HR Soapbox

Transferred from a Nice Boss to a Horrible Boss: Is That Discrimination?

August 21, 2015
Some managers are like Michael Scott in “The Office,” allowing all sorts of shenanigans to slide by and never handing down any punishment. Other bosses are quick-trigger disciplinarians from the mold of Miranda Priestly (Devil Wears Prada) or Monty Burns (The Simpsons). On the legal side, do employees facing such whiplash discipline have any grounds for a lawsuit? The answer is maybe …

Our Annual Summer Quiz: The American Workplace

August 7, 2015
It’s summertime, so take a break from work to take our annual quiz about, well, … work. Here are a dozen questions about the American workplace and the people who inhabit it. Happy Summer!

Summer Annoyances … Flies, Mosquitoes, the DOL and EEOC

July 22, 2015

It’s summer, that wonderful time of year when everything slows down, including the pace of business. But our bureaucratic friends in Washington didn’t get the memo. Even just since the fireworks cooled down, federal agencies have cranked out a series of important actions with major implications for HR and the workplace …

The Top 10 Quotes from HR’s Biggest Conference of the Year

July 1, 2015
We packed up the Soapbox and headed out west this week, absorbing all things HR at the big Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) annual conference in Las Vegas. Here are some of the more interesting words heard by the Soapbox …

Setting Priorities: A 7-Step Process for HR

June 25, 2015
Establishing yourself as a key member of the strategic team requires you to make tough HR decisions and defend them to executives. Use these seven guidelines to help separate real priorities from perfunctory tasks …

7 Conversations That Keep Employees Engaged & Productive

June 3, 2015
The health of a company can often be gauged by watching the interactions between employees and their leaders. Here are “connecting conversations” that supervisors should be having regularly with their employees to improve the connectedness between staff and management …

Should You Fire Your Benefits Broker? 3 Questions for Them, 3 for You

May 14, 2015
Even before the birth of Obamacare, managing company benefits was becoming a more complex process. Here are some issues to consider when choosing the right broker:

Is it Possible For HR Professionals to be Too Compassionate?

April 30, 2015
For HR professionals, too much emotional involvement in employee problems can chew up your time, drain your energy and increase your stress. The goal is to be receptive to others’ feelings without adopting those feelings as your own. Use the following six tips to maintain your emotional distance while still remaining effective …

Lessons from LEAP: Best Quotes from our 2015 Employment Law Conference

April 13, 2015
HR professionals from around the country came to the Bellagio in Las Vegas last week to soak up expert employment law advice at the 11th annual Labor & Employment Law Advanced Practices (LEAP) Symposium, hosted by Business Management Daiy and the HR Specialist. The Soapbox was there to record pearls of wisdom dropped by the speakers, 25 of the best employment attorneys in the country. Here are just some of  those thoughts:

E-Signatures: Can Keystrokes Carry the Same Legal Weight as Pen Strokes?

March 30, 2015
These days, many employer documents exist solely in electronic form, acknowledged by employees using so-called electronic signatures instead of written ones. However, it’s vital to have a system to authenticate that such a “signature” was really executed by a particular employee or applicant. A handful of court cases have shown that sloppy authentication can lead courts to nullify “signed” agreements …