Employee Relations Questions of the Week

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Are Holiday Gifts, Prizes or Parties Taxable Wages?

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Question: Are holiday gifts, prizes or parties taxable wages? Answer: With the holiday season approaching, organizations may find that individuals or groups who benefit from the organization’s services, desire to make year-end gifts to the organization’s employees for their loyal service. Employee gifts in the form of cash or gift certificates/coupons, regardless of the amount, are […]
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Attendance Point System Policy

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Question: We have an attendance point system policy for our nonexempt employees that gives points for each occurrence of absence.  It feels like people have learned to “play” the system, either by missing multiple days in a row (which count as one occurrence) or always missing Mondays or Fridays.  Do you have a suggestion on […]
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Establishing a Uniform Policy

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Question: What are the pros and cons I should consider before establishing a uniform policy? Answer: Today, millions of employees wear corporate uniforms in the workplace.  Whether it is to clearly exhibit a company logo, make it easier for customers to identify employees, or to develop a sense of unity among the staff, they have […]
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Inappropriate Employee Behavior Outside of Work: What Can I Do?

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Question: Employees have come to me upset because a group of employees got “a little crazy” at a recent industry conference.  The employees complaining shared that they felt like it made the company look bad since they had name tags on that included the company name.  What can I do about this?  Can I talk […]
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Just Cause Termination

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Question: Can you terminate a stock room employee for failing to find a piece of needed equipment that he could not locate in the drawer when we had six on hand? He said we didn’t have the part when in fact we did. Answer: In an at-will State, an employer can terminate an employee for a […]
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Excessive Absenteeism

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I have an employee with excessive absenteeism and tardiness due to her pregnancy. She has been with the company less than eight months. Per her physician's request she has been asked to stop working and has asked us for a leave of absence for six to eight months. The company can not afford to hold this position for such a long time. What are our legal obligations?
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How to Handle an Autocratic Manager

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I work for a manager who is a retired, very successful captian of a submarine for the US Navy. There are 45 people under this manager varying in age from 21-50, and we are losing people from our team left and right due to his autocratic management style. This management style worked very well for him as a captain, but in the civilan world we don't know what to do. What can our team do to work together and change this so that we can enjoy coming to work again?
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Employee Engagement…From Beginning to End

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By Patti Dunham, MA, MBA, SPHR and Debbie Hatke, MA, SPHR Employee engagement; we’ve heard the term before and as HR professionals we know and we preach that “happy” employees are “productive” employees. But do we really understand engagement? Have we really tried to truly get employees engaged? Do we recognize, and act on the knowledge, […]
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