Pat DiDomenico

On Cyber Monday, E-Shopping Should Be the Least of Your Online Worries

November 25, 2014
On Cyber Monday, desk-bound employees will be filling their virtual shopping carts, scooping up $4 birdfeeders and two-for-one video games. Wasted hours are a concern. But in recent years, technology has flipped the “On” switch to a whole new set of legal problems for employers. The biggest headache: smartphones. As phones turn smarter, so should your policies and practices. Here are four smart steps …

Tear Down That Wall Between HR and Employees!

November 10, 2014
This past weekend, the world celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which came just two years after President Reagan’s famous speech at the Brandenburg gate exhorting the Soviet Union to “Tear down this wall!” Walls can be physical barriers that keep people and ideas out. But people can also create their own psychological walls that keep any criticism or less-than-positive news at bay. HR and supervisors should ask themselves this question: How high is the wall I’ve crated between me and my employees? Look for the following symptoms …

Garnishments on the Rise: 5 Ways Employers Should Respond

October 10, 2014
While the economy is finally waking up from the Great Recession, millions of Americans are still feeling the hangover in the form of wage garnishments. Garnishments—the legal recovery of debt through the seizure of employee pay—have spiked in the past decade. More than 7% of U.S. workers had their wages garnished in 2013. What if a lender wants a piece of your employee’s paycheck? Here are five tips:

 

Death of the ‘Mailbox Rule’? Rethink the Way You Send Your FMLA Notices

September 18, 2014
Typically, courts have recognized the “mailbox rule,” in which documents sent by regular postal mail are assumed to have reached the designated person. But a new federal appeals court ruling is making employers question whether sending FMLA notices via regular mail is still acceptable.

Mandatory retirement: Is it ever legal?

September 16, 2014

You’ve got some older employees in your workplace, and while they’ve provided excellent service over the years, you’re now wondering if they’re ever going to, you know, call it quits. You’d kind of like to hire some younger, more dynamic folks. And you’re even more concerned because you know that the trend toward an older workplace is accelerating. A recent Gallup poll showed that 49% of Americans in the Baby Boom generation plan to retire at 66 or older. Of course, you can’t give your older workers a hard time so as to pressure them into leaving. You know that’s against the law. But could you maybe suggest — or even require — that they retire at a given age, say, 65 or 70?

Managing Workaholics: A 12-Step Program to Help Them Find Balance

September 5, 2014
Quick, think of the hardest working employee in your company. What you think of as a hard worker may actually be a workaholic. Should you care?  Yes. Here’s why, plus a dozen tips for managers and HR pros to help employees find balance (and help the company cut costs and liability) …

Want Employee Suggestions? Think Outside the Box

August 21, 2014
Employees have great ideas every day. Is your organization tapping into them? Unless HR and management make it a priority to regularly request (and implement) suggestions from the rank-and-file, that fertile soil of ideas will quckly dry up. Here are tips for your suggestion program, plus 10 of the strangest, real-life ideas dropped into suggestion boxes.

‘Thanks, But No Thanks’: The Fine Art of Writing Legally Smart Rejection Letters

August 5, 2014

Some employers have simply given up on notifying unsuccessful candidates. That’s not a smart move. The number one thing people hate about the job-search process is when they don’t hear back after an interview. Here are seven tips for drafting simple, well-written canned rejection letters …

Summer ‘blahs’ or full-blown burnout? 25 questions to gauge your mental state

July 25, 2014
Everybody feels their on-the-job motivation dip at times; but the blues can turn into a Level 10 job burnout if the blues are combined with overwork and underappreciation. To see if you are edging toward the crispy end of the burnout scale, take this 25-question self-assessment quiz …

The Summer HR Quiz: 10 Questions on Work & the Workforce

July 11, 2014

The Cosmo Quiz this ain’t, but these brain-teasers on different aspects of work and the workplace should give you plenty of food for thought.