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Sending a former employee’s wrongful termination claim to an arbitrator, the California Court of Appeal ruled that his employment arbitration agreement was not unconscionable and deserved to be enforced. The court found that the agreement’s limitations on discovery and on “just cause” terminations, among others, were not substantively unconscionable, and so reversed a lower court order denying arbitration.

Compliance is a big part of human resources. When HR does compliance right, it can give us time to do the other, more strategic parts of our job. Today’s reader question deals with one of the big compliance issues companies face: employee files.

On March 19, @WeKnowNext chatted with all the "bossy" folks on Twitter about the "Ban Bossy" Campaign. 

In case you missed it, here are all the great tweets from the chat:

The last few years have seen the creation of an enormous amount of mobile applications designed to transform the way work is done. As more people ditch their laptops for the greater convenience of tablets, demand for mobile apps that can facilitate tasks and communications has never been higher. With developers racing to create the next great app, it can be challenging to determine which solutions will bring the most positive results.

It is anticipated that, yet this week, President Barack Obama will formally announce a proposed change to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to direct the Department of Labor to revamp its regulations to require overtime pay for several million exempt employees who are currently classified as “executive or professional.”

On March 12, SHRM @Weknownext chatted with Lance Haun (@thelance) about "HR, Your Job is Now Outside the Comfort Zone."

In case you missed it, here are all the great tweets from the chat:

I must admit that I prefer to have a tonsillectomy or root canal, as opposed to watching a verbose slide deck created in PowerPoint.  Don’t get me wrong, PowerPoint is a great tool.  The problem is people have engaged in what I’d consider to be, almost criminal activity as they’ve butchered its true intent. 

Employers are looking to control benefit costs by asking workers to take on more responsibility for their coverage. There is conflicting evidence, however, as to whether this cost shifting is lowering employees' perception of the value of their benefits.

In another delay of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) requirements, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department (HHS) extended for two years a transitional policy that provides insurers the option, if allowed by their states, to renew their policies for current enrollees without adopting all of the 2014 market rule changes.

The number of cell phones is expected to exceed the number of people on the planet, according to Digital Trends. That’s a pretty amazing statistic. Add to that the over 1M active apps in the iTunes App Store, and there’s tremendous productivity potential in terms of the combined technology in our phones and apps.

If you’re anything like me, you don’t spend too much time thinking about how much money is in your retirement account.  Yes, I know, I’m a tax and benefits lobbyist, so you’d think that I’d know what my balance is down to the penny!  But the truth is, like many employees, although I know that I’m contributing to my retirement account, I don’t fret about the details on a daily basis. That’s about to change, as pending tax reform could significantly impact not only the types of investment options available but whether employees will have access to a retirement account at all.