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Employee Relations

THREE CHAMPAGNE BOTTLES … TWO DIFFERENT PENALTIES

07/01/2006

Q. Two employees went to breakfast and drank three bottles of champagne to celebrate one’s birthday. One employee is an exempt employee who has been with us for seven years. The other is an hourly employee with the company for one month. I’d like to treat them differently: terminate the hourly employee and suspend the exempt employee for a week. Is that possible? —D.M., California

Get Ahead by Drafting Your Own ‘Career Annual Report’

07/01/2006

What have you learned and accomplished in the past five years? If you can’t answer that question, you’ll have a tougher time selling yourself to potential employers. Use the following template to create an annual report that can help collect your thoughts each year …

Cut turnover by teaching managers how to respect staff

07/01/2006

Employees who feel less respected by their superiors are more likely to jump ship. The lesson: Treating workers with respect and dignity is ultracritical to retaining good workers, especially in a hot job market …

Retention: If you want to keep them, let them go

07/01/2006

You’ve probably had great employees quit because they wanted to try their hand at a radically different career. Here’s a way to let employees "test drive" a career and still keep them on staff …

Inappropriate nicknames can lead to bias lawsuits

06/01/2006
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Team-Building Events: Fun is good; employee humiliation is bad

06/01/2006

It’s summertime, and corporate thoughts turn to company picnics and outdoor morale-boosting efforts. One word of caution: If your team-building exercises go beyond three-legged sack races and into the realm of reality TV, you could be headed for a lawsuit …

Plan ahead for the pandemic flu threat

06/01/2006

Whether it’s bird flu or a more general flu pandemic, experts say some type of global flu outbreak is inevitable in the coming years that could kill 2 million Americans. The federal government is encouraging employers to create contingency plans …

‘Last straw’ needn’t be egregious to justify firing

06/01/2006

Employers often bend over backward to give employees second chances. But when second chances turn into third and fourth chances, you’ll  probably lose your patience and send the employee packing. Some employers, however, wrongly believe that they must cite a particularly serious behavior or performance problem as the last straw before termination. As a new ruling shows, that’s simply not true …

Are Employee Protests a ‘Protected’ Activity?

06/01/2006

Recent immigration-related rallies have led many employees, mostly minority ones, to skip work on those days. That action sparked an important question in HR circles: How should employers react to unexcused absences caused by employees’ attending political protests? …

Don’t let opinions of employees cloud your decisions

06/01/2006
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