Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Amazon Studios’ The Boys. Within the past week or so, I started to watch an Amazon Studios television series called The Boys. Based on a comic book series of the same name, The Boys posits a world in which superheroes—referred to as “supes”—exist and are in the employ of global conglomerate […]
Times are tough for businesses. Rapid shifts in operations have left little time to plan or organize change management, and many leaders are now scrambling to keep teams engaged, motivated, and proactively tackling what needs to get done. This is no small feat in normal times, as only 34% of employees consider themselves engaged in the workplace. […]
Netflix’s new dramedy Wednesday provides a fun and exciting new addition to the Addams Family catalogue, as well as some chilling workplace scenarios. The series begins with our macabre heroine, Wednesday Addams (played by Jenna Ortega), getting kicked out of school for attempting to murder some school bullies via piranhas in the school pool. Naturally, […]
COVID-19 caused much of the labor force to suddenly switch to remote work, transforming the traditional workplace as we know it. One study found that only 15% of those employed pre-COVID-19 worked from home; the number of these workers ballooned after the pandemic by an additional 35%, indicating that fully half of the employed labor […]
‘Innocent’ little e-mails and text messages can cost companies billions, wreck promising careers (of politicians and HR managers), and cause untold hassles. In today’s Advisor, attorney Mindy Chapman sorts out the issues. Chapman, a popular speaker and consultant and president of Mindy Chapman & Assocates LLC, offered her tips at the recent SHRM Annual Convention […]
We created a position 3 years ago that we now believe was misclassified as exempt/salaried and should have been non-exempt/hourly. We have had an individual in the position for the past 3 years and are going to change them to hourly ASAP. Importantly, we also want to address potential overtime worked during this time. What […]
It’s challenging to reward tech workers, says consultant David Wudyka, but you have to find a way to do it or you’ll lose them. Wudyka is the founder and managing principal of Westminster Associates, a Massachusetts-based human resource and compensation firm that specializes in pay, performance, and productivity issues. His tips came during a recent […]
Can an employer hire someone as an independent contractor (i.e. on a 1099) for a set period of time (i.e. 4-6 months) to see if they are the right fit for the employee, to try them out? The agreement/contract would state that if after the time period, it is determined they are the right fit, […]
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to pay overtime to nonexempt employees based on their regular pay rate and the number of hours worked in a workweek. While this sounds straightforward on paper, employers commonly fail to realize that nondiscretionary bonus payments must be included in calculating the regular pay rate and, ultimately, […]
It’s that time again and your employee pundits are getting rabid—without careful attention, it’s the end of productivity until the election is over. Fortunately, employers can control political activities at work to a large extent, but there is a patchwork quilt of federal and state laws that governs this area. And, as always, this patchwork […]