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Legal Restrictions on Employee Background Checks

Employee background checks are used by an estimated 92 percent of organizations in one form or another before hiring someone. They can be quite useful, but employers should be careful because the EEOC has been cracking down on illegal use of background information. Are you aware of what you should and shouldn’t be doing with […]

What’s Penn State Mean for HR? More Harassment Cases

Special from the Advanced Employment Issues Symposium, Las Vegas The unfortunate revelations of alleged sexual misconduct at Penn State and other schools will have one clear effect for HR, says attorney Mark Schickman: You’re going to see an uptick in harassment charges. Sexual harassment charges had been declining somewhat, but the recent publicity will reverse […]

Appeals court keeps hold on Obama’s immigration orders

No quick resolution is in sight to the uncertainty surrounding President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration. On May 26, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift a temporary hold on Obama’s actions, which were designed to ease deportation worries for millions of undocumented immigrants who have been […]

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Recruiting: How Does the U.S. Compare to the World?

Yesterday we took a look at some of the projections by ManpowerGroup into the state of recruiting at the end of this year. Today we’ll look at how the United States compares to the rest of the world when it comes to recruiting. So, how does the United States stack up compared to the rest […]

OSHA urges employers to think crowd control for Black Friday

As shoppers plan their Black Friday bargain hunting, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is urging retail employers to plan their crowd-control measures to keep workers safe. In 2008, a worker was trampled to death while a crowd of shoppers rushed the doors of a Wal-Mart store in New York. OSHA recommends that retailers […]

How HR can help employees overwhelmed by holiday stress

by Michael G. McCourt We now are fully involved in the crush of festivities and holiday shopping that traditionally mark the beginning of the sprint to New Year’s Eve. This is the season of peace on earth and good will toward our fellow man, right? Not always. A Challenging Season The holidays have the uncanny […]

Binge work and the ever-expanding grindstone: What’s HR’s role?

Employees adhering to the old-style conventional wisdom that urges them to keep their noses to the grindstone hope their hard work will pay off. But they might be wise to heed a more modern take on how to approach work: Slow down and guard your health.   The concept of “binge working” is getting a lot […]

Making Personnel Information Public is Perilous in California

By Joel Van Parys While a California court’s decision addresses personnel information for police officers in particular, all employers should be taking steps to safeguard and protect confidential employee information. The case is a reminder that releasing private personnel information about employees is a big decision that may involve risk for the employer—even if the […]

Retirement Benefits 2014—What’s Really Happening?

Please participate in our brief survey and see how what you are doing stacks up against what other successful companies are doing. We’ll get answers to these questions and more: What’s your company’s 401k match level? What changes are you making with pensions and 401(k) plans? What types of retirement/savings/investment plans do you offer? How […]

Accommodating Mental Illness

By Alix Herber and Hadiya Roderique In Canada, employers have a duty to accommodate individuals suffering from a disability to the level of undue hardship. In the case of an employee with a physical disability, it often can be relatively straightforward to identify accommodations that can be implemented. In contrast, the accommodation of mental illness […]