Q. One of our employees who is out on workers’ comp isn’t following the treatment prescribed by the workers’ comp doctor. She fails to attend physical...
Problem: If an employee’s insubordinate behavior was caused by her bipolar disorder and you fire her, is the termination a violation of the Americans with...
Plenty of employees have chips on their shoulders. Some are hypersensitive to perceived slights and constructive criticism. Others get angry over minor problems....
How belligerent does an email have to be to warrant firing the sender for willful misconduct and threatening a co-worker? A court has concluded that typing in all...
Progressive discipline policies are not mandated by either state or federal employment laws. But legal issues often arise from the application of progressive discipline...
Insubordination can result when difficult employees intentionally disregard a direct order from a manager, or inadvertently cross the discipline line when company...
HR wears many hats, one of the most important being keeping your organization out of court. An equally important—and related—hat is smoothing out the...
Sexual harassment allegations often come down to he said/she said arguments. Without hearing from both sides, there’s no way to determine what happened. If one...
Paul Falcone, author of 101 Tough Conversations to Have with Employees, offers these scripts to follow when you need to have awkward but essential conversations with...
With a record number of Americans now in prison and police and prosecutors increasingly taking a hard line on crime of all kinds, more employers are finding...
Employers have the right to expect employees to listen to reasonable directions, accept criticism and otherwise behave in a civilized way. When an employee...
If an employee ever sues, you need to have strong documentation of performance, behavior and discipline issues. Managers sit on the front lines of the documentation...
Employers and employees have the right to a safe work environment free from violence or direct threats of harm. Punishing an employee who puts others in danger or...
A reader of The HR Specialist Forum asks: “What can I do about a data entry employee who doesn’t sit upright? I don’t mean ordinary slouching; this guy...
In a much-watched case, the Texas Supreme Court has refused to expand employer liability for employee off-duty conduct. That’s good news for employers, which faced...
Employees who work for government agencies have a few additional rights that privately employed workers don’t enjoy. One is the right to speak out on matters of...
You probably have workplace rules that ban weapons in the workplace and don’t allow employees into the building with guns or knives. And that rule probably spells...
Offensive postings on the social networking web site Facebook led the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) to fire one employee and discipline seven others.
Being arrested for a crime is not the same as being convicted. After all, citizens are innocent until proven guilty, and many arrests never result in convictions. But...
