The costs of employee absenteeism—reflected in lost production, overtime and temporary replacements for the absent worker—can add up quickly. What’s...
If you’re considering hiring inmates through a work-release program, carefully weigh whether you will have to pay them as regular employees under the FLSA, or...
In today’s economic climate, you might be tempted to forgo hiring a temp to fill in for an employee who’s out on FMLA leave. Especially if you initially...
If your promotion processes are haphazard—devoid of objective criteria and without a clear system for choosing candidates—you could wind up facing a...
If you discharge an employee after she exhausts time off available through the FMLA, sick leave and other benefits, she may still be eligible for unemployment...
Some employees try to fabricate a lawsuit by resigning and then alleging that some form of discrimination made their working conditions so intolerable that they had no...
Q. Lately we have been concerned about workplace theft—both of our property and that of our employees. We would like to search our employees’ lockers, each...
The cardinal rule for employers is to punish like offenses the same way. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have some flexibility. For example, when two...
Illinois’ long-standing mistrust of the federal government’s E-Verify employment eligibility verification program has now been codified into a new law...
Employees who suffer from an impaired ability to become pregnant are disabled under the ADA. Since childbearing is a major life activity, conditions that interfere...
Just in time for March Madness … the new draft of a prominent American Psychiatric Association (APA) manual recommends expanding the category of “mental...
The FLSA allows employers to round off an hourly employee’s arrival or departure time to the nearest five minutes, tenth of an hour or quarter of an hour. But your...
Q. A former employee recently filed a complaint against my company with the EEOC. He is alleging race discrimination. As part of its investigation, the EEOC will be...
Don’t, under any circumstances, use co-worker resentment over disability accommodations as a reason to transfer or terminate the disabled employee. If you’re...
Q. One of our former employees, Joe Smith, has started an engineering consulting business. We have contracted with Joe to provide services similar to those he provided...
Q. May we include a provision in our bonus plan for North Carolina employees that they will forfeit any bonus that has not been paid at the time of termination?
Q. Our company pays out bonuses in the year after the work is completed, sometimes late into the first quarter. If an employee resigns before the bonus payout date (say,...
I practice management-side employment law because I want to help businesses better manage their talent. I am not so naive to think that employers fire people only for...
Q. One of our employees recently told her supervisor that she has a heart condition. She went home early the other day because she wasn’t feeling well. Can we...
