Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
When you offer employee perks, it’s critical to make clear whether the program is a vested benefit or a company bonus that is subject to change or cancellation. Former Hewlett-Packard engineer Mark G. Leonard is suing the high-tech giant, claiming that it cancelled a program to provide thousands of retirees lifetime rebates on its products, […]
Effective August 15, Louisiana will join a growing number of “red” states that have limited employer policies banning guns from the workplace. Under the new law (Senate Bill 51), employers may not prohibit employees from storing “lawfully possessed” firearms in their locked personally owned or leased vehicles while parked on company property. The new law […]
Limits On Use Of Social Security Numbers In July 2002, a law took effect restricting the display of consumer Social Security numbers (SSNs) by California businesses. Although the law wasn’t targeted at the workplace, it had implications for employers’ use and display of worker SSNs. Now a follow-up law, SB 25, will further limit SSN […]
We’ve talked a lot about the importance of employee satisfaction in recruitment and retention efforts. Turnover and hiring are expensive, and companies can’t afford to keep losing their staff over low levels of satisfaction. However, there is a strong argument in favor of promoting employee satisfaction on the flip side as well.
This meal period deal is driving me nuts. The workers on our assembly line usually work 6-hour shifts. Most of the crew want to work through the meal break, and we’d like that too—more productivity. But we have a few who insist on their meal break. And we can’t run the assembly line without the […]
The U.S. Department of Labor has collected its rules, guidance and other materials on the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act into a new MHPAEA Web page. The materials on this page include a new set of frequently asked questions on “understanding implementation” of MHPAEA, which when enacted in 2008 substantially beefed up HIPAA’s […]
By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady When BLR’s CEO came out against proposed laws making salaries public after the recent U.S. Supreme Court case on the matter, readers reacted strongly … in both directions. Recently, I used this space to agree with a U.S. Supreme Court decision that discrimination in pay cases cannot be […]
It’s hard to believe that the “wedding crashers” would be allowed to crash into the citadel of Internet security and secrecy, that house of learned geeks—the Google campus! A new movie, “The Internship,” starring Will Farrell, Vince Vaughn, and Owen Wilson, was rumored to be filming in Silicon Valley. And yes, these 40-ish guys are […]
Farmers Insurance Exchange has been ordered to pay $90 million to 2,400 adjusters who claimed they were misclassified as exempt administrative employees and cheated out of years of overtime pay. The record-breaking award by an Alameda County jury could ultimately top $130 million with interest and attorneys’ fees. The adjusters, who make an average of […]