Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
(Updated August 2009) by Sarah Fuson With Thanksgiving less than a week away, thoughts turn to turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. But Thanksgiving represents more than stuffing ourselves silly and watching football all day. The first Thanksgiving was held in 1621 by the Pilgrims, a group of Puritans who fled England because […]
Samuel Goldwin, the legendary movie producer, was famous for lines like, “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” When he was dealing with employees, one of his favorite sayings was, “I’ll take 50 percent efficiency to get 100 percent loyalty.” What does that have to do with employment law? Loyalty. In the […]
The holiday season is just around the corner, and busy employees are increasingly doing their shopping at the world’s gigantic electronic marketplace, located conveniently on their office computer. Careless e-mail use can end up as a huge lump of coal in an employer’s stocking — in the form of evidence used against it in litigation. […]
Litigation Value: $150.00 (for the birthday cakes) As they always say, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Nowhere is this more true than at office parties, birthday or otherwise. Lucky for Dunder Mifflin, the biggest party-related issue in last night’s episode was birthday cake. But sometimes employers just aren’t that […]
McCarthy Tetrault Since the concept of at-will employment isn’t recognized in Canada, U.S. employers need to understand how terminations are handled in their operations north of the border. Are you confident that your termination decisions are in line with Canadian law? And what about the “enhanced” severance known as “Wallace damages”? Are you clear on […]
by Karen Sargeant former of McCarthy Tetrault You have found the perfect employee. Your intuition tells you the candidate is exactly what you’ve been looking for. But will she really be the perfect employee? Reference and background checks are a good way to ensure that you have the right person for the job, but they’re […]
Employment law attorney Michael P. Maslanka reviews the book The Truth About Managing People by Stephen E. Robbins. Review highlights book’s truths about managing employees in the workplace. Talk about debunking workplace myths. In a series of 53 short chapters (the longest clocks in at three pages), Robbins challenges quite a few in Truth About […]
McCarthy Tetrault Canadian discrimination laws, like those in the United States, generally require employers to make accommodations for employees with disabilities. By law, employers must accommodate to the point of “undue hardship,” but undue hardship is difficult to define and is assessed on a case-by-case basis. What happens when employee rights come up against your […]
McCarthy Tetrault A “blog,” short for web log, is akin to an online diary or an electronic discussion board that often includes a mix of commentary and opinions from visitors to the website. More and more employers are dealing with employees who may be blogging about their work. Here are some questions you should consider. […]
LITIGATION VALUE: $400,000 (that classified ad just isn’t going to look good to a jury) While I didn’t expect it to come from the Utica branch, it looks like the “the war for talent” that so many commentators have been writing about has finally hit Dunder Mifflin. Unfortunately for Michael Scott, the war simply can’t […]