With most laws, employers have less difficulty meeting the laws’ mandates as time goes by and they become more familiar with the requirements.
Not so with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), where lawsuits have multiplied as the law has increasingly fallen out of step with the modern workplace, according to Paul DeCamp, an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area office of Jackson Lewis, and former administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division.
Let's be honest - most job descriptions are terrible. There are exceptions of course, but the vast majority of job descriptions –are cookie cutter templates that provide a laundry list of responsibilities and knowledge/skills/ability requirements that give a job seeker no sense of what it's like to work for the company. We're experiencing so much progress in the talent space with recruiting 3.0, social recruiting, and more startups innovating in the space than we've ever seen – yet most job descriptions are written the same way they were 10 years ago. Why?
Employers opting to drop their health care plans in 2014 and pay the penalty imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will not benefit economically in the short or long term, a study published in July 2012 by Truven Health Analytics found.
SHRM We Know Next blogger Jessica Miller Merrell offers listeners at SHRM's 2012 Annual Conference's "The Hive" a crash course in Twitter.
The 2012 Summer Olympics will offer a technologically unprecedented opportunity for workers to plug in and slack off to watch live-streaming games on smart phones, tablets or company computers. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that the London games, which get under way July 27, will hurt productivity much more than previous Olympics.
"Do we need an employee nap room?" Find out with SHRM's new Employee Benefits Prevalence Benchmarking report! Key benefits can really separate you from the competition when it comes to recruiting and retaining the best.
Summer is underway, and another group of “Trophy Kids” (Gen Y) is preparing to leave their jobs at your local coffee shops and retail stores to join the ranks of the professional workforce. They have big plans and high hopes, but as many twenty-somethings can attest, a diploma doesn’t guarantee success. A few of us have learned the hard way that there are some things that college simply can't prepare us for.
In case you missed it, here’s what happened on We Know Next this week.
The proportion of employees in the U.S. who work predominantly from home or another remote location has, over the last decade, more than tripled in many industries, while nearly doubling nationwide among all full-time workers, according to a 2012 report by The Conference Board, a not-for-profit business membership and research association.
Many organizations’ pay decisions may be unbalanced because they are too focused on external comparisons. Instead, they should spend more time looking internally to measure the actual business impact of their pay practices, according to compensation specialists who analyzed the results of the 2012 Metrics and Analytics: Patterns and Use of Value survey.
The New Health Care Reform Law: What Employers Need to Know (A Q&A Guide) By Jason Lauritsen
Traditional definitions of the word “innovation” tend to be just a bit too narrow and constrictive, according to HR consultant Susan R. Meisinger, SPHR.
Meisinger led the mega session “HR’s Role in Driving Innovation” on June 25, during the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2012 Annual Conference and Exposition, held here June 24-27. She told audience members that they needed to think of innovation as more than just generating new ideas, processes and products.
On July 25, SHRM We Know Next invited special guests Ryan Estis and Seth Mattison to chat about Next Generation Leadership.
While Nextchatters were divided on whether the generational stereotypes hold true, they did agree that organizations will need to foster a culture of mentorship, where both sides truly believe they can learn from each other.
It's not about who's right, wrong, better or worse. We're different, and we need to leverage those differences to drive results.
In case you missed it, here are all the great tweets from the chat:
Employees with nonvisible disabilities often wonder whether to disclose their condition when applying for a job or working for an organization, because they fear negative repercussions will arise if they do so.
Yet people with disabilities are the largest and fastest growing minority group in the world, representing more than 750 million individuals, according to a recent webinar. In the U.S., there are more than 54 million people with disabilities. However, people with disabilities are employed at less than half the rate of their nondisabled counterparts.
"The single most important strategic pillar of any great enterprise is people,” best-selling author Jim Collins said in his Tuesday keynote session at the SHRM 2012 Annual Conference.
After spending nine years studying why some companies thrive in uncertainty or even chaos, while others do not, for his latest book Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All (HarperBusiness, 2011), Collins concluded that “it all begins with people.”
This report, generated by Institute For The Future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute:
The proportion of employees in the U.S. who work predominantly from home or another remote location has, over the last decade, more than tripled in many industries, while nearly doubling nationwide among all full-time workers, according to a 2012 report by The Conference Board, a not-for-profit business membership and research association.
In case you missed it, here’s what happened on We Know Next this week.
Do social media sites waste time, distract from work and drain a company’s resources?
While some business leaders and journalists have answered those questions in the affirmative, others have asserted that social media has become absolutely essential to conducting business in the digital age.
Today’s workplace is experiencing a revolution. Technology and the introduction of new methods of communicating, networking and collaborating have changed the way we do business and have created new challenges for leadership.
It's also a transformative era for the human resources profession. We’ve entered a unique epoch in history where four generations are intersecting in the workplace. Each carries with it deeply held convictions, attitudes, ideas and expectations about the value and meaning of work.
"Globally linked virtual teams will transform every government and company in the world. Any of our peers who don’t do it won’t survive."
-John Chambers, CEO, Cisco
When Jerry Sandusky was still employed by Penn State as a football coach in 1998 and was accused of child abuse, several men—including President Graham Spanier, Senior Vice President-Finance and Business Gary Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy Curley and Head Football Coach Joe Paterno—concealed the accusation from the university board of trustees, according to a July 12, 2012, report by Louis Freeh, an attorney with Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan LLP, former judge and former director of the FBI.
Recognized as a leading expert on executive compensation, Robin A. Ferracone combines her own 20 years of experience with interviews with executives and compensation committees to provide a clear examination of and guidance on determining pay packages, actions, and designs in Fair Pay, Fair Play.
U.S. employers take note: a majority of workers are dissatisfied with their jobs but have no plans to quit, two recent studies suggested.
Just 47 percent of Americans are satisfied with their jobs, according to a report released June 27, 2012, by The Conference Board, a global, independent business membership and research association.
Poorly run meetings start in the wrong place and end up rushed before they’re done.
Right place: Leave inconsequential items for the end. Deal with big items at the beginning. I’m tempted to check off a few quick agenda items before digging into the meat of meetings. It’s seductive but ineffective and inefficient.
Don’t prioritize insignificant agenda items by placing them first.
The last dispatch from me from #SHRM12, aka, the SHRM Annual Conference & Exposition which wrapped up yesterday from Atlanta.
Aside: which major industry event will be the first one to actually adopt as its 'official' name the event hash tag? It would be kind of cool to see SHRM or some other organization to just drop the tired and formal sounding 'Conference and Exposition' part and just go with #SHRM12 as the event name.
Stay on track with health care reform's approaching deadlines, or risk paying the penalties.
In case you missed it, here’s what happened on We Know Next this week.
The notion of business as a combination of sport and war was attributed to Emile Herzog (1885-1967), a French author who used the pen name, Andre Maurois. I’m going to admit at the outset that I was a strong proponent of Herzog’s concept for most of my career. However, now that I look back from the CEO afterlife, I realize that this view need not be pervasive.
Seventy-five percent of health care spending is attributable to illnesses that are behavior-related and preventable, which explains why employers increasingly are focused on starting health improvement programs. Unfortunately, an all-too-typical employee response when asked about their employer’s program is, “I think we have something, but not many people use it.” So said Brad Cooper, CEO of US Corporate Wellness, a provider of employee wellness programs, during his presentation at the 2012 SHRM Annual Conference, held here June 24-27.
Five Frequent Errors
America’s got talent. So why is it so hard to find?
Maybe it wouldn’t be great theater, but why not develop another reality-based television show based on marriage—one that would tie the knot between those elusive skilled workers and job openings at thriving U.S. employers.
Online social media games can engage employees and motivate them to improve their health much more effectively than traditional health and wellness programs, according to Adam Bosworth, founder of Keas, a company that develops online social games. Bosworth spoke in the concurrent session "Make It Fun: Why Social Games Are So Effective at Improving Employee Wellness and Engagement," at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2012 Annual Conference held here June 24-27.
Social media strategist and HR blogger, Laurie Ruettimann, answers questions from the audience, at the SHRM 2012 Annual Conference and Exposition, on how HR professionals can effectively use social media to execute their objectives.
The two-year omnibus highway transportation bill (H.R. 4348), passed by Congress on June 29, 2012, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on July 6, includes long-sought funding relief for employer-provided defined benefit pension plans. The measure, known as the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP–21), also raises the premiums that plans pay to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC).
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New Medicare taxes on high earners, imposed under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), mean big changes in wage withholding, executive compensation and personal financial planning for these employees.
Additional Wage Withholding Required in 2013
Companies involved in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) that are successful in retaining key talent begin the retention process early, according to a new global survey from Towers Watson.
Roughly two-thirds to three-fourths of both buyers and sellers surveyed use retention agreements, chiefly for senior leaders below the boardroom level, key contributors and technical experts, according to the findings.
In case you missed it, here’s what happened on We Know Next this week.
Managers asked to rank five employee motivators—recognition, incentives, clear goals, progress in the work and interpersonal support—placed recognition and clear goals at the top of the list and progress in the work at the bottom, according to Teresa Amabile, Ph.D., professor of business administration and director of research at Harvard Business School.
Publicly owned, for-profit entities and companies that employ 25,000 employees or more are most likely to engage in effective practices for accommodating people with disabilities, according to a study by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in collaboration with the Cornell University ILR School Employment and Disability Institute.
However, a majority of employers from all sectors, industries and sizes engage in the following accommodation practices:
Hiring is not expected to ramp up significantly in July in the manufacturing and service sectors, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) survey for July 2012.
ATLANTA--Three HR professionals from Coca-Cola said they drew inspiration from space exploration when they transitioned their employee relations (ER) function to a centralized, shared services model in which nearly every employee issue is managed over the phone.Merit-based salary raises are by far the most frequently used incentive pay program. Unfortunately, they do a poor job of motivating performance, explained John A. Rubino, president of Pound Ridge, N.Y.-based Rubino Consulting Services, during his June 25 session on “Performance Pay Programs that Really Work,” conducted at the Society for Human Resource Management's 2012 Annual Conference and Exposition held here June 24-27.
Globally, companies are struggling to find talent in a market saturated with applicants. For most organizations, the problem is the gap between available skills in the talent pool and their current job requirements. There are simply not enough people with the requisite experience, education and knowledge to drive and fuel innovation and growth.
I just returned from a great four days at the SHRM conference, last week, where I was fortunate enough to meet several other solo conference goers. To that end, I thought I’d share some tips I’ve observed and picked up from others about attending conferences on your own.
I can totally relate to this excerpt from Peter Bregman’s article, "How to Attend a Conference as Yourself:"
It’s not too late to train youth employed in summer jobs about workplace policies, something employers too often fail to do, according to Jay Zweig, an attorney with Bryan Cave in Phoenix. Training of youth and managers is particularly needed about sexual harassment, workplace safety and hourly restrictions.
Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment is one of the biggest areas of complaint with all employees, Zweig noted. When youth haven’t been in the workplace before, they might not know how to behave appropriately with co-workers in that setting.
ATLANTA—Tom Brokaw, an icon of U.S. broadcast journalism as managing editor and anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” used his closing keynote address at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2012 Annual Conference to call on HR professionals to be part of a national dialogue focused on solving the nation’s challenges.HR professionals may be familiar with the ins and outs of wage and hour laws, but managers often are not, Gregory Hare, an attorney at Ogletree Deakins in Atlanta, told attendees at a concurrent session on Monday.
Equally troubling is employees’ argument that they were unaware of an employer’s wage and hour policies. Don’t leave room for that argument—it could spell trouble in wage and hour litigation, he cautioned.
Signed Statements
From Shakespeare's Hamlet 1602:
Heaven and earth,
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on't—Frailty, thy name is woman!—
Hamlet is angry at his mother for marrying shortly after his father's death. He sees her as weak. He generalizes the weakness he sees in his mother to women generally.
No progressive manager would say a sexist comment like that today. Actually, they might, just when they think they are being progressive!
On June 20 as #Nextchat invited special guest Joe Gerstandt to join us for an informative discussion on “what’s next” for Diversity and Inclusion in the 21st century.
In case you missed it, here are all the tweets from the chat:
Managers asked to rank five employee motivators—recognition, incentives, clear goals, progress in the work and interpersonal support—placed recognition and clear goals at the top of the list and progress in the work at the bottom, according to Teresa Amabile, Ph.D., professor of business administration and director of research at Harvard Business School.
