• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly

Employee Relations

12 tips to help employees handle the stress of tough times

07/06/2009

Layoffs, pay cuts and an uncertain economy have left many organizations with fewer employees to do the work—often for the same or less money. Not all of those employees are handling it well. Here are a dozen ways you can deal with economy-induced employee stress and help your employees focus on their work:

Send tailored e-mails to deliver actionable health info

07/06/2009

When employees hunch over keyboards all day, all the motivational posters in all the break rooms of the world won’t improve their health. Health care giant Kaiser Permanente—a leader in designing wellness programs for other organizations—wondered what it could do to get its own staff to eat better and exercise more. Thus was born an innovative e-mail campaign that delivered big results.

Even the best sexual harassment policy is useless without supervisor vigilance

07/06/2009

No sexual harassment policy will protect your company if what is going on in the cubicles or on the shop floor is blatantly offensive. It may not even matter that the offended or harassed employee didn’t follow your complaint policy and report the harassment to upper management. If she tried to talk to her immediate supervisor, that’s enough.

Keep superstars on board with sabbaticals—even during tough times

07/06/2009

During a time of layoffs and budget cuts, you might not think a lot of organizations would be encouraging their employees to take lengthy sabbaticals—or that employees would feel secure enough to accept the offer. Yet six-week to six-month job pauses remain as common as ever. There are good reasons why the sabbatical is enduring even as other benefits become expendable.

Measure productivity loss when tallying up health costs

07/06/2009

Pull out your attendance records and a calculator to determine just how much productivity is suffering because of employee illness and poor health. Then find out what kinds of medical conditions are keeping employees from working at full capacity.

Patience, good records key when employee sues

07/06/2009

When an employee threatens litigation, take your time building the case against him. Make sure you base your decision on solid facts. Double-check to see that there’s no way the employee can claim you singled him out for unfair or inequitable treatment. Then rest easy, knowing that if you’re sued, you can counter the allegations with facts and get the case dismissed quickly.

Be ready to intervene if supervisor who shows bias needs an attitude adjustment

07/06/2009

In a perfect world, no one would ever utter a slur or make a derogatory comment. But this isn’t a perfect world, and employees come to work with emotional and cultural baggage. It’s up HR to make sure that baggage doesn’t turn into a discrimination lawsuit. 

An easy way to head off retaliation claims: Keep past performance reviews

07/06/2009

Before you decide to throw out old evaluations and files, consider this: An employee may sue and refer back to those evaluations from memory. If she remembers nothing but positive performance reviews until a recent poor appraisal (engineered, she believes, to get her fired), you’ll need to be able to show her employment history wasn’t as rosy as she remembers.

Beware issuing completely negative performance reviews

07/06/2009

Supervisors often come down hard on underperforming employees during regular performance reviews. But sometimes, completely negative appraisals can come back to haunt you if the employee later sues. Juries are more likely to believe that you terminated the employee fairly if you include some positive feedback.

Even in Silicon Valley, tech firm retains staff

07/06/2009

Twenty percent of West Valley Staffing Group’s employees worked there for a while, left for other jobs, and then came back to claim their former positions. And many of the technology temp agency’s 60 employees have worked there for a decade or longer, even though most Silicon Valley firms suffer from high turnover. Perhaps it’s the perks …