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.
Increase Responses to Disability Self-Identification Form
By Allen Smith 2/5/2015
Employers that are not federal contractors are prohibited from asking whether applicants or employees have disabilities, except in response to a reasonable accommodation request from someone whose disability is not obvious, and then only to ask for documentation to back up the request.
Federal contractors, by contrast, must ask applicants and—every five years—their workforce to complete disability self-identification forms as part of fulfilling their affirmative action requirements.
The response rate to the forms can be low—between 2 percent and 15 percent, estimates Connie Bertram, an attorney with Proskauer in Washington, D.C. Employers can improve response rates by explaining the affirmative action purpose of the form without hounding applicants and employees to respond, attorneys say.
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Costs and Productivity Are Top Benefits Program Priorities
It's “a balancing act” for many employers
By Stephen Miller, CEBS 2/6/2015
Companies are focused on the sometimes conflicting goals of maintaining employee productivity and controlling costs when designing their benefits programs, according to the latest Employee Benefits Trends Survey report by Wells Fargo Insurance, released in January 2015.
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‘A Herd of Deer Made Me Late’
By Kathy Gurchiek 2/5/2015
It’s hard to be on time for work when you’re waiting for the judge to set your bail, you knocked yourself out in the shower or you dreamed you were fired.
Those are among the more bizarre excuses human resource professionals have heard from employees trailing into work late, according to a CareerBuilder report released Jan. 29, 2015.
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