20 February 2024
Companies often face the challenging task of workforce optimization, which may involve layoffs or downsizing. While these decisions are never easy, offering outplacement services can provide many benefits for both employers and employees. There are advantages of embracing outplacement services as a beneficial approach to employee transition during layoffs.
23 January 2024
While it seems like elections and politics have been on-going rather than every two or four years, we are now entering the actual election year, and employers should prepare themselves to address possible employee dissent, rancor, or worse.
23 January 2024
As more states and cities make marijuana legal in some format, we can expect drug testing laws to change, and they are. It should not be a surprise that California has already put a new law in place as of January 1, 2024.
28 November 2023
A recent report from The Best Place for Working Parents® and Southern Methodist University's Center on Research and Evaluation (CORE) highlights the advantages of family-friendly policies, revealing their positive impact on both working parents and businesses' overall performance.
14 November 2023
ASE has advised on this in the past but with the current state of social media use and the growing rancor and divisiveness in society we remind employers again: employers do have rights when it comes to its employees’ off-work verbal and social media communications.
24 October 2023
In the past, employers did not actively surveil employees except in two major areas. First, the internet. Employers had to make sure that employees were not going to illicit sites. Second, on factory floors. For many, insurance coverage played a role in filming employee activity in case of accidents and other like activities. There is also recording of calls for customer service, for example, that are stated to be used for training purposes.
24 October 2023
Employers are advised to review certain employee handbook policies to ensure they will not be found to violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). As we have reported, the pro-labor National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is issuing new Board decisions that are decidedly pro-labor and challenge some long standing employer policies as a violation of a worker’s right to engage in protected concerted activity.
24 October 2023
Now that marijuana has been legalized for recreational use in Michigan and 23 other states and all 50 states have legalized some form of use – from CBD oil only to medical marijuana to fully legalizing use – employers are wondering if they should continue to have applicants/employees submit to drug tests.
24 October 2023
HR professionals are continually seeking ways to cut expenses, enhance operational efficiency, and uphold productivity. When it comes to onboarding procedures, the transition to a paperless approach emerges as a strategic way to realize these objectives. Below, we examine the advantages of paperless onboarding.
5 September 2023
In a March report released by the Pew Research Center, it was revealed that in 2022, women in the United States typically earned 82 cents for each dollar earned by men in similar roles. This statistic remained stagnant when compared to the year 2002 when women earned 80 cents on the dollar. The slow pace of narrowing the gender pay gap in the 21st century stands in stark contrast to the considerable progress made in the preceding two decades. In 1982, women were earning a mere 65 cents for...
9 August 2023
Not unexpectedly, last week the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) changed its work rule test. The NLRB’s work rule test assesses whether particular employer policies (rules) illegally restrict workers’ rights. The Biden labor Board, now comprised of his appointees, and its General Counsel stated that since this Administration came into office, it would be reviewing many Trump-era labor rules and this rule in particular.
18 July 2023
With the enactment of both the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) effective June 27, 2023, and the Nursing Mothers Act also known as the PUMP Act, covered employers should consider adding new policies to communicate compliance and inform employees what they are providing them as a result of those laws.
27 June 2023
ChatGPT and other AI tools are being used by employees to perform their jobs. In one survey, it was found that around 43% of employees use AI such as ChatGPT at work, mostly without telling their boss. The problem isn’t just the use of these tools, but the fact employees are providing potentially confidential information to the tools to create solutions. Once the confidential information is in the AI tool, which is a generative AI tool, continuously learning, it is...
13 June 2023
About half of workers are not fully engaged in their jobs, according to a study conducted by Gallup. This means they are only doing the minimum required to get by – not good for employers. This drop in employee engagement has happened two years in a row. But why?
30 May 2023
With the passage of the PUMP Act last year employers with 50 or more employees should now consider including a policy addressing nursing mothers in the workplace. Employers under 50 in size may have an exemption but only if they can demonstrate that compliance for a particular employee causes undue hardship.