on the top 10 catastrophic health conditions it sees is instructive for self-funded plans. Two categories of cancer, end-stage renal disease and two categories complications related to newborns […]
When Patrice Hall sat in Denver’s Mile High Stadium listening to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last August, she had never felt so inspired and hopeful. After almost two decades in line management, Hall has spent the last 13 years as a diversity executive, most recently as head of the […]
by Mark I. Schickman At its heart, the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) football scandal is a criminal matter. But it’s also the ultimate example of sexual harassment being permitted to recur openly, continuously, and notoriously in a workplace. It’s a sober reminder of what can happen if any person or group believes they are bigger […]
Employment law attorney Justin Pierce tackles the tough question of whether an employer should allow an employee to hang a “Happy Birthday, Jesus” sign in his office. Q Last year at Christmas, one of our employees, we’ll call him “Bob,” put up a small sign in his office that read “Happy Birthday, Jesus.” A non- […]
Can’t we deal with job descriptions later? No—you need lean, practical job descriptions that accurately reflect essential job duties, say San Francisco attorneys Mark Schickman and Cathleen Yonahara. They serve an important, if not necessary, function in virtually every significant employment decision businesses make.
With April unofficially “national tornado and storm month,” this is a good time to think about having a policy for handling externally caused shutdowns. Here are things to think about. If a company opens an hour late because of a storm, should an employer pay employees who show up earlier because they didn’t hear the […]
Yesterday’s CED featured tips for finding payroll fraud; today, tips from consultant Vicki Lambert, CPP, on who should do your payroll audit, plus an introduction to BLR’s popular Managing an HR Department of One.