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HR Management

MIOSHA can’t cite company again pending appeal of original citation

05/09/2008
Q. Our company has been cited by the Department of Labor for what it considers to be a violation of a MIOSHA safety standard. We are appealing the citation, which we understand could take months or even a year or more to be resolved. Our citation contains an abatement date, but we don’t think we have to make the changes suggested because we still believe there was no violation of the standard. Can MIOSHA cite us again for the same condition because we have not abated the contested safety violation? …

Borders considers sale

05/09/2008
Ann Arbor-based Borders, the nation’s second-largest bookseller, has announced that it may put itself up for sale. Online retailers, including  Amazon.com, and discount retail chains such as Wal-Mart have brought unmanageable pressure on the book chain …

Successful Negotiating: 7 Steps to Getting What You Want – Audio Conference

05/07/2008

This national audio seminar lays out a step-by-step guide for everyone—even the nervous, pushy, impulsive or tongue-tied—who wants to negotiate a better deal in the office, in the boardroom … and in life!

Absent without leave: Can we fire for violating vacation policy?

05/06/2008
Q. We recently could not reach an employee who works off-site. Then we learned he was responding to customer messages by saying he was on vacation. After we learned this, he contacted his supervisor and said he had been on vacation and would be on vacation the rest of the week. His supervisor reports that he had not requested vacation time beforehand—and our policy states that vacation time must be preapproved. This employee had been a marginal performer, and now his supervisor wants to fire him. Can we fire him for this? …

Kids will be kids: Inappropriate workplace behavior and teenage workers

05/06/2008

Q. Some of our employees are teenagers who work part time while they go to school. Often, this is their first job. Some of them don’t seem to understand proper behavior in the work environment. They usually are OK with customers, but when they are interacting with each other, they give each other a hard time. Verbal put-downs and even physical acts are common. Does this create any potential problems? …

Election ’08: What you need to know about what workers think

05/06/2008
Election year politics has a strange way of focusing employers and employees on the larger issues—such as jobs, wages and the economy. HR pros should pay attention to election year buzz. Knowing what’s on employees’ minds as they go to the polls can help savvy employers get a glimpse of the future workplace.

Lower health care costs with strategy to change behavior

05/02/2008
Colleges and universities with the lowest health care costs also have the most productive employees, says a new survey by HR consulting firm Sibson. Here are five lessons all businesses can learn from healthy campuses …

Get ahead of the curve by offering anti-Gay bias training

05/02/2008
Ohio may soon join other states in outlawing sexual orientation discrimination by private employers. It may be time for employers to rethink their employment discrimination policies and include sexual orientation. One good first step is to include anti-gay discrimination training in your regular anti-discrimination program …

Take time off seriously—By setting a formal vacation policy

05/02/2008
You wouldn’t dream of having informal payroll policies, right? Yet too many employers treat vacation time—a form of compensation—as a casual entitlement. Getting too informal can cost you. A sound vacation policy addresses the following five elements …

Authorities: Cincinnati woman literally robs someone blind

05/02/2008
A woman who went to a Cincinnati courthouse to answer an indictment faces another charge after she allegedly cheated the blind owner of the courthouse deli …