Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Naps during the workday may soon be a no-no in Spain! Despite the historical precedence for a daily doze during the noontime heat, it was found that the practice actually made workers less productive after they snooze.
A federal district court judge on Aug. 12 dismissed a suit by current and former employees of a Maryland construction company who alleged that the company failed to comply with ERISA disclosure requirements and to provide retirement plan documents upon request because the Spanish-speaking plaintiffs couldn’t understand the English documents. ERISA requires that plan sponsors […]
The U.S. Department of Labor has issued the Spanish version of the General Family and Medical Leave Act Notice poster, which incorporates changes in the new and revised regulations issued earlier this year. Under FMLA, a covered employer must post a copy of the General FMLA Notice in each location where it has any employees […]
A record damage award levied against a telephone company that tried to prevent operators from speaking Spanish to each other in the workplace underscores the risks of enforcing English-only policies. Faced with this increasingly common type of bias case, a federal court has concluded that the language restriction amounted to illegal discrimination based on national […]
In what may be the first jury award involving an employer’s English-only policy, an employee for Baccarat Inc. has won $500,000 in damages after claiming that she was fired for speaking Spanish. Irma Rivera worked as a saleswoman at one of Baccarat’s showrooms. After a new company president took over, Rivera alleged that she was […]
With hopes of a hotter IPO market on the horizon, many private company employees seek to better understand their equity. Two major factors come into play when thinking about equity in startups: how to value it and how the option-related taxes work. Employees need to understand their equity’s value to confidently exercise or sell, and […]
Patricia “Pat” Mayers is the Senior Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Manager at Seismic, a global enablement platform that was recently placed on the prestigious Forbes Cloud 100 List. Mayers’ unique background includes a childhood spent growing up abroad, and she attributes her passion for DEI, at least in part, to the race-relations culture shock […]
Communication and connection are at the core of being human. Interacting with others and the world around us is critical not only for collaboration and progress but also for inclusion and belonging. It’s ironic, then, that something as universal as language can be so limiting. Language differences significantly impact people’s ability to connect with one […]
The decade ahead will likely be known for innovations we haven’t even imagined yet. In the workplace, it may be known for the rise of a new way of scheduling employees: the 4-day workweek. As overwork has become a chronic issue, entire countries have started piloting and testing shorter workweeks. Between 2015 and 2019, Iceland […]