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.

Workplace Discipline Done Right: What Your Managers Need to Learn

You might think the law’s behind you when you discipline workers, but human factors can change the equation. Employment-at will is a bedrock concept of American business, allowing employers, with few exceptions, to fire anyone, at any time, for any legal reason. No documentation is legally required. But take that concept too literally and you […]

Will Stress Cause the American Workplace to ‘Snap’? Can Flexibility Save Us?

BLR CEO and Founder Bob Brady returns from a work-life conference with work/life balance flexibility as an antidote to stress, and a reminder to not forget the person who must make that flexibility work. Are things “about to snap” in the American workplace? Are we reaching a “tipping point” at which stress-related trauma is going […]

Employment Law Tip: Watch Out for Weingarten Rights

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) allows employees, both union and non-union, to engage in “concerted activities for the purpose of mutual aid or protection.” This includes an employee’s right to have a union representative present at an investigatory meeting that the employee reasonably believes could result in discipline.

iPods at Work: Help or Hindrance?

Companies are issuing iPods to workers to enhance training and communications. But along with the benefits have come serious policy questions. Once you mostly saw them dangling from the ears of teenagers hanging out near the local high school. Now you see them worn by the forklift driver in the warehouse, the receptionist on break, […]

Race Bias: EEOC Slaps Walgreens with Nationwide Class Action

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed an employment discrimination class action against Walgreen Co., alleging that the drug store chain discriminates against African American workers in its stores nationwide. Walgreens operates over 5,500 stores in 47 states and Puerto Rico, so the lawsuit affects thousands of current and former employees.

Sick Leave: SF Approves Transition Period for Paid Sick Leave

We reported last week that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was considering an ordinance that would give employers an additional transition period before San Francisco’s controversial paid sick leave law, Chapter 12W, takes full effect. The paid sick leave law was approved by voters and took effect on Feb. 5, 2007.