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Holiday Season (and Year-Round) Stress: How to Handle It

Today’s workforce operates under high pressure, especially at holiday season. Here are some tools to help them handle the load. Holiday season is one of the most joyous times of the year, but it’s also one of the most stressful. Gift buying fever is at its peak, and the malls are jammed. Even worse are […]

Will Your Investigation Satisfy a Jury?

  If you carry out misconduct investigations, how good should they be? As good as the jury thinks they should be, say today’s experts. And that better be pretty darn good, because juries expect a lot from HR.

News Flash: $3.8 Million Verdict Against Kmart After Customer Beaten By Security Guard

A state appeals court has upheld a jury’s $3.8 million award to a dentist who suffered a career-ending injury when he was beaten up by a Kmart security guard. The ruling provides a dramatic example of how you can be liable for misconduct by your employees. Problems started when George Heimer tried to return a telephone […]

Danger: Casual Background Checks on Social Media

Special from the Advanced Employment Issues Symposium, Las Vegas The biggest mistake I see managers making is failure to document, says attorney Molly DiBianca, member of the Employers Counsel Network (BLR/M. Lee Smith’s network of attorneys from all 50 states). And the number two mistake is casual background checks on social media. DiBianca’s remarks came at […]

National Employment Law Trends

Last year is ended on a high note, at least in terms of one economic indicator: the nation’s unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent in December. Despite that good news, many states are still experiencing record unemployment; this rampant unemployment was the number one issue addressed by state legislatures this past year. Here is a […]

Wellness Plans Discriminate, Union Official Says

Wellness benefits have exploded in the past decade because they purportedly make employees healthier and save employers money, but they have found a detractor in at least one labor union.  John Borsos, secretary-treasurer of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, told reporters in Washington, D.C., Dec. 17, that wellness programs are a $6 billion industry […]

IRS Eases Rules for 401(k) Hardship Withdrawals, Loans Tied to Hurricane Sandy

Plan sponsors in areas Hurricane Sandy affected may want to prepare for an increase in loan or hardship withdrawal requests after the IRS on Nov. 16 said it temporarily will relax its rules that apply to such emergency funding for retirement plan participants.  The IRS announced the relief in Announcement 2012-44. Hurricane Sandy should be […]

Handbooks Help Is Here!

Yesterday, we discussed two of the big employee handbooks mistakes employers tend to make, according to attorney Elaina Smiley. Today, a look at the final mistake she sees too often, and an introduction to a valuable handbook drafting tool — specifically for California employers.

Millennials Often Underestimate Healthcare Costs

Aflac, a provider of voluntary insurance, announced results from the 2016 Aflac WorkForces Report, revealing how Millennials are more likely to embrace a nontraditional approach to pay their medical expenses compared to older generations. They also are more likely than non-Millennial generations to regularly underestimate the total cost of healthcare issues.