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Policies / Handbooks

Give employees a ‘grace period’ to spend FSA dollars

06/01/2005
The IRS announced last month that you can give employees an extra 21/2 months to spend money they’ve set aside in their flexible spending accounts (FSAs) for health care and dependent …

Summer’s here: Time is right for safety lapses and fraud

06/01/2005
As temperatures rise, so do two additional risks: 1. Safety. Summer months are traditionally the worst months for on-the-job accidents. That’s because the heat can impair employees’ judgment and more employees …

Dropped your drug testing? You’re not alone

06/01/2005
Workplace drug testing’s popularity has gradually fallen since peaking in 1996, when 81 percent of employers surveyed by the American Management Association (AMA) said they tested. By 2004, that percentage had …

Build an impenetrable age-bias shield

05/01/2005
In light of the Supreme Court’s recent landmark age-bias ruling, you should schedule time in the coming weeks to review your organization’s policies, from hiring to compensation and layoffs, to find …

Base bilingual hiring decisions on language skill, not ethnicity

05/01/2005
Like many employers, you may have legitimate business reasons for hiring bilingual employees. Federal anti-discrimination laws allow you to target bilingual employees, as long as you use their language skills, not …

Sharpen your no-solicitation policy; vague language may let union in

05/01/2005
The best way to prevent employees from rallying support for a union in the workplace is to write and enforce a specific no-solicitation policy. To make sure it passes legal muster, …

Take same-race discrimination complaints seriously

05/01/2005
Don’t allow discrimination to continue at your workplace simply because the “discriminator” and “discriminatee” are in the same racial minority. Just as supervisors over age 40 can be guilty of age …

Arbitration agreements: Draft legal pact to stay out of court

05/01/2005
THE LAW. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is a less costly way of resolving employment conflicts than going to court Also, good ADR programs often end up being a more peaceful forum …

‘Reasonable’ Maternity Leave Doesn’t Matter Under FMLA

05/01/2005

Q. Is there a law or reasonable standard regarding how many weeks maternity leave should be? And should we make that a written policy in our employee handbook? Even with FMLA, to which our employees are entitled, we thought maternity leave was either six or eight weeks, depending on type of delivery. —J.F., Pennsylvania

Be a driver, not a passenger, during times of change

05/01/2005
Issue: How to play a key role in shaping changes in your organization.
Benefit: You can better anticipate future HR needs and position yourself as a “thinker” not just a …