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Compensation & Benefits

Allow religious days off if at all possible

07/24/2009

Employers are required to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs. That can include adjusting work hours, such as not scheduling employees to work on worship or holy days. Never punish an employee who tells you he must miss work for religious reasons unless you have considered possible accommodations.

N.C. court stops pay raises for migrant workers nationwide

07/24/2009

Minimum wages for immigrant farm workers won’t go up following a North Carolina federal judge’s decision to halt a federal government plan to overturn an H-2A visa regime it had implemented just last year. The injunction means farmers nationwide can continue to pay H-2A visa holders between $7.25 and $8.51 per hour.

Tap into the power of e-mail to change employees’ health habits

07/24/2009

When employees hunch over keyboards all day, all the motivational posters in all the break rooms of the world won’t improve their health. Solution: Deliver practical, actionable advice directly into employees’ e-mail in-boxes.

New CDC web site helps employers combat obesity

07/24/2009

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last month unveiled LeanWorks, a web site designed to help U.S. employers address employee obesity and its related costs.

Company Records: What to Keep, What to Dump

07/21/2009
A records retention schedule ensures that an organization keeps the records it needs for operational, legal, fiscal or historical reasons, and then destroys them when they’re no longer useful. You have to know what you have and how long to keep it—legally and for your own business purposes—before you can establish an efficient records management system.

Can we require riffed employees to sign a release before they receive severance pay?

07/20/2009

Q. Under our company policy, employees who are terminated because of a reduction in force are entitled to severance pay. Can we require them to execute a release in order to receive severance pay?

ADA accommodation: Yes to time off, no to paid time off

07/20/2009

Employers have to reasonably accommodate disabilities, and those accommodations may include reduced hours or time off. However, employees aren’t entitled to paid time off.

A good deed punished: Voluntary FMLA leave can become a mandate

07/20/2009

Under the FMLA, only employers that have 50 or more employees within 75 miles of the company’s work site are required to provide FMLA leave to their employees. The requirement is commonly known as the “50/75 rule.” Can an employer that has fewer than 50 employees within 75 miles of the company’s work site willingly agree to provide its employees with FMLA rights and benefits? That situation recently occurred in Reaux v. Infohealth Management Corp.

Can we deduct from his paycheck? Employee ruined a company-issued laptop

07/20/2009

Q. One of our employees was issued a company laptop and later corrupted it by downloading games and other nonbusiness software. Can we recover the value of the damaged property from this employee’s next paycheck?

Feel free to scale back leave, pay policies that exceed USERRA requirements

07/20/2009

Members of the armed services are protected from discrimination and have re-employment and leave rights under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA). But the law doesn’t require employers to indefinitely continue what amount to voluntary special privileges for service members.