Tag: BLR

‘It’s My First Amendment Right to Discuss Wages’

Beachboard, who is a shareholder in the Los Angeles and Torrence, California offices of national employment law firm Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C., shared his model computer usage policy at the SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition held recently in Atlanta, Georgia. ‘I’m just exercising my First Amendment rights’ Employees who are chastised or […]

Privacy Training on Electronic Monitoring: A Case Study

When conducting privacy training on electronic monitoring, share the following case study with your employees: In this case, Janice Collins complains to her supervisor Bill Smith that one of her male co-workers, Jerry Bartolli, is viewing pornographic websites on the job. Furthermore, Collins says that Bartolli has been sending sexually explicit e-mails to several female […]

Get a Move on Training!

Why? Consider that brain research conducted in the past decade has found that moving from a sitting position to a standing position increases oxygen to the brain by 15 to 20 percent and that “more oxygen in the brain means better learning. It’s that simple,” says Sharon Bowman, president of Bowperson Publishing & Training (www.bowperson.com) […]

More Violence Prevention Training for Employees

Train Employees to Take Personal Security Measures Take a proactive role in violence prevention. Convince your employees to make personal security a habit when coming and going from the workplace or traveling on business. Advise them to do the following: Keep vehicle doors locked—both while driving and whenever you leave the vehicle. Check your vehicle […]

Train to Prevent—and/or Prepare for—Potential Violence

Consider the following: Ours is a violent society and some of that violence finds its way into the workplace. One sixth of violent crimes occur in the workplace—nearly 2 million incidents a year. More than 600 people die each year nationwide from violent acts in the workplace. Tens of thousands of people are assaulted at […]

HR Departments in Flux—What Are Best Practice Companies Doing?

For years, BLR® has surveyed HR and compensation/benefits professionals to find trends in policy and practice. We appreciate your participation in our series of brief, targeted surveys. Today’s survey topic: Your HR Department. (We’ll publish the results in a future issue.) Please participate in this brief survey and together we’ll get answers to these questions […]

Key Comp Issues: Alignment, Compression, and Risk

[Go here for questions 1 and 2] 3. What is the Alignment of Incumbents Within Their Pay Grades? Perform the following analyses, suggests Carroll: All positions in the organization compared to the midpoint (market) Positions within each pay grade compared to the midpoint (market) Analysis of incumbents within each pay grade compared to the midpoint […]

Performance Appraisal Ratings—Training Required!

Because poor performance is often advanced as the reason for a termination, the performance appraisal system is often the crux of the defense against a wrongful termination suit. Here’s how to train your managers and supervisors to make sure your appraisals hold up. Direct Legal Problems in Appraisals One common claim is from an employee […]

'They Never Told Me'

‘Surely They Know What I Want’ Managers and supervisors don’t like confronting their employees about performance problems so they tend to assume that employees are aware that they are not doing an acceptable job. Unfortunately, employees don’t think that way. They assume that everything is fine unless they are told otherwise. Then if there’s a […]

C-Suite Doesn’t Care? You’re Talking About Comp the Wrong Way

Carroll talks of one CEO who was frustrated about compensation. He had his 12 top people that he wanted to compensate well, but he couldn’t seem to afford to do it. He thought that setting up a formal comp program would interfere with his ability to do what he wanted, but Carroll said to him, […]