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Retaliation: The Dumbest Thing Managers Do

What, someone filed a complaint about me? No one gets away with that! Whoever it is will be sorry! Sound like any of your managers? Tell them that, whatever it is, get over it! Retaliation is a platinum invitation to a lawsuit. If you haven’t trained your managers to avoid retaliation, it’s likely that one […]

Can We Layoff Employees With the Most Seniority?

This economy has hit our small retail Insurance Agency hard, we laid off an employee May ’08, another at the end of ’08, cut wages—by 15%—last May (’09) and have done many other things to cut our expenses. Unfortunately we need to lay off three more employees next week … two of the three we […]

ADA

EEOC Addresses Telework as Reasonable Accommodation

By now, many employees have been working from home since March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. With no signs of slowing and the rollout of a vaccine to the general public not likely to occur until well into 2021, teleworking looks like it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future.

The FLSA and holiday pay for temporary employees

by Craig Olivo Q: We recently hired a temporary employee for a position that is classified as exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). With the holidays quickly approaching, will we be required to pay the temporary employee for the holidays observed by our company? A: The FLSA doesn’t require payment for time that […]

toothpaste

The Toothpaste Can’t Go Back in the Tube: 6 Tips for Workplace Communication

I recently watched a preschool teacher deliver a message on “Words that Hurt.” The teacher creatively used a tube of toothpaste and a paper plate per student for this hands-on activity. I watched 12 small children eagerly squeeze the entire contents of a tube of toothpaste onto a paper plate, giggling as their plates filled […]

FMLA abuse

How Much FMLA Leave Is Too Much?

Bar none, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is the hardest employment law to administer for employers and the easiest to abuse by employees. That double whammy often results in frustrated employers making rash decisions, which, of course, lead to lawsuits. And so goes the following case, in which the employer gave the employee […]

Were You Thrown Into HR? Here’s How One HR Professional Adapted

One thing I have learned from interviewing so many HR professionals is that the path to HR is rarely direct. Virtually everyone begins in another field and gravitates toward HR. Others fall into the field when they take on some HR duties and realize they are good at it. In this week’s “Faces of HR,” […]

Windfalls and Changing the Terms of Commission Agreements

Vesting of Commissions One particularly difficult sticking point with commission agreements is failing to define what is supposed to happen if a sale is canceled or the terms need to be renegotiated. One solution that eliminates many problems is to state that a draw or advance becomes a vested commission only after all conditions on […]