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Policies / Handbooks

Don’t require employees to visit a psychologist

06/01/2005

Q. Can we require an employee to receive psychological counseling or treatment if his behavior has become a hindrance to his job performance? —N.M., Kansas

Add anti-Nepotism rule to your family of policies

06/01/2005

Q. Some employees have complained anonymously that an employee is receiving preferential treatment because she’s the wife of a manager. How can we defuse this situation? Should I transfer her to another warehouse? —B.B., New York

Sharpen your no-solicitation policy with precise language

06/01/2005
Issue: How to stop employees from promoting a union organizing campaign on company time.
Benefit: A correctly worded no-solicitation policy gives you the power to legally squash in-house organizing efforts. …

5 ways to keep mandatory overtime from boiling over

06/01/2005

Like most organizations, your organization probably needs to squeeze more productivity out of fewer employees these days. That may mean requiring some hourly employees to work overtime, even if they don’t want to. But, if handled incorrectly, mandatory overtime can smother morale, create management-employee tensions and spark legal disputes … 

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, …