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HR Management

Prevent your employee handbook from becoming a binding contract: 2 easy steps

01/15/2014
A few simple mistakes in your employee handbook can turn it into a binding legal contract and destroy your right to terminate em­­ployees at-will. Here’s how to avoid that:

Chrysler takes its training academy on the road

01/14/2014
Chrysler Group employees who can’t make the trip to the auto manufacturer’s 25,000-square-foot War­­ren, Mich., training center can attend remotely via a new mobile classroom.

Exploring an online HR degree? Consider these important factors first

01/13/2014
More HR professionals are seeking degrees online as the programs become common and the quality im­­proves. Plus, employers increasingly see online degrees for HR (and other disciplines) as acceptable alternatives. But be careful when choosing an online program.

Misconduct caught on video: Must we show the employee the proof?

01/10/2014
Q. A client took video of one of our employees talking on the phone and swerving all over the road when driving a group of children in the course of her job. We suspended the employee. Now the employee is demanding to see the video. Must we let her?

Ohio? You gotta be @#$%&! kidding me

01/09/2014
Ohio residents do the most to put the cuss in customer, using profanity in one out of about every 150 phone calls to customer service centers, according to a Marchex Institute study. The potty-mouth Buckeyes were followed by residents of Maryland, New Jersey, Louisiana and Illinois.

Make sure your pay policies properly address meal breaks

01/08/2014
Paying employees for break time—or not paying them—is one of the trickiest aspects of wage-and-hour law compliance. Know your obligations!

Often-overlooked risk: training discrimination

01/07/2014
Make sure supervisors in your organization aren’t playing favorites with some employees at the expense of others. Excluding certain employees from the “inner circle” that get special training, mentoring or promotion opportunities is legally dangerous, as this new ruling shows.

Age Discrimination: ADEA/OWBPA

01/05/2014

HR Law 101: Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, employers with 20 or more workers can’t engage in personnel practices that discriminate against individuals age 40 and older. Most age discrimination cases grow out of wrongful discharge and mandatory retirement policies, but they can involve any adverse change in working conditions …

Possible porn: Can we search computers?

01/03/2014
Q. An employee recently complained about re­ceiving inappropriate email messages and links to porno­graphic websites from some of her co-workers. We would like to review the messages to figure out exactly how large a problem we face. Can we do this?

Can we withhold double the cost of unreturned equipment from employee’s final paycheck?

01/03/2014
Q. Our employee handbook states, “If you do not return a piece of property we will withhold from your final paycheck the cost of replacing that piece of property.” One of our employees recently quit on the spot. My boss wants to almost double the actual replacement cost of the item. Can we do this?