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‘My meds made me do it’: medication side effects and the ADA

by Connor Beatty Sometimes an employee who isn’t making the grade may blame his lackluster performance on the side effects of certain medication he’s taking. Although managers may express some skepticism about that excuse, there are times when a cause-and-effect relationship might exist. That appears to have been the case for a Maine lawyer whose […]

pandemic

HR Takes Center Stage During the Pandemic

No event has impacted the economy as abruptly and with such speed as the COVID-19 pandemic, an occurrence that altered the way we live and work virtually overnight. In the span of a mere 8 weeks, unemployment shot from under 4% to nearly 15%.

Don’t Be An %#*hole!

Oswald, CEO of BLR, offered his thoughts on the worst in management in a recent edition of The Oswald Letter. The book was a New York Times bestseller, Oswald continues, so plenty of people have read it. I’d say it has some good lessons for everyone. But, what amazed me were some of the stories […]

Planned Merit/General Increases by Size and Industry: Survey Results

BLR’s 2012 Pay Budget Survey was conducted in June 2011. A total of 1637 organizations participated.  (For a complete copy of the Pay Budget Survey, including regional data, go here.) Here are more findings: Planned Increases by Company Size Small employers (those with fewer than 100 employees) and medium (between 100–500 employees) are planning the […]

Remote

Zoom and Meeting Inclusiveness

When people talk about inclusiveness in the workplace, the concept is often closely associated with diversity—ensuring that a company is inclusive of its diverse workforce. Diversity means ensuring there are diverse people at the table, while inclusiveness means giving everyone at the table a chance to be heard. Typically, inclusiveness is associated with race, gender, […]

Build a Perfect Peer Group for Compensation Comparisons

Who’s in Your Peer Group?  The first thing to do is to decide which companies should make up your peer group, says Boyd. Should you compare to companies:  Against whom you compete for business? Whose revenues are approximately the same as yours? With about the same number of employees? In the same industry?   Isn’t there […]

costs

Cut Down on Costly Mistakes with These 7 Recruiting Strategies

Mistakes businesses make when recruiting can be costly and damaging. Consider the findings from one CareerBuilder survey: The average cost of one bad hire is $14,900. Many companies simply cannot afford these errors.

Stay Interviews: An Underutilized Tool for Reducing Turnover, Increasing Engagement

There is a saying in the outplacement business after any reduction in force that managers should “re-recruit” their employees by reminding them how valuable they are. Companies are particularly vulnerable at that time because employee turnover usually spikes. A tool to help re-recruit employees is the stay interview.  Stay interviews are conversations with employees about […]

We Subject Employees to Abuse Regardless of Gender, Race, or Age

A worker calls a coworker an “F”ing moron. Is it harassment? asks attorney Jonathan Segal. It’s probably not harassment as long as the name-caller is an equal opportunity name-caller, but is it appropriate? Most employers want to be an employer of choice, says Segal, and this is not the way to go about it. Segal, […]