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HR Management

Arbitration agreements: Draft legal pact to stay out of court

05/01/2005
THE LAW. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is a less costly way of resolving employment conflicts than going to court Also, good ADR programs often end up being a more peaceful forum …

‘Reasonable’ Maternity Leave Doesn’t Matter Under FMLA

05/01/2005

Q. Is there a law or reasonable standard regarding how many weeks maternity leave should be? And should we make that a written policy in our employee handbook? Even with FMLA, to which our employees are entitled, we thought maternity leave was either six or eight weeks, depending on type of delivery. —J.F., Pennsylvania

Be a driver, not a passenger, during times of change

05/01/2005
Issue: How to play a key role in shaping changes in your organization.
Benefit: You can better anticipate future HR needs and position yourself as a “thinker” not just a …

Scour your policies now for any traces of age discrimination

05/01/2005
Issue: A new Supreme Court ruling ratchets up your vulnerability to federal age-discrimination lawsuits.
Risk: Employees no longer need to show a “smoking gun.” Even policies that inadvertently discriminate can …

Take the lead in identifying premises-liability risks

05/01/2005
Issue: Your organization has a responsibility to provide a safe environment for employees and customers.
Risk: Weak security efforts may lead to a “negligent security” lawsuit, an increasing problem for …

Don’t dock pay for time-Clock mistakes

05/01/2005

Q. We dock employees’ pay by 15 minutes if they don’t punch in or out on their timecards. If this happens more than twice over any 90-day period, we write up the employee. We’ve recently been told that we shouldn’t have such a policy. Is that correct? If so, how can we make sure employees punch in? —K.K., Michigan

Shorter, more frequent breaks reduce on-the-job accidents

05/01/2005
Issue: How to structure break schedules to maximize productivity and safety.
Benefit: Allowing more frequent, but shorter, breaks are smarter than giving longer infrequent ones, new research shows.
Action: …

Take same-race bias complaints seriously

05/01/2005
Don’t allow discrimination to continue simply because the “discriminator” and “discriminatee” are among the same racial minority. The EEOC is warning that it’s seeing more discrimination complaints between people of the …

Previous pregnancy troubles are no reason to refuse hiring, rehiring

05/01/2005
Remind your managers: Contrary to popular belief, female employees don’t need to be pregnant to earn legal protections under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). Even nonpregnant employees can sue.
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Train all supervisory employees how to spot and take complaints

05/01/2005
Don’t think that you can automatically swat away a pesky sexual-harassment suit by saying the complaining employee didn’t follow your complaint procedure to a “T.” Courts may let employees pursue their …