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HR Management

What is the most effective way of keeping a former employee from giving away trade secrets?

03/03/2015
Q. As an employer, what can I do to avoid unauthorized disclosure of sensitive company information when an employee departs?

Why you need a workplace gambling policy

03/03/2015
Most employers fail to specifically prohibit workplace gambling, and many sanction the behavior as harmless fun. Don’t bet on it.

4 years after GSA scandal, feds ease limits on training

03/03/2015
When the General Services Administration dropped $823,000 in 2010 to fly 300 federal workers to a lavish team-building conference in Las Vegas—complete with clowns, a mind-reader, an employee-produced rap video and after-hours parties in hotel suites—the Obama administration cracked down. But now, the pendulum is swinging back.

The HR I.Q. Test: March ’15

03/02/2015
Here’s our monthly quiz on your knowledge of HR law, news and issues.

JOLTS report shows details of economic recovery

02/27/2015

The unemployment rate—now 5.7%, compared to 10% in October 2009—is one measure of how well the economy is rebounding. But labor economists often note that the unemployment rate is something of a statistical blunt instrument that fails to capture the nuances of what’s really happening in the job market. Economists increasingly turn to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey to spotlight the detail in the broader employment picture.

Make sure you can authenticate e-signatures on applications and arbitration agreements

02/24/2015

These days, many employers don’t bother to print employee handbooks, arbitration agreements and other employment documents. Instead, they exist solely in electronic form, acknowledged by so-called electronic signatures instead of written ones. That’s fine, as long as you have a system for authenticating those e-signatures.

How many baby boomers are still working?

02/24/2015
The first baby boomers reached retirement age five years ago, and now they’ve started leaving the workforce in droves.

Oil firm turns employees into decision-makers

02/23/2015

Engineers and others who work for Anadarko Petroleum Corp. in The Woodlands, Texas, are expected to make decisions that will help the company profit and grow. Not all of them are used to that. So when any of its 3,500 employ­­ees expresses a lack of confidence about reaching beyond his or her comfort zone, the organization teaches the would-be decision-maker how.

Poll: Women qualified for top jobs but are held back

02/20/2015
Women are perfectly capable of succeeding in senior executive jobs, but factors largely beyond their control have kept them from achieving more corporate success. That’s the attitude pollsters at the Pew Research Center uncovered when they asked 1,835 randomly selected adults what keeps more business women from holding leadership positions.

Spring cleaning: It’s time to freshen up your job descriptions

02/18/2015
Do they bear enough relation to what your employees are actually doing every day?