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Carl Crosby Lehmann

More leave after FMLA leave?

04/19/2010
Q. One of our employees recently completed 12 weeks of FMLA leave to care for an ill family member. She has now requested a 30-day leave to undergo chemical dependency treatment for alcohol abuse. Since she has already utilized all of her available FMLA leave, are we required to grant this most recent leave request?

Can we make employee pay cost of lost BlackBerry through payroll deductions?

04/19/2010
Q. One of our employees recently took a company-issued BlackBerry with him on a business trip. The employee lost the BlackBerry while out on the town, and the company would like to have him pay for a replacement. Can we deduct the cost of a replacement BlackBerry from his paycheck?

Must we offer severance pay?

04/19/2010
Q. Because of a downturn in our business, we are thinking of eliminating a position. Are we required to offer severance pay to the terminated employee?

How should we handle overtime and holidays?

03/11/2010

Q. I am wondering about rules relating to overtime during weeks with holidays. We pay a higher rate than normal for employees who work on the day of a holiday. Do we need to include the additional pay rate in calculating any overtime owed during the same week? …

How should we proceed? We want to hire someone who has signed a noncompete agreement

03/11/2010

Q. We would like to hire an applicant who used to work for a similar company, but he has a noncompete agreement with his former employer. We think the noncompete is way too broad—it lasts for three years and prevents him from working anywhere in the country—and we do not believe the work he will be doing competes with any activities of his former employer. Can we go ahead and hire him?

Worker wants to alter a discipline note she saw in her personnel file—Now what?

03/11/2010

Q. An employee asked to review her personnel file, and we let her. Now she wants us to change a discipline notice she found in the file. We don’t have to do that, do we?

Spring cleaning: Give employee handbook a thorough going-over

02/09/2010

Because employment laws and your business are in a constant state of flux, it’s critical to keep your personnel policies up-to-date. As spring approaches, one item on every HR professional’s spring cleaning list should be a review of the organization’s employee handbook. In light of recent legal changes, be sure your policies include these updates:

Can we split a shift to avoid overtime?

02/09/2010

Q. We have an employee whose job requires her to perform check-in tasks for about an hour at the beginning of the day. She is then needed to perform certain check-out tasks eight hours later at the end of the day. During the remainder of her workday she performs various administrative services. To manage her time and avoid overtime, we began asking her to take an extra hour break during the middle of the day. She says she doesn’t want to take this additional break. Can we require her to take the additional breaks so that we don’t have to pay her overtime?

What are the basics of complying with the new Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act?

02/09/2010

Q. I read the article last month (“Follow 5 steps to make sure GINA doesn’t trip you up”) regarding the recent passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act. What should we do to make sure that we are not violating this law?

Is English-only OK? We can’t understand what Hispanic workers are talking about

02/09/2010

Q. We have a number of Spanish-speaking employees. We can’t tell, but we suspect they sometimes make inappropriate comments in Spanish about our clients and other employees. Can we require these employees to speak only English when at work?