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Employee Relations

Manager orientations: How to get new leaders up to speed quickly

10/01/2006

How would you rate your orientation process for new managers and executives? Not good, if you’re like most organizations. Poor orientations can cause high-dollar hires to leave or fail to become productive in the critical first months. Improve your orientations by taking the following steps …

Attract and Retain Part-Timers With Dental Discount Plans

10/01/2006

It’s obviously easier to recruit and keep good part-time or entry-level employees if you offer some type of health benefit. That’s why more employers are turning to the growing number of low-cost dental discount plans available from big health insurers …

Employee feedback helps revamp parental leave policy

10/01/2006

When Rob Keeling, director of diversity at Capital One, wanted to improve the McLean, Va.-based credit-card company’s parental leave policy, he didn’t have to look far for suggestions. The company’s female employees, through their employee network, told him what to do …

Mandatory sabbaticals help retain call center staff

10/01/2006

Employees who celebrate their sixth anniversary at ServiceNet, a Jeffersonville, Ind., warranty service company, don’t get lapel pins to commemorate the occasion. They receive alarm clocks. Each clock counts down the year until the company boots the employee out the door … for a mandatory paid sabbatical …

Favoring older applicants: Is it discrimination?

10/01/2006

The EEOC has provided more legal cover for employers that actively recruit older applicants and offer better perks to their older employees. New proposed EEOC regulations, which reflect a 2004 Supreme Court decision, say you won’t violate federal age-discrimination law if you favor older employees over younger ones …

Draw attention to your perks during ‘Work & Family’ month

10/01/2006

Supporting a balance between employees’ work lives and personal lives "is in the best interest of national worker productivity." At least that’s what Congress declared in 2003 when it decreed that October shall be deemed "National Work & Family Month" …

Texas workers are optimistic about job availability, security

09/01/2006

The Texas Employee Confidence Index recently reached a high for 2006. The index, which measures adult workers’ confidence in their personal employment situation, hit 62.7 in July, up from 60.7 in June and 58.4 in May …

Employee blogs raise privacy, confidentiality issues for employers

09/01/2006

Most organizations have comprehensive Internet, e-mail and electronic communications policies that spell out what’s acceptable usage and what’s not. But few employers have addressed a growing problem: the proliferation of employee Web logs, or "blogs" …

Announcing terminations: What’s the smartest way?

09/01/2006

A reader of our weekly e-mail newsletter, The HR Specialist Weekly, recently posed this question: “How do you let other employees know when you’ve fired someone?” Following are some of the responses from other readers …

Employer not liable for manager’s unforeseen safety breach

09/01/2006

If one of your company’s supervisors knowingly ignores a safety rule, can OSHA hold the company liable? OSHA has long argued "yes" and has moved against employers on the premise that if the supervisor knows he’s violating the rules, then the company also knows …