If, like some companies, you have a policy forbidding dating or relationships between supervisors and hourly employees, make sure you enforce the rule consistently ...

Both Illinois and federal laws require employers to let their employees off for jury duty. Additionally, employers may not penalize employees for serving on a jury. No matter how obvious this is, every now and then, employers try to get back at employees who perform their civic duties. It never works ...

While all economic cycles share certain features, they also have unique effects. What’s different for HR in the 2008 downturn versus the last one? Here are three distinctive characteristics of the current economic slump that are affecting your employees—and potentially reshaping your HR programs:

Do you have to provide employees who work eight hours or more during a shift with an unpaid meal break away from all job responsibilities? Or can you continue to pay employees while they eat, expecting them to take calls or respond to work needs? ...

Title VII forbids employers from basing employment decisions on an individual’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin. But the U.S. Supreme Court has twice upheld an employer’s right to voluntarily adopt race- and gender-conscious employment policies that the employer thinks will remedy inherent work force imbalances ...

You’d never discuss how much money you make, right? Dude, that attitude is so 20th century! The 20-somethings you work with eagerly dish about salaries, bonuses and other work topics you might consider taboo. Managers tempted to forbid such talk? Don’t let them! Here's why.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has just expanded employee rights in alleged sexual harassment cases. The court has ruled that sexually explicit language that tends to demean women can be the basis of a sexual harassment and hostile work environment claim even if the language is not aimed at a particular woman ...

BJ’s Wholesale Club will pay $100,000 to settle an EEOC lawsuit. The manager of the company’s Homestead store, who is Cuban-American, allegedly subjected a black employee and a Puerto Rican employee to numerous racial slurs ...

State Rep. Mary Brandenburg took aim at Florida’s new guns-at-work law. “It’s beyond belief to think it’s essential to have guns at work,” she said after the bill passed the Legislature on a largely party-line vote, 72-42. “This was the most boneheaded bill we’ll pass this session.” ...

Discharging an employee is stressful to everyone concerned. It can be doubly stressful if the employee held a publicly visible position. Local reporters are likely to call asking for information about why the organization fired the employee. Handling those calls poorly can spell legal trouble ...

Q. We recently could not reach an employee who works off-site. Then we learned he was responding to customer messages by saying he was on vacation. After we learned this, he contacted his supervisor and said he had been on vacation and would be on vacation the rest of the week. His supervisor reports that he had not requested vacation time beforehand—and our policy states that vacation time must be preapproved. This employee had been a marginal performer, and now his supervisor wants to fire him. Can we fire him for this? ...

Ohio may soon join other states in outlawing sexual orientation discrimination by private employers. It may be time for employers to rethink their employment discrimination policies and include sexual orientation. One good first step is to include anti-gay discrimination training in your regular anti-discrimination program ...

You wouldn’t dream of having informal payroll policies, right? Yet too many employers treat vacation time—a form of compensation—as a casual entitlement. Getting too informal can cost you. A sound vacation policy addresses the following five elements ...

To manage the workload, employers have to know who will be at work and who will not. After all, when an employee isn’t at work, someone else has to step in and get the work done. Of course, employees sometimes do get sick or have emergencies. A well-crafted call-in policy can help employers cope with unexpected absences ...