All posts by Vicki

Your Opinions: What Makes a Good Boss?

Management

I recently wrote a blog post about what it takes to be a good boss. According to the statistics counter on this blog, it has been one of the most widely read entries. I’m glad it has been well-received. But now I want to know your anecdotes, opinions, and lists of the qualities that good bosses possess.

As I said in my post, it is my belief that good bosses have integrity, are great communicators, provide recognition of good work and encourage new ideas and innovation. Because of my faith, I also believe good leaders should reflect the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. For more on being a Christian employer, click here.

So what about your opinion of good leadership? Post a comment here and let me know what you think. Just click on the word “comment” at the end of this post and tell me: What do you think makes a good boss? What qualities should every manager be striving to achieve? Who has been a good boss in your life and what set that person apart? If I get several comments, I’ll post a top 10 list of good boss qualities according to my brilliant blog readers! Thanks and I look forward to reading your comments.

Preparing for Possible Changes in Employment Laws

Discrimination, Personnel Policies

The elections are over and it is clear that with the Democrats in charge of the White House and Congress, things are going to change. Whether you celebrate or mourn that fact, if you are a business owner or manager, you need to prepare your business for some of those changes.

There are a number of laws affecting employers that have a good chance of passing after the new government takes office in January. These include:

  • The Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which would amend Title VII to add sexual orientation as a protected class, much like religion, age, national origin, race, disability and gender. President-Elect Obama’s transition team has already added sexual orientation as a protected class in their hiring, along with gender identity.
  • The Fair Pay Act, which will negate a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that substantially crippled the filing of any Equal Pay Act claims by imposing a draconian statute of limitations. The Fair Pay Act would again ensure that women are paid the same rate as a man for performing a job that requires the same skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
  • The Healthy Families Act, which will require employers with 15 or more names on the payroll to provide full-time employees with 7 or more days of paid sick leave per year. This would be the first paid leave ever required of employers by the federal government. Obama and Vice-President-Elect Joe Biden cosponsored this bill while they were in the Senate, so passage of this act or a similar one is likely.
  • The Equal Remedies Act and Civil Rights Act, which could remove the current caps on damages in discrimination cases and prohibit the employer from making the employee agree to arbitrate these claims before the dispute arises.
  • The Employee Misclassification Prevention Act, which would raise the penalties for employers who call their employees “contract labor” or “independent contractors” to avoid paying taxes and benefits on their workers.
  • The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected begin enforcing ergonomic regulations that were written during the Clinton years. These regulations would affect white-collar workplaces that have seldom had OSHA on their radars at all.

Many other laws affecting employers are expected to be introduced and passed while the Democrats are in power for at least the next two years. That information should light a fire under you to audit your employment practices now to make sure that they are currently compliant and as forward-thinking as possible.

For example, take a look at your pay policies. Are women in your workplace paid less than similarly qualified men? Do you pay anyone on a “contract labor” basis?

Do you shy away from hiring anyone that “seems gay”? Do you fire in haste or anger without clearly documenting all of the nondiscriminatory reasons? Do you rely on an arbitration agreement that you force all of your employees to sign and think that agreement will protect you from a runaway jury?

If you answered any of these questions “yes” or if you suspect any of your other employment practices may be questionable, this is the time to have someone knowledgeable about employment law conduct an audit of your practices and policies to correct the mistakes you are making now and to prepare for the changes to come.

Managing Those Pesky Females (Yesterday)

Discrimination

The following is an excerpt from the July 1943 issue of Mass Transportation Magazine. This was written for male supervisors of women joining the work force during World War II. My best friend Christi Key sent this to me. Snopes.com says it is authentic and has posted the original magazine in a pdf format to compare.

Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees: There’s no longer any question whether transit companies should hire women for jobs formerly held by men. The draft and manpower shortage has settled that point. The important things now are to select the most efficient women available and how to use them to the best advantage.

Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:

1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they’re less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn’t be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.

2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It’s always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.

3. General experience indicates that “husky” girls – those who are just a little on the heavy side – are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters. Continue reading Managing Those Pesky Females (Yesterday) →

What Can You Say About a Former Employee?

Termination

So you fired an employee because you smelled alcohol on his breath right before he jumped into the cab of a company delivery truck. You let your assistant go because she was late for work at least two days per week and was recalcitrant when confronted.  You found your salesman so abrasive and arrogant that you couldn’t stand him and just eliminated his job one day.

If you are a Texas employer, what do you say about these and other former employees when their prospective employer calls for a reference? If you have attended any human resources management seminars in the last 10 years, you have been told to “say nothing”. Give out the dates of employment and salary, but no specifics on the employee is the frequent advice of employment lawyers.

I understand. I often say that too when I realize that explaining the nuances of giving out references takes too long and will probably be misinterpreted by my audience. But for this blog I am going to try to take off your straitjacket and tell you as a Texas employer how to give out informative references in a way that will give you a good chance of avoiding legal trouble: Continue reading What Can You Say About a Former Employee? →

FMLA Revisions

Attendence

In one of the Bush administration’s final regulatory acts, the U.S. Department of Labor has issued 762 pages of revisions to the Family and Medical Leave Act. The changes have been two years in the making and not unexpectedly are more favorable to employers than employees. Family advocacy groups are pretty unhappy with the new regulations. But that doesn’t mean that the FMLA will ever be easy to apply in your workplace.

If you don’t know the basics of FMLA, it entitles employees to take 12 weeks unpaid leave to deal with the birth or adoption of a child, the employee’s serious health condition, a family member’s serious health condition, or a parent, child or spouse’s military deployments, including 26 weeks if a military family member is wounded. FMLA protects the employee’s health care benefits while on leave. Once the employee has used up his twelve weeks, you must return him to his old position or an equivalent position with the same benefits, compensation and status.

By the way, if you have less than 50 employees (full- or part-time), you can stop reading right now. FMLA only applies to companies that are larger than yours.

For those of you who have more than 50 names on your payroll, here are a few of the numerous changes you must understand by the time the new FMLA regulations go into effect on January 16, 2009: Continue reading FMLA Revisions →

Policy Manual Blunders

Personnel Policies,

Like all good employment lawyers, I encourage my clients to have an employee policy manual that outlines, among other things, the company’s expectations regarding employee performance, explaining the available benefits, setting guidelines for using the company technology and prohibiting harassment, violence and drug abuse.

I regularly draft new policy manuals for my clients or review and revise their old manuals. There are several serious blunders I often run across in the employee handbooks I review. If you are a business owner or supervisor, pull out your handbook now, blow the dust off the top of it and crack it open to see if you have made similar mistakes in your manual: Continue reading Policy Manual Blunders →

Employees Who Lie

Discrimination, Documentation, Termination,

Have you ever discovered that an employee lied about something important at work? For example, what would you do if an employee called in sick on two scheduled workdays and then you found out she had really been in Las Vegas during her sick leave?

The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a city’s discharge of a worker for dishonesty about her sick leave was a valid reason for discharge even though she produced a doctor’s note confirming her illness. Hughes v. City of Bethlehem (October 2, 2008). The city suspended her without pay while they investigated her sick leave excuse and confirmed her little gambling jaunt. Since the investigation confirmed the employer’s suspicions of dishonesty, the city terminated her job.

She, of course, sued for everything but the kitchen sink, including gender discrimination, disability discrimination, unlawful retaliation for seeking accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act, violation of Family and Medical Leave, and deprivation of procedural due process, since she was employed by a governmental agency.

Fortunately, the Third Circuit was able to see through all the allegations to the main point: Continue reading Employees Who Lie →