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HR Management

Should we pay for training time?

02/23/2011
Q. Occasionally, we offer in-house training and development programs for our employees. The training is strictly voluntary and isn’t conducted during normal working hours. Our company has never paid employees for the time spent attending such training. Is that legal?

Tell staff you’re monitoring work e-mail so they can’t argue it was confidential

02/23/2011
Employers can read any e-mails sent using company-owned computers or other devices, as long as they inform employees they should have no expectation the communication is confidential. That’s true even of e-mails an employee sends to an attorney to discuss a potential lawsuit against the employer.

Tap employee affinity groups to build bottom-line results

02/23/2011
An old employee-relations idea has found new purpose in today’s tumultuous business environment: Employee resource groups (ERGs)—also known as affinity groups or employee networks—are on the rise in companies large and small.

What keeps HR awake at night?

02/22/2011
Rising health care costs, implementing the new health care reforms, rapidly changing business and labor markets, growing regulatory complexity and managing the aging workforce top the list of challenges HR pros face. That’s what the Society for Human Resource Management found when it surveyed more than 9,000 practitioners.

?4U…What’s the etiquette for texting in business?

02/22/2011
If it’s common for your employees to text for business reasons, remind them to keep their professionalism intact. Business communications trainer Barbara Pachter offers these suggestions:

After NLRB ruling, can employees really trash you on Facebook?

02/21/2011
Don’t read too much into the recent foray by the NLRB into the brave new world of social media. Employees don’t receive a free pass on social media posts. They don’t have license to defame, disparage or otherwise trash their company, management, product or co-workers. Until the NLRB says otherwise, employers shouldn’t treat social media any differently than any other form of employee communications.

It’s time to ban texting while driving

02/21/2011
If you provide either cell phones or vehicles to your employees, lay down the law: No sending or reading text messages if you’re driving as part of your job. It’s illegal in 30 states.

Setting sound policies, following processes to a ‘T’ increase odds of winning in court

02/18/2011

Employers that follow their own disciplinary process—even in cases involving difficult employees—benefit if those employees sue. When courts see a reasonable disciplinary policy that is applied evenhandedly, they rarely second-guess an employer’s decision to fire an employee.

Disneyland goes out of way to accommodate Muslim dress

02/18/2011

It took a complaint to the EEOC, but Disneyland will allow a Muslim woman employed as an intern there to wear an Islamic head scarf. Disney worked with CAIR to come up with a clothing option that met the woman’s religious requirements and still satisfied the Walt Disney Company’s uniform guidelines.

Shift recruiting, retention priorities to beat ‘talent paradox’

02/17/2011
The challenges facing HR pros who specialize in talent, compensation and benefits are dramatically different today than they were just a year ago. At Deloitte Consulting, we call it “the talent paradox”—the apparent contradiction that occurs when unemployment is still relatively high, yet companies still are seeing significant shortages in critical talent areas.