Category: HR Management & Compliance

There are dozens of details to take care of in the day-to-day operation of your department and your company. We give you case studies, news updates, best practices and training tips that keep your organization fully in compliance with ever-changing employment law, and you fully aware of emerging HR trends.

‘Hi, I Need Copies of All Your Files’: Taming Discovery in the Age of the E-File

“Hi, I just need to see every electronic file and e-mail relating to Steve Smith and his employees, colleagues, bosses, and customers from the last year, please.” Arrrgh! Discovery should be easy in an age of electronic wizardry, but it’s a nightmare. If your company is sued over an employment (or any legal) matter, the […]

Hot List: The BusinessWeek Bestseller List

BusinessWeek ranks business books that are the most recent bestsellers and provides a short summary. 1. Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. Are you unsure where your true talents lie? Do you feel that you are both a person who gets things done and someone who offers penetrating analysis? Well, you can discover whether you are […]

Family and Medical Leave: What Do We Do with an Employee Who Doesn’t Have Enough Hours for FMLA Leave but Might by the Start of the Leave?

You’d think we’d have the FMLA figured out by now, but we have two issues that we don’t know how to address. One employee has requested leave, but she hasn’t yet worked 1,250 hours and hasn’t been employed by us for 12 months. However, by the time the requested leave would begin, she would have […]

Rest Breaks: How Do We Handle Complaints About Smokers’ Breaks?

We’re a small company and we’ve been fairly lenient with rest breaks. We assumed that employees would take a 10-minute rest break in the morning and again in the afternoon, but we haven’t policed exactly how long people take their breaks. We’ve also just let smokers step outside for cigarette breaks without tracking how often […]

Meal Breaks: What Are Our Meal Period Obligations for Truck Drivers Whose Hours Are Regulated by the CPUC and the DOT?

Many of our employees are commercial truck drivers whose hours are regulated under CPUC and DOT rules. Do we need to provide meal breaks or make sure that these employees take meal breaks? CPUC and DOT rules regulate the number of hours that a driver can work per day, but are we still bound by […]