• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR LAW Weekly
  • The HR Weekly

HRIS / Technology

New IT system helps Barilla cut down turnover

12/16/2010
Pasta maker Barilla America scored a big “zero” with employees last year: zero work stoppages due to faulty processes, plus overall employee turnover decreased to 8.1%. Reason: A $50 million overhaul of the organization’s 18-year-old IT systems and work processes gave employees the tools they needed to increase speed and improve efficiency.

Catch 22: The records-retention steps you must always be ready to take

12/14/2010

Employers and HR professionals hear it all the time: You must be prepared to preserve relevant documents and produce them if you are sued. You can take some preparatory steps to ensure that you can comply with inevitable litigation holds and are proficiently primed to assist your attorneys should litigation occur. This list of 22 to-do’s can guide your document and data preservation and retention procedures:

Can we prohibit texting at work based on the Supreme Court’s recent Quon decision?

12/09/2010
Q. What lessons should employers take from the Supreme Court’s decision in City of Ontario v. Quon? That’s the case about the texting police officer. We want to ban personal texting at work.

Porn at work is misconduct, even without a rule against it

12/09/2010

Give some employees an inch and they’ll take a mile. They stubbornly insist on pushing the rules and argue that if the handbook doesn’t say something is prohibited, then it must be OK. Fortunately, courts don’t often agree.

Social media: Business booster or time waster?

12/09/2010
A new Accountemps survey asked employers to reveal their greatest concern about employees’ use of social media. Top results: wasting time (51%), behaving unprofessionally (18%), posting company info (11%).

Power up your networking efforts with a 5-point LinkedIn strategy

12/08/2010

What’s the best way to get a job right now? Networking, according to a recent survey of HR execs by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The best (and easiest) way to nurture your online network is through LinkedIn, the one social networking site you can’t ignore if you’re a professional. Here’s how to best use the web site:

The future of introductions: ‘Bump’ vs. business cards

12/08/2010

More than 20 million people have downloaded Bump, an application that allows people to bump their smartphones together to exchange contact information. But that doesn’t mean the end of business cards.

Watch out for pitfalls, risks of using social media in hiring

12/01/2010
Employers are increasingly using web-based social media—such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter—to screen potential employees, in addition to the usual applications, interviews, references, and background, credit and drug tests. But they don’t always recognize the potential pitfalls and risks.

Firing worker for Facebook rant: Is it illegal?

11/22/2010

In what could be a groundbreaking case, the National Labor Relations Board filed an unfair labor practice complaint last month against a Connecticut company that fired a worker who complained about her supervisor on Facebook. This is the first case in which the NLRB has argued that workers’ criticisms on social networking sites are protected activity.

Conducting online background checks? Beware the pitfalls

11/16/2010
Online tools can be highly valuable in recruiting and selecting the best candidates and screening out bad hires. Despite the potential advantages, those activities come with potential employment law risks that are still evolving due to the relatively recent emergence and growth of social media. Some of the obvious and not-so-obvious legal risks: