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California #HR professionals already have a lot of state-specific details they need to understand. This year, many new laws are taking effect, and employers are grappling with a flurry of court rulings and regulatory activity from 2014.

To help clarify the changes, the California Chamber of Commerce provided an overview in Long Beach on Jan. 14, 2015–one in a series of seminars being held statewide this month.

Updated daily, the HR News home page is your one-stop shop for the latest news and featured articles. This page compiles top staff-written and external news of general interest to HR, plus major stories in the HR Disciplines. 
 

Here are today's top stories:
 

What HR Should Know About Anonymous Gossip App Memo

By Aliah D. Wright  1/26/2015

Partnering with IT, getting free trials from vendors can be effective as well

When human resource leaders approach C-suite executives with requests to fund new HR technologies, they can feel a little like a teenager asking a date’s parents for permission to stay out past midnight.  

Despite higher productivity, the share of income flowing back to workers has diminished

For the past several years, wage and salary surveys in the U.S. have consistently shown annual increases of about 3 percent across employee groups. And despite ongoing evidence of economic recovery and growth, employers have made few, if any, strides toward increasing salaries and are not expected to do so anytime soon.

Severance trust fund for employees ‘unprecedented,’ experts say

Human resources and labor law experts say Target Canada’s $70 million severance package for the approximately 17,600 employees the retailer is about to lay off is “unprecedented” and “unusual.”

Target Canada announced Jan. 15, 2015, it will shut all 133 stores across the country as it exits the Canadian retail market during the first half of the year.

HR pros are always looking for effective ways to accomplish their organization’s talent management strategies. The problem is finding the time to plan and implement a strategy while keeping up with daily administrative tasks.  

A smart talent strategy is critical for any organization.  The key is to determine where your organization has needs and to find creative ways to address them.

Whether you rely on regional sales representatives, a freelance accountant, or a remote IT team to manage your ecommerce site, some of your most valuable employees may rarely set foot in the office. How do you create a cohesive company culture with a team that includes remote contractors? Finding ways to motivate, inspire, and integrate your freelance workforce into this culture can make the difference between an employee who's simply working for a paycheck and one who is engaged with your core business values. Here are a few tips to bring them on board.

The magazine’s first issue of the year features the article “What’s in Store for HR in 2015?” by Josh Bersin, principal and founder of Bersin by Deloitte. In the article, Bersin makes nine predictions about how HR will redefine the workplace this year.

On January 21, SHRM @weknownext chatted with John Hudson (@JohnPHudson) about A Culture of Sports in the Workplace.

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

Commission creates new task force after witnesses testify about recent cases 

More-frequent training, guidelines for investigations, and consent decrees that force employers to identify and combat discrimination were among the suggestions from experts who testified at a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) hearing on how to prevent harassment in the workplace.

As a blogger, I’ve been fortunate to participate in events that I would not normally have attended when I was an HR Generalist. During those events, I learn about specific companies, their products and services, and how they address the needs of human resources professionals.

With the Super Bowl just a few weeks away, now is the perfect time to talk about the many parallels between the workplace and world of sports. 

This post continues our overarching discussion of the importance of restaurant careers and the opportunities available within the industry. Today the focus will be on the mobility of those employed within the field. Here are a couple key statistics from the infographic below:

9 in 10 restaurant workers 35 or older have moved to higher-paying jobs in the industry after their first job.

Even newbies enjoy the restaurant industry’s upward mobility: 71% of employees 18-24 land a more lucrative gig in the business after their first job.

Are you considering a career in technology?  Maybe human resources technology?  Check out this comic-infographic of the Life of Grace Hopper by Pablo Stanley...

Hi, I’m Pablo Stanley and I’m an experience designer at Udemy. I was so inspired by Grace Hopper that I wanted to pay tribute to this rarely recognized pioneer. Hope she inspires you as much as she inspires me. 

Organizations report that their global mobility programs are critical to supporting new business growth, improving financial performance, and enhancing employee engagement, succession planning and talent management.

But organizations also say the mobility function remains a low strategic priority. And while many new expatriate assignments are predicted for the new year, a majority of companies report that their global mobility programs do not deliver value for the money spent.

Mobility Program Benefits Recognized

Even though we are in the middle of the first month in 2015, it is never too late to have goals or resolutions to focus on for this period.  I thought I would share a few I have in the hopes that they might be of value to you as well.

Our firm is not a pure HR firm, but we do a variety of work in the Talent Acquisition and Talent Development areas.  Here are my resolutions for 2015:

In 2015 I WILL:

In today’s complex global economy, HR has evolved to become a key leadership position and businesses expect more of HR professionals than ever before. As I have written before, this profession is being challenged to keep up with the rapidly changing world of work.

By most accounts, 2014 went down as a successful year for job creation. Problems do remain— millions are still out of work, others are underemployed and middle-class jobs are shrinking—but purely from a numbers standpoint, the labor market grew at a solid pace.

As a proud member of the HR Community, I was trying to think of things that, individually or collectively, we potentially could do better in 2015. With that background, I came up with following eight resolutions:

1.         Avoid HR Jargon.  People appreciate plain English.  Enough with the paradigm shifts, synergistic partnerships, value added relationships and outside the box thinking.  And by the way,  if you are outside the box, you are still defining yourself by the box!  Enough with the box.

What you need to know about service animals, emotional support animals, other kinds of animals at work 

A dog walks into a bar. Or a department store. Or perhaps it’s carried into a supermarket and set in the seat of a grocery cart. 

Make assessments forward-looking, strength-based

Nearly everyone dreads year-end performance reviews. First, they coincide un-festively with the holiday season, when bad news is no fun to give or to receive. And as more employees are being asked to do self-assessments, there’s an added stress for workers. What documentation do they need to prove their worth at work? How do they navigate the process of rating themselves?

To effectively reach Millennials, understand what motivates them

Millennials, more than other generations in the workforce, are the most likely to want employers to play an active role in supporting their overall health and wellbeing, according to a new analysis.

As we all know, in EEO termination claims, how we treat the "comparators" is critical.  Two (2) key questions:

Did you let anyone else go for a same or similar reason?

Did you not let someone else go even though they had engaged in same or similar conduct?

What do you do if you have an inconsistent practice historically?

Employee absenteeism remains one of the most common workforce problems in today’s workplace.

Absenteeism problems can range from employees not showing up without notifying their employer to using sick leave for vacation. Some abusers habitually use all of their paid time off every month.

Many workplace absences are covered by federal laws like FMLA and ADA, but, for the nonprotected cases, employers should be swift and consistent with the administration of discipline.

SHRM/Kronos: Total Financial Impact of Employee Absences Across the United States, China, Australia, Europe, India and Mexico

Earlier this year, SHRM and Kronos conducted a study of the impact of employee absence on organizations and employees.  The holiday season is, of course, particularly hard hit with employee absences.  We’ve done research on this topic before, though the emphasis has been largely on the financial impact of absence.  This study, like the prior research, underscores the greater impact that unplanned absenteeism has on the bottom line.