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As an employer do you worry about all of the paid time, e.g. vacation, sick, personal days, etc. that your employees have available to them?  Think about this; what if you didn’t have to worry about how much time employees had available to take off and the only thing you had to do as a … more »

If you are an employer who employs over 50 employees who work at a location within a 75 mile radius of your headquarters, you know that you must comply with the guidelines of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). While the FMLA does not require employers to utilize the DOL forms, many employers do, … more »

All companies should have policies and practices stating their commitment to providing a work environment that is free from all forms of discrimination and conduct that may be considered harassing, coercive, or disruptive, including sexual harassment. They should also include wording that actions, words, jokes, or comments based on an individual’s sex, race, color, national … more »

The new workplace: one with less strict with regards to everything. Casual dress, flexible schedules, no employee handbook or policies, a social construct and a non-traditional corporate culture. These smaller firms may be the way of the future. But do these new businesses with their free-for-all mentality; blur the lines of what constitutes sexual harassment? … more »

New Focus HR has recently had the opportunity to recruit for a Human Resources Director for a local client.  The job is a fairly high level HR position requiring in depth experience in all of the functional areas of human resources.  For those of you who are not familiar with the functional areas they include: … more »

It is almost summer and many companies have plans to have college interns within their organizations. Have you asked the question as to whether interns should be paid a minimum wage and overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for services that they provide to your organization? If not, please consider these suggestions first. … more »

Terminate. This word is frequently used by owners and managers in business. Most however, don’t really understand what it means to terminate an employee. Educating these decision makers on items to consider prior to termination and the different types of terminations is sometimes challenging. First of all, there are different types of terminations and not all of them … more »

Conflict in the workplace is not something that owners, managers and supervisors seek out.  However, it happens every day in companies of all sizes. Most management-level employees do not do a great job of documenting negative subordinate behaviors or poor performance, nor do they even do an okay job. Documentation for negative employee behaviors and … more »

Progressive discipline is the process of dealing with behaviors and actions in the workplace that do not meet expectations or communicated performance standards. This process uses increasingly severe steps to correct a problem after an employee has been given a reasonable opportunity to do so, and fails. The goal is to help the employee overcome … more »

You may or may not have a wellness program at your company. But chances are if you do, the level of participation isn’t very high. The goal of these programs is to help control health care costs by increasing preventive care and in turn, reducing the occurrences of prevalent medical conditions. Unfortunately adding these programs … more »