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

HR Management

47 hours: That’s the average American workweek

09/29/2014
If you’re envious of workers who put in their eight hours a day and then go home, you’re not alone. Americans work an average of 47 hours per week, according to Gallup’s annual Work and Education Survey.

The training intentions were good; the marketing was questionable

09/29/2014
Officials at the St. Louis County (Mo.) Police Academy identified a training need and jumped to address it. But they may have wanted to think twice about how to describe it.

For 55% of workers, what they do is who they are

09/22/2014
More than half of working Americans say they get a sense of identity from the work they do, but education and income levels play a big part in the degree to which people feel that way.

New OSHA rules require more injury reporting

09/22/2014
If your workplace is prone to injuries, get ready to submit more paperwork to OSHA.

Florida hotel touts focus on ‘people before policies’

09/22/2014
At the Hyatt Regency Clearwater Beach Resort & Spa on Florida’s Gulf Coast, 70% of management positions are filled internally, and 18 employees were promoted into manager roles over the past year. HR execs there credit the resort’s “people before policies” philosophy.

How honest can I be when called for a reference on a subpar former employee?

09/19/2014
Q. I recently fired one of my employees, but today another company called me, stating that the former employee marked me down on a job application as an employment reference. Can I tell the prospective em­­ployer about how terrible an employee this person was?

How do we rein in our staff on social media?

09/19/2014
Q. What are the rules and laws about social media? We have employees who have generated Facebook pages with our company name. They are also posting information that we are not ready to publish—such as the opening of another store in a new city.

Can a former employee demand access to her personnel file?

09/17/2014
Q. A former employee called HR asking to review her personnel file. We already let her review her file following termination last year, and nothing has changed in the personnel file since she reviewed it. Can we just tell the former employee “No”? Or can we ask her to pay for a copy of the file for her own records? Our HR manager is going on vacation next week. Can we wait to deal with the former employee’s request until after the human resources manager gets back from vacation?

How to make your best decisions: 4 steps

09/16/2014

Employees at the highest and lowest levels of the organization chart often make the boldest decisions. Most folks in the middle cling to conventional behavior. Where does that leave you?

Must we have a smoking section onsite?

09/16/2014
Q. Our smoking area is outside our building, but the smoke seems to be drifting into the ventilation system. An employee who is super-sensitive to smells has complained. Can we move smokers to their vehicles? Do we even need to provide a place for smokers onsite?