Month: December 2011

A Holiday Wage and Hour Checklist: Are You Naughty or Nice?

By Jeff Gilbreth and Gauri Patil As the holiday season ramps up, many of us will be spending time with family and friends, attending holiday parties and preparing for another new year. While this is certainly a fun and joyous time, we are here to remind employers that various wage and hour pitfalls are lurking […]

15 Ideas in 15 Minutes—Attract, Engage, Retain

A much-appreciated session at BLR’s recent Advanced Employment Issues Symposium was a panel presentation during which panelists offered quick, real-world-tested ideas for attracting, engaging and retaining employees. The original talk was called “30 Ideas in 30 Minutes,” but we’ve culled the best fifteen ideas for our readers. The panelists were: Andrew Botwin, head of Human […]

Supreme Court to Review Arizona’s Divisive Immigration Law

by Chris McFadden The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear arguments in Arizona v. United States, the lawsuit concerning the constitutionality of the state’s controversial immigration enforcement measure S.B. 1070. The bill originally was scheduled to become law in June 2010. However, shortly before it went into operation, the U.S. District Court for Arizona […]

Experts Explain Top 5 COBRA Implications of Reform’s Summary of Benefits and Coverage

One simple line requiring that group health plans and insurers describe “continuation of coverage provisions” in summaries of benefits and coverage (SBCs) actually raises several complex issues for COBRA administrators. The health care reform law requires that group health plans and insurers accurately describe in SBCs the benefits and coverage under the applicable plan or […]

Delaware’s Law on Same-Sex Unions Takes Effect January 1

By Adria B. Martinelli and Lauren E. Moak The new law allowing same-sex civil unions in Delaware and recognizing civil unions performed in other states goes into effect January 1, 2012 after being passed last spring. The law also changes all sections of the Delaware Code that mention marriage by requiring that the word “marriage” […]

Organizational Development? Start with the Janitor, says Al Gore

Challenge # 4: Organization Development [Go here for challenges 1 to 3.] Gore worked on the "reinventing government" program at the country’s largest employer, the US Government. He says the key to finding better ways of doing things is to start at the bottom. His teams met first with the janitors and worked their way […]

Mental Impairment Accommodation in Action

In yesterday’s Advisor, we got attorney Audra Hamilton’s take on mental disability accommodation. Today, her examples of accommodation in action, plus an introduction to BLR’s popular pre-written policy collection, SmartPolicies. Hamilton’s remarks came at BLR’s Advanced Employment Issues Symposium, held recently in Nashville, Tennessee. Hamilton practices law in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Accommodation Example #1: Depression John […]

Attitude Is Key to Business Growth

Last week I was part of a CEO panel asked to discuss how to achieve double-digit revenue growth. Now, isn’t that the $1 million question! My co-panelists were highly respected executives, each with 20-plus years of experience in our industry — publishing. Yet, when we started discussing the session among ourselves, I was surprised by […]

Leopard Teams Are $800 Million Better than Layoffs

Leopard Teams Gore was followed by Wayne Cascio, winner of the Michael R. Losey Human Resource Research reward, who related to the Advisor a story of "responsible restructuring." He says that in his research he found that when faced with financial challenges, CEOs tend to fall into one of two camps: One group says, "What […]

Workers’ Comp: It Just Won’t Go Away

Workers’ comp – it’s not an area where the law tends to change very much, but it remains a hassle, day after day. In today’s CED, we’ll feature case studies – all based on real situations – that help us deal with this frustrating part of HR management.