Category: Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is an important and ongoing strategy of any HR plan. Ensuring that your company supports hiring, engaging, and retaining diverse workers with varied backgrounds will set your company up for long-term success and an increased bottom line. This topic offers the latest strategies for talent management, key insights from diversity leaders, case studies on D&I in the workplace, and more.

Religion in the Workplace: A Delicate Balance

By Keith Moorman With the steady flow of news putting religious issues in the spotlight, it’s a good time to review the requirements regarding religion in the workplace. Religion and Private Employers Although the U.S. Constitution prohibits governments from interfering with the free exercise of religion, it doesn’t dictate how a private employer must deal […]

Political Discrimination: The Elephant in the Room?

By Jeremy M. Brenner The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits a state employer such as a university from discriminating against applicants and current employees based on their political beliefs or affiliations except in very limited instances. If an applicant or employee can demonstrate that her political views or associations caused a state employer […]

Hate Crimes Reported Nationwide Remain Steady

According to the 2010 Hate Crime Statistics report released by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program late in 2011 the number of hate crimes reported nationwide in 2010 remained fairly steady from the previous year. Participating local law enforcement agencies reported a total of 6,628 incidents — up just slightly from the 6,604 incidents reported […]

Juggling Act: When Work and Special-Needs Parenting Collide

By Tammy Binford It’s often easy for employers to be understanding when workers occasionally need to duck out of work early for a meeting at school or a trip to a child’s doctor. It happens to nearly every working parent once in a while. But what about an employee whose child has some kind of […]

Employers, Beware of Looming “Pattern-or-Practice” Charges

By Diane Pietraszewski The vast majority of all equal employment opportunity lawsuits are filed by individual employees or job applicants. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) may file cases on behalf of individuals, but it rarely does so because of limited resources. To get more “bang” for its litigation bucks, the EEOC is increasingly turning […]

This Decision May Not Make the Grade

By Jeanine Poole It may seem that requiring a high-school diploma for a job is a correct answer. However, a recent “informal discussion letter” from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) indicates that you may need to do more studying before making that choice. Background In October 2011, the state of Tennessee wrote the EEOC, […]

March: Women’s History Month

On March 8, 1857, women from New York City factories staged a protest over working conditions. In 1981, 124 years after that historic protest, Congress established National Women’s History Week to be commemorated the second week of March. In 1987, Congress expanded the week to a month. Here are some facts about American women from […]

Beauty and the Best

By Mark I. Schickman We have eliminated many forms of workplace discrimination and made great strides toward erasing others. Nonetheless, one form of discrimination ― “Beauty Bias,” as coined by Stanford Law Professor Deborah Rhode ― remains alive, well, and possibly inherent in the human condition. When babies are shown pictures of adults, they usually […]

A New Genre of Discrimination? Smokers Need Not Apply

By Susan Hartmus Hiser Q: Our company is considering implementing a policy that would make individuals who smoke ineligible for employment. In doing so, we would save a substantial amount of money on our insurance premiums. Can we do this? If so, how do we monitor employees who claim they have quit smoking? A: Many […]

Firing Someone for Not Acting Enough Like a Man Is Discrimination

By Donna Eich Brooks The headline of this article was worded very specifically. You may have seen write-ups on a recent opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (the federal appeals court for Alabama, Florida, and Georgia) that announced some seismic shift in the law like “Transgendered persons protected from discrimination” […]