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Jeffery Akers was a patent examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). He sought a promotion but didn’t get it. Instead, a younger woman was given the position. Akers believed that his age and gender prevented him from getting the promotion, so he filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission […]
On October 1, 1908, Ford Motor Company introduced the Model T, generally regarded as the first affordable automobile and the car that industry experts say “put America on wheels.” The first Model T, produced for the 1909 model year, was assembled by hand and sold for $850. The demand for the cars was so high […]
by Kara Shea I’m often asked to give advice about whether employees are exempt from the overtime requirements of federal law. I have to say that it’s a pretty easy call about 70 percent of the time. But then there’s that troubling 30 percent of jobs that give my clients (and, truth be told, yours […]
Last Friday (Oct. 10) we discovered we had some significant technical problems with the survey on Your HR Department that caused us to lose many of your responses. So we’re going to try this again. The survey is the same. We’ve gotten the technical problems resolved. Now we just need you to take the survey […]
Q: We’ve been going through the interactive process with one of our employees (we’ll call him Mike). As a result, we’ve been accommodating him with unpaid leaves for the last year. It’s been tough, and Mike’s supervisors have told me more than once that they need to terminate him and move on. According to them, […]
Litigation Value: Currently, $0 My stomach still hurts from laughing. This week on The Office, Michael Scott prepared for the birth of his make-believe baby by having Dwight Schrute, pant-less and on Michael’s desk, give birth to a buttered-up watermelon, all the while screaming about secretly marking the baby so no one could steal it. […]
By Brian Jones Just My E-pinion “Our senior leaders just don’t get it!” This refrain is heard all too frequently, especially during discussions regarding an organization’s leadership development efforts, says Brian Jones, today’s guest columnist. We all want our senior leaders to “get it”—to support, participate, and buy in to the organization’s leadership development initiatives. […]
In today’s we-want-to-be-the-employer-of-choice world, isn’t it counterintuitive to be telling each new employee, “We can fire you for any reason or no reason”? In the face of the numerous exceptions to employment-at-will status (see yesterday’s Advisor), why would any company bother with at-will statements? Even though it may seem wrong from a morale standpoint, and […]
Resources for Humans managing editor Celeste Blackburn reviews the book The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up. Review summarizes book’s theory on how levity improves the workplace and ways to achieve levity. These are serious times. As the stock market plunges and the government is bailing out banks, many employers are struggling to […]
What HR manager hasn’t heard, “We’re an at-will employer, so why do I need documentation before I fire?” Good question, says today’s expert. After all, what is ambiguous about the at-will doctrine? In most organizations, employees are “at will,” that is, they are hired for no specific time period, with no contractual relationship, and employment […]