Human Resources

From the HR Support Center: Which State’s Minimum Wage Do We Pay?

Do we pay the minimum wage of the state where our headquarters is located or the state an employee does the work? Good question. It comes up a lot with employers who have people working remotely or at a worksite in a different state. The answer...

08 April, 2019

From the HR Support Center: The Employment Laws Every Growing Organization Should Know About

Periods of growth are particularly exciting for small and midsize businesses, but they also bring new HR challenges. Along with adding employees—which may change the feel of your culture as well as your floorplan—your organization may become subject to federal and state laws that take...

01 April, 2019

Who Owns an Employee’s Great Idea?

Let's say one of your employees comes to you with a great idea. The employee tells you over the last eight months she's been working on solving a really perplexing challenge your firm has with an old product. It's not even in her job responsibilities,...

27 March, 2019

From the HR Support Center: Can I Ensure That a Terminated Employee Doesn’t Get Unemployment?

We will be terminating an employee who’s been with us only a month. How do I ensure that they don’t get unemployment? Unemployment insurance (UI) benefit claims can be difficult to contest. Most state unemployment departments will only deny benefits if the employee’s misconduct rose to...

25 March, 2019

EEOC Cases Illustrate Examples of Unlawful Discrimination at Work

The mission of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is to enforce federal anti-discrimination laws. When it receives and investigates a complaint that it deems legitimate, it tries to iron out a resolution with the employer in lieu of going to court. If that fails,...

20 March, 2019

From the HR Support Center: DOL Proposes New Overtime Rule

The Department of Labor has released a new proposed rule to increase the minimum salary that an employee must earn to be exempt from minimum wage and overtime under a white collar exemption. The Rule The proposed rule requires that salaried exempt executive, professional, administrative, and computer...

18 March, 2019

Employee Conflict: How to Intervene

The U.S. Department of Justice reports more than 2 million violent workplace crimes, on average, occur each year in the U.S. Homicide is one of the leading causes of death in the workplace. Retail businesses report nearly 300,000 individual violent workplace incidents a year. So, how...

13 March, 2019

From the HR Support Center: Obama Led New Minimum Salary for Exempt Employees Not Completely Dead

As you may recall, a new minimum salary for exempt employees almost took effect in December of 2016. The minimum salary of $23,660 per year was set to increase to $47,476 per year, but a last-minute ruling from a federal judge put all that on...

11 March, 2019

From the HR Support Center: Can a non-exempt employee manage another non-exempt employee?

Yes, it is completely permissible for non-exempt employees to manage other non-exempt employees. In fact, employers are under no obligation to classify employees as exempt, even if they meet the criteria under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Employers may have an entire workforce of non-exempt...

04 March, 2019

Workers Must Be Paid for Breaks of Less than 20 Minutes

A federal appellate court has upheld a lower court's ruling that a marketing call center wrongfully docked employees for breaks of 20 minutes or less during which they were logged off of their computers and didn't have to perform any work related duties [Secretary United...

27 February, 2019