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HR Management

Want to catch harassment? Go looking for it

06/23/2011
More than a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court decided its biggest sexual harassment and hostile work-environment cases, women are still filing and winning sexual harassment lawsuits. Many of them could easily have been prevented had HR and upper-level management taken regular, surprise walks through the factory floor and other work areas.

Intoxicated and driving during working hours: How should our policy address this problem?

06/23/2011
Q. When an employee was recently injured on the job, a co-worker drove him to the hospital. On the way back to work, they were in a car accident and both employees tested positive for illegal substances. What should we consider when developing a policy to prevent this kind of thing from occurring in the future?

Must we comply with subpoena for worker’s file?

06/23/2011
Q. We recently received a subpoena to produce the contents of an employee’s personnel file in connection with a federal lawsuit. The employee is a party to the lawsuit, but the company is not. Do we have to comply with the subpoena? Should we tell the employee about the subpoena?

Keep it clean (and sober)! Ensure drug testing is uniform and fair

06/23/2011
When you offer employees a chance for drug or alcohol treatment and rehabilitation, make sure you treat them fairly. There’s nothing wrong with telling recovering employees they may be randomly tested for drugs or alcohol without notice. You can even use a “lottery” system that results in some employees being tested more often than others.

5 simple ways to tune up your inbox

06/23/2011
Email is a source of productivity, but it can also become an out-of-control monster. If you’re in search of the magic bullet to make it easier to archive email—and later find what you need—here are five tips to tune up your inbox:

Business climate: How ‘stressed’ is your state?

06/22/2011
Nevada tops the list of states most “stressed” due to bankruptcies, unemployment and other economic indicators, followed by California, Florida, Arizona and Michigan, according to a new Associated Press report.

6 steps to take if one of your employees gets arrested

06/17/2011
With a record number of Ameri­cans now in prison and police and prosecutors increasingly taking a hard line on crime of all kinds, more employers are finding themselves unprepared to answer the question: “What do I do now that one of my employees got arrested?”

Can we require ‘English-only’ at work? Foreign-language chatter is affecting morale

06/16/2011
Q. Some of our employees speak to each other in their native language. We are worried that some workers will feel excluded. To boost employee morale, we would like to institute a policy prohibiting our workers from speaking any language other than English during the workday. Is such a policy legal?

Cal/OSHA puts heat on contractor after flash fire injures welder

06/16/2011
The California Division of Occu­pa­tional Safety and Health has fined a public works contractor more than $235,000—and threatened to put it out of business and criminally prosecute executives—after a welder suffered severe burns in a workplace flash fire.

Owner, foreman get jail time for worker’s fatal plummet

06/16/2011
A California court has sentenced a company owner and a foreman to a year in jail for allowing unsafe working conditions that led to a roofer’s accidental death.