Shortly after moving here in the late 1980s I interviewed for a job with a small business. The owner’s wife had several questions for me. Was I married? Did I have small children that might need my attention during the workday? Did I plan to have more children? Did I have any health issues that might cause me to miss work? When I got home I told my spouse there was no way I’d work for someone who asked so many illegal questions! However, I actually ended up taking the job and helping the business create policies and procedures to keep them from crossing over into this illegal territory in the future. read more »

Hardly a day goes by without hearing a news story about a child who was bullied at school. Many of these stories have tragic endings. The increased public discourse on bullying has resulted in heightened awareness by parents, increased coping education for children and new rules for classrooms and playgrounds.

But what about the workplace? Do bullies exist there? You may be able to mentally run through your own work history and think of a coworker or boss who may have been a bully. Or was that coworker just not a team player? That boss just tough and demanding? Is there such a thing as a workplace bully, and if there is, what can, or should, be done about it? read more »

Your company has an opening for an administrative assistant. You’ve interviewed several candidates and have narrowed it to three. They all say they have the skills and abilities you’re seeking. How do you verify their claims, and select the final candidate who will best fit the job and your company?

Many companies today are using pre-employment tests to assist with this. They are a great resource when added into the selection process, as long as you understand what tests to use, and how to use them.

There are several types of pre-employment tests that businesses may utilize in their selection process: read more »

Last year, my longest tenured employee’s father passed away, and she suddenly found herself becoming the caregiver for her elderly mother as well as her elderly mother-in-law. These responsibilities were so demanding that she was forced to resign. During that same time period, another employee became the caregiver for her elderly father-in-law, and also had to resign due to the strenuous demands this placed on her. I now have a third employee struggling in a similar situation with her own ailing father-in-law. Clearly, the working caregiver is becoming the norm in today’s workplace! read more »

The benefits and cost-savings of allowing employees to work from home have received much attention — it cuts down on commuting expenses for staff as well as overhead within your own office, and provides your employees with morale-boosting work-life flexibility. In my own company, we’ve allowed several employees to telecommute for a variety of reasons — physical disability, an ailing spouse who couldn’t be left alone, a new baby, a severe allergy to fragrances. In all of these instances, we were very pleased with the success of our work-from-home arrangements. But telecommuting also comes with risks — chief among them, security issues and liability issues, on top of the issues that naturally crop up when managing someone who isn’t physically in the same location as you. read more »

“There can be no doubt about our commitment to ethics and integrity,” Rupert Murdoch recently said. Sadly, he’s probably right. If perception is reality, most of us have little doubt about the ethics involved in Murdoch’s business scandal that we have watched unfold.

This is certainly not the only example of a surprising lack of business ethics that we can think of, but it’s probably the most notorious recent example that comes to our minds. Many pundits have wondered how these things went on so long within Murdoch’s companies, why good employees didn’t speak up, and what happened to the ethical managers in all of this? read more »

As someone who follows employment news, I’m always particularly interested to watch lawsuits that arise against larger companies over their workplace policies. As a smaller business, it’s a constant struggle for us to stay abreast of federal, state and local laws, regulatory interpretations, and court rulings, but you’d think the bigger companies would have an easier time of it.

Take the seemingly mundane area of wearing apparel and uniforms. You wouldn’t expect to see companies getting into trouble there, would you? Here are some recent cases within just within the last few weeks. read more »

In 2009 when Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis took over her new job she said, “There’s a new sheriff in town.” Since then, there has been little doubt that she sees her role as one of labor law enforcement. In fact, she seems to embody the current administration’s view that the way that many employment issues will be solved is to enforce them at the business level.

Do you have employees who voluntarily check their email and respond from wherever they are, 24/7? In our high-tech world of smart phones, tablets, netbooks, etc., the line between work and home can be blurred. read more »

It has been four years since my husband died unexpectedly. His untimely death sent my life into a chaos that lasted for several months. As a business owner, his death didn’t just impact me, it soundly impacted my co-workers, as well as my husband’s. He had worked for a small business for several years, and their family-like atmosphere was upended by the news of his death.

There is a lot written on the subject of bereavement, but we’re often not prepared to cope with it in our own businesses. When we prepare policies on the subject, all we generally do is create bereavement leave, granting employees a number of days off, scaled to the closeness of the relative that died, and that is generally the end of our preparation. read more »