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Employment Law

Consider access to personnel file even if not required

08/01/2006

Q. We fired an employee based on an eyewitness account of theft. We documented that report and put it in the ex-employee’s personnel file. That person has now hired an attorney and asked to see the file. We feel that we have no obligation to respond. Do we have to turn it over without a subpoena? —E. I.  

Overly specific discipline policy can spark liability

08/01/2006

Q. I’m the HR director, and our discipline policy is very complicated and has several different categories of offenses. It says that if employees commit offenses that may result in suspensions of more than three days, employees are allowed a pre-disciplinary counseling conference. Now, my manager thinks that conference should be skipped if the employee has already been counseled for a prior offense in the past 12 months. I’m concerned that this deviates from our policy. Can we do this? —S.D., Illinois

Lessons from the 2006 SHRM conference: Online-Only Handbooks: a risky legal proposition

08/01/2006

Rather than print out paper versions for each new employee, some employers have begun creating electronic-only employee handbooks. With each new hire, HR simply points the person to the online handbook, and tells him or her to read it and sign an acknowledgment form. Online handbooks cut costs and make it easier to amend your policies. But such a strategy could be legally risky …

Lessons from the 2006 SHRM conference: Avoid discipline that makes ‘Example’ of workers

08/01/2006

Employee discipline, above all else, must be consistent. When it’s not, mistakes put employers at risk of messy discrimination claims …

Lessons from the 2006 SHRM conference: Union-Organizing Risks Heightened by Labor’s ‘Change’

08/01/2006

Unions are dead. You may have been hearing that for years. But radical reforms by the labor movement have added new energy to its organizing efforts …

New retaliation rules: What managers need to know

08/01/2006
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Worried About a New Hire? 7 ‘Salvage Operation’ Tips

08/01/2006
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Most Fortune 500s Now Offer Domestic-Partner Perks

08/01/2006

As of June, 253 companies in the Fortune 500 (or 51 percent) provided health insurance coverage to employees’ same-sex domestic partners, according to a Human Rights Campaign survey …

Silence talk of employee health info; loose lips sink HR

07/01/2006

You know to keep employees’ health records confidential and locked away. Yet some HR professionals and supervisors aren’t so cautious when it comes to in-house talk of health information. Use the following court case to remind supervisors about the legal dangers of such gossip …

Feds Clarify Handling of ‘No-Match’ Letters, Electronic I-9s

07/01/2006

Pay attention to a pair of new regulations released in June that aim to help you comply with the laws relating to checking new hires’ work authorization documents. The first proposed Department of Homeland Security regulation sets forth guidance on how employers should handle so-called "no-match" letters that notify employers of discrepancies with new hires’ Social Security numbers …