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.
Updating your employee handbook is a critical annual initiative for an HR department. It ensures compliance with industry standards and federal and state laws.
What is a statute of limitations agreement? In the employment context, this is an agreement between the employer and employee that states the employee agrees to bring any claims against the employer within a specific period of time after employment.
Many organizations have had to adjust their return to office plans due to employees revolting. Rather than compete with the home office, try embracing it by creating an office that builds off of what your employees love about working from home.
Businesses, both large and small, are increasingly reliant on the internet for daily operations, creating attractive and potentially lucrative targets for cyber criminals. As a new era of work from anywhere is ushered in, traditional in-office firewalls don’t work. A cyber attack can cripple any size company.
Cell phones in the workplace are a distraction that employers want to control and employees don’t want them to control. The common statement by an employee is “what if I get an emergency call? I cannot be unavailable to my . . .“ And what makes this worse is that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) generally sides with employees without regard to the practicalities involved.
A recent article published in CCH HRAnswersNow Expert Insights looks at the issue of FMLA coverage for remote workers. In this case, a person worked from their home which was well outside what could be reasonably considered within the coverage area of the FMLA.
Does your organization award perfect attendance? Is it done on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis? And what does perfect attendance mean exactly? Perfect attendance needs to also take into account the variety of days that should still be counted towards perfect attendance without penalizing the employee for taking them.
Employers have had to scramble over the last three years while dealing with COVID. Suddenly working from home was not a rare option but a required way to keep businesses going while keeping employees as safe as possible. Now that most companies and employees have found their groove in dealing with the pandemic, long COVID is creating new challenges for employers and the employees suffering from the symptoms.
MRA, one of ASE’s sister associations located in Wisconsin and Illinois, released the results of their latest Hot Topic Survey on Remote Work and Inflation. The survey revealed that remote work has become one of the most valued benefits companies can offer.
Over one in four employers is exploring the expansion of covered abortion services, according to a new report from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. The Post-Dobbs Employer Coverage: July 2022 Pulse Survey revealed current abortion coverage offerings and future considerations. When asked about making changes to current coverage for abortion services, employers responded with the following:
Last month the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled against an employer that did not follow its employee handbook policies properly. The Court pointed to the importance not only of having an employee handbook but to set up the policies properly in order to achieve the true intent of what the employer wants from its handbook policies
The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) finished its term this year with some decisions that though not directly impacting employers, does compel them to review their benefit plans and other select policies to ensure they stay up to date.
With the holiday behind us and the pandemic winding its way leading to more normalcy, the ability to rest and essentially take it easy is creating an opportunity to recharge and become more productive. With most organizations offering limited time off, depending on the number of years the employee has worked, time off can range from 10 days to 25 days according to ASE’s 2022 Michigan Policies & Practices Survey.
Earlier this month a survey of 400 worldwide C-suite executives was conducted by Herbert Smith Freehills, LLP that found those executives foresee an unprecedented rise in workplace activism. The survey report found executives today are confronting employees articulating their views about not only workplace concerns and issues but on wider social issues. This worker activism is enabled and is consequentially amplified by social media.
Many employers are investing in health programs for their employees. It could be offering to co-pay for a gym membership, providing online health support programs, or providing on-site fitness centers. However, one important health benefit that employers have offered for a long time is vacation time.
ASE recently published the results to its biennial Policies and Practices Survey. Survey results are broken into six major categories and are based on three employer sizes in both the National and Michigan (a subset of the national report) editions. Nearly 100 Michigan employers participated in the 2022 edition, and 189 questions were answered regarding human resource policies and employment practices.
ASE regularly receives member calls about personnel file management and maintenance. Let’s go over some basic information about record retention and personnel file management.
Spring has sprung, at least by the calendar, which means it is time to hire summer help. Help could come in the form of interns, co-ops, work study programs, or perhaps even just helping a young person with an employment opportunity. What does this mean for employers?
By now most everyone has seen or heard that at the Oscar awards on March 27th actor Will Smith took offense at a joke made by Chris Rock about Smith’s wife. Smith proceeded to walk up on stage and slap (hard) Chris Rock and then yell at him to leave his wife out of his remarks (with expletives) after returning to his seat.
As remote work becomes more ubiquitous as well as advantageous to employers and employees alike, employers are investing in or supporting workers by providing equipment and property to perform work offsite (at home mostly). This property and equipment still may belong to the company, but as inevitably happens at some time, the employer and employee part ways. How should the employer manage the return of their property without causing more of a problem legally speaking?
In ASE’s Designing Employee Handbook class as well as other EPTW articles we tell employers to be careful with limitation of actions clauses. A limitation of actions clause is used to reduce the amount of time an employee has to bring a wrongful employment action against an employer – usually down to just 180 days from the wrongful employment act.
As larger employers wait for the Occupational Safety and Health Agency’s (OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS) that will tell them how to compliantly manage mandated vaccinations, many employers are looking to make other constructive changes to their health and safety policies. As a lever to promote voluntary vaccination, some employers have implemented health care “surcharges” on unvaccinated workers.