Question: Our harassment policy specifies how employees should report issues to the company. If no one formally reports inappropriate behavior, do we need to do anything about it? Also, can we discipline an employee for not following our reporting procedures?
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Question: We have a non-exempt employee who has a medically certified serious health condition that requires a 10-minute rest break every hour. Our current schedule allows one 10-minute rest break for every four hours worked, so most non-exempt employees only receive two rest breaks each shift and not the eight this employee requires. Do we have to pay the employee for all eight rest breaks?
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Question: We have a pregnant employee who just notified us she has lifting restrictions for the remainder of her pregnancy. Her current position requires consistently lifting 40 pounds, but she says she can’t lift more than 10 pounds. Can we put her on leave for the rest of her pregnancy?
Read More…Because deficient safety processes are the underlying causes of accidents, it is important to administer the most critical ones effectively. Here’s how employers can prioritize safety objectives when under a time crunch: Create a weighted scale for “prevention” and one for “compliance” (1-5 for effectiveness at “prevention” and 1-3 for effectiveness at “compliance,” where 1 is at the low end…
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Question: Our employee handbook states that all new employees will receive a $3,000 bonus on their three-year anniversary. Five employees will be eligible this year. Business is down and we really can’t afford this anymore. Do we have to pay them?
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Question: We have an anti-harassment policy and complaint process in our employee handbook. We also conduct annual training for employees. What else should we be doing to prevent workplace harassment?
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Question: We recently conducted a self-audit and discovered that we underpaid one employee for wages earned. If we pay her the past wages owed and ask her to sign something releasing us from liability, are we covered?
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Q: We’re planning to offer some voluntary training to employees in the evening regarding internet and social media safety. We don’t have to pay them for time spent in that training, do we?
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Question: We just received an application from a candidate who’s clearly qualified, but we know he sued his last employer for discrimination and we’d rather not hire someone who goes around suing people. Can we get in trouble for rejecting him?
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Question: We just found out that a former employee was awarded a default judgment of $75,000 against our company, but we didn’t even hear about the lawsuit until just now. Is there a way to get the judgment reversed since we didn’t receive the legal documents?