Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Yesterday, California attorney Allison West offered tips for avoiding defamation and fraud lawsuits. Today, her tips on recruiting, plus an introduction to a California-specific hiring resource no HR professional in our state should be without.
Anyone who’s watched a courtroom drama knows that hearsay evidence is inadmissible, so you can’t consider it when doing your harassment investigations, right? Wrong, says expert attorney Allison West, SPHR. There are three reasons investigators should not rule out hearsay statements or evidence.
While it’s true that there are no specific antibullying laws in the United States, that doesn’t mean that bullying can’t be the basis of a lawsuit, says attorney Allison West, SPHR. West, who is principal at Employee Practices Specialists in Pacifica, CA, delivered her suggestions for dealing with bullying in the workplace at the SHRM […]
Note: This very interesting post is by attorney Allison West, principal of Employment Practices Specialists, in Pacifica, Calif. Thank you, Allison for contributing this to our blog. See below for more about Allison, and a Thompson Interactive Webinar she will be giving on this topic. So, what is a religion, anyway? Not surprising, countless religions exist […]
The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled, in an 8-0 decision, that retaliation claims aren’t limited to the employee who actually engaged in protected conduct.
We’ve never had any rules about decorating personal workspaces and never had any problems. But recently, some issues have come up and I think we need a policy. For example, an employee reported that a valuable item was stolen from her desk while she was at a meeting. Another employee complained about a swimsuit calendar […]
We’ve got a situation around our PTO (Paid Time Off) program. When we first initiated it, people liked it, and we thought that the very clear policy—exceed your accrued PTO days and you won’t get paid for any additional time off—would work well. We figured employees would hoard their days, and that we’d only have […]
I make a lot of employment decisions in the average day, and I’m just not sure of all the laws that cover each type of action. My question is, if I’m acting in good faith, in what circumstances could I be held personally liable for my actions? Thanks for your help.— Rose Ann, HR Specialist […]
Occasionally we have an employee we would like to discipline (or fire outright), but the employee has recently done something that leaves us open to a retaliation charge if we take action against them-like making a discrimination complaint, requesting FMLA leave, or talking to OSHA about safety issues. Right now, we have a manager who […]
We are having a lot of trouble with employees—both exempt and nonexempt-who come to work late. Our attempts to deal with this haven’t been too successful. In some jobs like the assembly line, punctuality is critical-we can’t run the line without all the people there. In other cases, it doesn’t matter so much as far […]