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Policies / Handbooks

Base bilingual hiring decisions on language skill, not ethnicity

05/01/2005
Like many employers, you may have legitimate business reasons for hiring bilingual employees. Federal anti-discrimination laws allow you to target bilingual employees, as long as you use their language skills, not …

Sharpen your no-solicitation policy; vague language may let union in

05/01/2005
The best way to prevent employees from rallying support for a union in the workplace is to write and enforce a specific no-solicitation policy. To make sure it passes legal muster, …

Take same-race discrimination complaints seriously

05/01/2005
Don’t allow discrimination to continue at your workplace simply because the “discriminator” and “discriminatee” are in the same racial minority. Just as supervisors over age 40 can be guilty of age …

Arbitration agreements: Draft legal pact to stay out of court

05/01/2005
THE LAW. Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is a less costly way of resolving employment conflicts than going to court Also, good ADR programs often end up being a more peaceful forum …

‘Reasonable’ Maternity Leave Doesn’t Matter Under FMLA

05/01/2005

Q. Is there a law or reasonable standard regarding how many weeks maternity leave should be? And should we make that a written policy in our employee handbook? Even with FMLA, to which our employees are entitled, we thought maternity leave was either six or eight weeks, depending on type of delivery. —J.F., Pennsylvania

Be a driver, not a passenger, during times of change

05/01/2005
Issue: How to play a key role in shaping changes in your organization.
Benefit: You can better anticipate future HR needs and position yourself as a “thinker” not just a …

Scour your policies now for any traces of age discrimination

05/01/2005
Issue: A new Supreme Court ruling ratchets up your vulnerability to federal age-discrimination lawsuits.
Risk: Employees no longer need to show a “smoking gun.” Even policies that inadvertently discriminate can …

Take the lead in identifying premises-liability risks

05/01/2005
Issue: Your organization has a responsibility to provide a safe environment for employees and customers.
Risk: Weak security efforts may lead to a “negligent security” lawsuit, an increasing problem for …

Don’t dock pay for time-Clock mistakes

05/01/2005

Q. We dock employees’ pay by 15 minutes if they don’t punch in or out on their timecards. If this happens more than twice over any 90-day period, we write up the employee. We’ve recently been told that we shouldn’t have such a policy. Is that correct? If so, how can we make sure employees punch in? —K.K., Michigan

Shorter, more frequent breaks reduce on-the-job accidents

05/01/2005
Issue: How to structure break schedules to maximize productivity and safety.
Benefit: Allowing more frequent, but shorter, breaks are smarter than giving longer infrequent ones, new research shows.
Action: …