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

Employee Relations

Curb Turnover Using Job-Rotation Plan, Not Job Sharing

09/01/2006

You know that employees who feel stalled in their careers are more inclined to quit. But how can organizations keep their workers energized and constantly training for a step up? One solution that’s gaining steam: a new breed of job-rotation program …

Lessons from the 2006 SHRM conference: Green M&Ms and other little motivational tools

08/01/2006

Execs talk a lot about external threats to their organization, but they often overlook the elephant in the room: a tuned-out work force that isn’t giving 100 percent.

Put a positive face on rising employee health costs

08/01/2006

With health insurance costs continuing to rise, you’ll likely have to tell employees (again) that they’ll shoulder more of the premium. Such news isn’t new for most employees. But they may be reaching the boiling point …

Pay & perks drive satisfaction, but HR perceives differently

08/01/2006

What’s the most important factor in an employee’s job satisfaction? A new study says HR professionals and employees have completely divergent answers to that question …

Lessons from the 2006 SHRM conference: Union-Organizing Risks Heightened by Labor’s ‘Change’

08/01/2006

Unions are dead. You may have been hearing that for years. But radical reforms by the labor movement have added new energy to its organizing efforts …

When punishing employees’ use of slurs, equality counts

08/01/2006

The mantra in real estate is "location, location, location." But the mantra in employee discipline must always be "consistency, consistency, consistency" …

Subjective fear of discipline no reason to quit

08/01/2006

To make a "constructive discharge" claim, employees must show that their working conditions were so intolerable that they had no choice but to quit and that those conditions amounted to discrimination based on age, race, sex or some other protected characteristic. But, as a new ruling shows, an employee’s subjective "fear of future discipline" isn’t grounds for a lawsuit under this constructive-discharge theory …

Drug-Test Policy Should Include Off-Duty Prohibition

08/01/2006

Pennsylvania employers that want to make sure their employees don’t come to work under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs should establish a random drug-testing program. State law makes employees ineligible for unemployment compensation anytime an organization bases its firing on employees’ "failure to submit [to] and/or pass a drug test conducted pursuant to an employer’s established substance abuse policy" …

Head-Office decision won’t insulate company from liability

08/01/2006

Don’t think that leaving the final firing decision to someone in company headquarters will shield your organization from a discrimination lawsuit. Even if the ultimate decision-maker doesn’t know the race, sex or age of the employee in question, the fired employee can still file a discrimination claim if he or she can point to lower-level bias that tainted the decision …

What does broad new definition of ‘Retaliation’ mean to you?

08/01/2006

Expect this summer’s blockbuster U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Burlington Northern v. White, to swell the number of retaliation complaints and legal claims …