Poisonous pork, cosmic messages and dumpster diving: Weirdest sick-day excuses

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Poisonous pork, cosmic messages and dumpster diving: Weirdest sick-day excuses

worst sick day excuses

News flash: A substantial number of workers who call in sick … aren’t sick. While you recover from the shock of this disclosure, check out CareerBuilder’s new research on employees’ sick day usage — including the most bizarre excuses employers have ever heard.  

According to the CareerBuilder survey, 38% of employees have called in to work sick when they’re feeling well in the past year, up from 28% last year.

Of the employees who called in over the past year, 27% said they had a doctor’s appointment (a similar proportion said they just didn’t feel like going to work), 26% said they needed to relax, 21% said they needed to catch up on sleep and 12% blamed bad weather.

But that dull stuff isn’t why you’re reading this post, right? You’re looking for the crackbrain excuses employees have offered to explain their absences. So here they are:

  • Employee claimed his grandmother poisoned him with ham.
  • Employee was stuck under the bed.
  • Employee broke his arm reaching to grab a falling sandwich.
  • Employee said the universe was telling him to take a day off.
  • Employee’s wife found out he was cheating. He had to spend the day retrieving his belongings from the dumpster.
  • Employee poked herself in the eye while combing her hair.
  • Employee said his wife put all his underwear in the washer.
  • Employee said the meal he cooked for a department potluck didn’t turn out well.
  • Employee was going to the beach because the doctor said she needed more vitamin D.
  • Employee said her cat was stuck inside the dashboard of her car.

Cold-weather call-ins

The most popular months for employees to call in sick continue to be December (20%), January (15%) and February (14%), on par with last year’s survey results. And while less than 1 in 10 employees (9%) say they have ever faked being sick during the holidays, those that do most often say it’s to spend time with family and friends (68%), while others wanted to holiday shop (21%) or decorate for the season (9%).

Unnecessary lies

Of the 52% of employees who have a Paid Time Off (PTO) program that allows them to use their time off however they choose, 27% say they still feel obligated to make up an excuse for taking a day off  (compared to 23% last year), and many of them are relatively new to the workforce. Of these employees who have a PTO program, 32% of those ages 18-34 say they still feel obligated to make up an excuse, compared to 20% of those 55 and older.

On the other hand, some feel they can’t afford to use a sick day, even when they’re ill. More than half of employees (54%) say they have gone into work when sick because they felt the work wouldn’t get done otherwise. Further, nearly half (48%) say they can’t afford to miss a day of pay, up from 38% last year.

‘The man’ is watching

While most employers claim to trust their employees, one in three employers (33%) have checked to see if an employee was telling the truth after calling in sick this year, compared to 31% last year. Of these employers, asking to see a doctor’s note was the most popular way to find out of the absence was based in truth (67%), followed by calling the employee (49%) and checking the employee’s social media posts (32%).

More than 1 in 5 employers (22%) has fired an employee for calling in sick with a fake excuse, an increase from last year (18%).

To keep an eye on questionable behavior, employers are going online. Thirty-three percent of all employers have caught an employee lying about being sick by checking their social media accounts, and of those, 26% have fired the employee.

The national survey was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder, and included 3,321 full-time workers and 2,326 hiring managers and human resource professionals across industries and company sizes.



For more HR News, please visit: Poisonous pork, cosmic messages and dumpster diving: Weirdest sick-day excuses

Source: News from HR Morning

Termination talk: 6 ways to ease the pain for both parties

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Let’s face it. Overall, being in HR is great. But it comes with one major drawback: having to be the one to tell people they’ve lost their jobs. Sure, it’s hard on the people across from you, but it’s also hard on you. 

One of the best ways to ease the pain? Treat it like removing a Band-Aid – take quick and direct action.

Of course, that doesn’t mean going in with a cold, robotic-like demeanor and delivering the bad news in one swift stroke. Although the goal is to get it over with, it still requires a great deal of tact — if both parties aren’t to leave the room feeling as horrible possible.

Ease the confrontation

To make the process less confrontational and mentally draining, executive coach Henna Inam of the firm Transformational Leadership offered up some tips on Forbes.com to help you get through this difficult task.

Here’s her advice in a nutshell:

  • Get talking points. Talk to management about the restructure and why it’s taking place. This will help you explain why the person’s being let go.
  • Prep mentally and physically. Run through your talking points with a trusted advisor. Then, visualize how you’d like the final discussion to play out. This is a trick athletes use before events.
  • Relax. This is easier said than done. But remember this: When you’re relaxed, those around you are more relaxed. So take a few deep breaths and try to remain centered emotionally.
  • Project confident body language. Keep your spine straight with your shoulders back, and maintain eye contact. This communicates confidence and compassion, says Inam.
  • Tune in to their emotions. Listen to the worker’s frustrations and let the person know you understand his or her feelings.
  • Reflect. Later, look back on the discussion and try to learn from what you did right and wrong.



For more HR News, please visit: Termination talk: 6 ways to ease the pain for both parties

Source: News from HR Morning

3 best practices when answering open enrollment questions

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Chances are you’re answering a lot of employees’ questions about your company’s benefits during this open enrollment season. 

With so many employees pressed for time, they’re likely not poring over your benefits handouts as thoroughly as they should be. That places more of a burden on you to make sure employees are making smart benefits elections.

Adhering to a few best practices when responding can help employees better utilize their benefits, improve benefits satisfaction and even improve their health.

Here are three of the best communication techniques, pulled from a slew of great ideas shared with Corporate Wellness Magazine, by Shawn M. Connors, president of Hope Health, a company built to help employers improve benefits communications:

Ditch the jargon

When employees have to decode a bunch of legalese or technical terms, they turn a deaf ear.

As a result, you can’t focus on the info first – focus on the reader first. What can he or she understand?

Keep telling yourself: You’re not “dumbing it down,” you’re making it easy to understand.

Keep it short

Clarity and brevity are the one-two punch needed to keep employees’ attention so they can act on what you’re telling them.

When writing or speaking, think sound bites, billboards, headlines and teasers.

Try to keep your communications to 100 words or fewer.

Break up copy

Whether you’re using email or print, don’t make employees read a wall of copy.

Include subheads, sidebars, pull quotes, charts and boxes so information can be absorbed and sorted at a glance.

Employees will scan any document you give them for points of interest to them. If they don’t find any in about three seconds, you’ve lost them.



For more HR News, please visit: 3 best practices when answering open enrollment questions

Source: News from HR Morning

Form 5500: New initiative from feds targets non-filers

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The IRS has a new project that centers around a key benefits compliance task.  

The IRS’ Employee Plans Compliance Unit recently announced the start of a new initiative that focuses on uncovering Form 5500 non-filers.

DOL-provided data

To do this, the IRS will be looking at payroll and plan data that firms provided to the DOL and comparing that data with its own records.

According to the feds, the goal is not only to identify Form 5500 non-filers but also to determine the underlying reasons for that noncompliance.

The IRS is specifically focusing on plans that failed to file a Form 5500 for the 2011 plan year. The agency will be sending letters to non-filers it discovers during the course of its investigation.

What you can do

If plan sponsors can’t respond with an explanation as to why they did not file, they’ll be put on notice and may face costly penalties for failure to file. Under ERISA, the DOL can impose an $1,100 per day penalty for each day that the Form 5500 is late — and there’s no cap on those penalties. Plus, the IRS can also hit plans witha  $25-per day penalty up to $15,000 for each late Form 5500.

While these penalties would put the non-filers the IRS discovers through its project in a terrible position, there is some good news. The DOL offers a delinquent filer program — a program that drastically reduces the late-filing penalties.

The relief under the delinquent filer program does vary according to plan size and the number of years the plan didn’t file, however, the cap on the penalty amount for a large plan that failed to file for multiple years is set at just $4,000 per plan. To put that in perspective, that penalty is less than the ERISA penalty ($1,100/day) that a plan that’s only four days late could be hit with.

Currently, the DOL is allowing plans that receive a late-filing letter from the IRS to participate in its delinquent filer program. However, plans that receive late-filer letters from the DOL aren’t eligible to participate in the program.

Note: Even though the feds are targeting 2011 Form 5500s, experts expect the agency to look into non-filers for other years as well.

So firms may want to revisit their Form 5500 filing history to make sure everything is in order.



For more HR News, please visit: Form 5500: New initiative from feds targets non-filers

Source: News from HR Morning

2015 Top Trending 4th Quarter HR & Talent Management Resources

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The 2015 Top Trending 4th Quarter HR & Talent Management Resources kit brings together the latest in information, coverage of important developments, and expert commentary to help with your HR and Talent Management related decisions.

Click here to learn more!  



For more HR News, please visit: 2015 Top Trending 4th Quarter HR & Talent Management Resources

Source: News from HR Morning

3 thorny people problems that will arrive with new OT rules

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3 thorny people problems that will arrive with new OT rules

difficult conversations

Are you ready for the three most difficult conversations you’ve had in a while? You can thank the DOL for them. 

The agency’s changes to the FLSA overtime exemption rules aren’t just going to be a financial headache for employers; they’re also going to be a managerial dilemma.

If the final rules resemble anything close to the DOL’s proposal — which would crank up the minimum salary threshold for all exempt employees to $50,440 — large chunks of companies’ workforces are about to go from exempt to non-exempt.

Financial implications aside, that creates a huge management problem: The change in classification will feel like a demotion to employees.

They’ll blame the DOL, right?

If you think employees will curse the Obama Administration for what could essentially be an overnight change in their work arrangements/classifications, you’re in for disappointment.

Odds are the average worker’s going to blame you, their employer. After all, not everyone keeps up to date with what the feds are doing. So, on its face, the shift from exempt to non-exempt status will look like something your company did for its own benefit.

But you and your managers know better — and must be prepared to deal with all this negative fallout.

With the finalized rules slated to hit in 2016, the time is now to start prepping for these awkward employee conversations the rule changes will spur:

1. Comp conundrum

Companies are facing a crisis of compensation. And this is the No. 1 question you should be pondering now:

  • Do we expect newly non-exempt employees to be as productive working 40-hour workweeks? (Note: This is assuming you’re not going to leave the door open for them to collect gobs of overtime on top of their regular pay.)

If your answer is no, that begs two more questions:

  • Will you decrease their pay and allow them to work OT to catch up? or
  • Will you lessen their workloads?

No matter the determination you arrive at, it’ll require a carefully-crafted conversation — and that goes double if you’re taking duties off of someone’s plate.

Reason: Your better employees will look at the move as you taking responsibility away from them — again, a demotion.

2. ‘Status drop’ disappointment

Adding to the perceived notion that they’re being demoted is employees’ loss of a salary.

Many view earning a salary as a rite of passage — after years of punching a time clock, they feel they’ve finally reached professional status.

But unless you’re willing to pump up these folks’ salaries above the new FLSA threshold, that status is about to change.

In other words, they’ll feel like being reclassified as exempt — and having to punch a time clock — is a loss of status.

This perception will be magnified 10-fold if they’re left out of after-hours business discussions in which they were previously included to prevent them from making OT.

This perception problem puts the onus on HR and employees’ managers to evaluate individual situations and find a way to assure employees they’re not being “demoted” or “losing status.”

3. Flex time talk

In a recent SHRM survey, 67% of HR pros said if the new rules lead to increases in OT eligibility and OT pay, it’s likely that employees will have decreased flexibility and autonomy.

After all, a lot of employees will have to start punching a time clock who haven’t done it before (or at least haven’t for a long time). That means arriving late and leaving early will result in less pay when it didn’t before — and telecommuters will feel as though Big Brother’s starting to watch them.

There’s no easy way to explain why this is how it has to be for many workers — but you do have one feather in your cap, should you chose to use it …

… a clearly defined structure

One way to sell employees on the idea of becoming non-exempt is to position the move not as as a loss of flexibility, but as a definition of structure.

Their hours will now be finite — and if they were working over 40 hours before, they can now spend that time with family and friends (again, assuming you’re not going to open the overtime gates).

Plus, since it appears the DOL’s going to classify any time spent answering work email and phone calls after hours compensable time, chances are employees won’t have to do that either. Thus, their work/life balance may actually improve as less work will creep into their personal time.

Info: For more on how to deal with difficult conversations, here is HR Morning’s list of conversation do’s and don’ts.



For more HR News, please visit: 3 thorny people problems that will arrive with new OT rules

Source: News from HR Morning

Which jobs promote the best work/life balance? You might be surprised

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Work/life balance is among the most common buzzwords — and the slipperiest issues — around HR today. Wonder what jobs offer the best of this elusive ideal? Read on.  

Recently, Glassdoor identified the 25 Best Jobs for Work/Life Balance, compiled using employee feedback shared on the career consultant’s website over the past year.

Glassdoor’s clients rated their satisfaction with their jobs’ work/life balance on a 1-to-5 scale — 1 being totally unsatisfied, 5 being very satisfied. Turns out work-life balance has decreased in recent years, as employees have reported an average work-life balance satisfaction rating of 3.5 in 2009, 3.4 in 2012, and 3.2 thus far in 2015.

So here’s Glassdoor’s lineup of this year’s 25 best jobs for work/life balance (listing includes average salary and number of available positions on the Glassdoor jobs board):

  1. Data Scientist
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 4.2
  • Salary: $114,808
  • Number of Job Openings: 1,315
  1. SEO Manager
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 4.1
  • Salary: $45,720
  • Number of Job Openings: 338
  1. Talent Acquisition Specialist
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 4.0
  • Salary: $63,504
  • Number of Job Openings: 1,171
  1. Social Media Manager
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 4.0
  • Salary: $40,000
  • Number of Job Openings: 661
  1. Substitute Teacher
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.9
  • Salary: $24,380
  • Number of Job Openings: 590
  1. Recruiting Coordinator
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.9
  • Salary: $44,700
  • Number of Job Openings: 446
  1. UX (User Experience) Designer
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.9
  • Salary: $91,440
  • Number of Job Openings: 338
  1. Digital Marketing Manager
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.9
  • Salary: $70,052
  • Number of Job Openings: 640
  1. Marketing Assistant
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $32,512
  • Number of Job Openings: 384
  1. Web Developer
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $66,040
  • Number of Job Openings: 2,117
  1. Risk Analyst
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $69,088
  • Number of Job Openings: 208
  1. Civil Engineer
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $65,532
  • Number of Job Openings: 809
  1. Client Manager
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $71,120
  • Number of Job Openings: 503
  1. Instructional Designer
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $66,040
  • Number of Job Openings: 782
  1. Marketing Analyst
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $60,000
  • Number of Job Openings: 341
  1. Software QA Engineer
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $91,440
  • Number of Job Openings: 457
  1. Web Designer
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $53,848
  • Number of Job Openings: 500
  1. Research Technician
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.8
  • Salary: $36,525
  • Number of Job Openings: 299
  1. Program Analyst
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.7
  • Salary: $71,120
  • Number of Job Openings: 524
  1. Data Analyst
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.7
  • Salary: $58,928
  • Number of Job Openings: 1,954
  1. Content Manager
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.7
  • Salary: $60,960
  • Number of Job Openings: 409
  1. Solutions Engineer
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.7
  • Salary: $92,456
  • Number of Job Openings: 652
  1. Lab Assistant
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.7
  • Salary: $27,550
  • Number of Job Openings: 779
  1. Software Developer
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.7
  • Salary: $80,000
  • Number of Job Openings: 3,330
  1. Front End Developer
  • Work-Life Balance Rating: 3.7
  • Salary: $75,000
  • Number of Job Openings: 1337

We’re struck by a couple of things here: First, how many of these jobs are in technology — don’t we keep hearing about how hard it is to find qualified tech people, and how overworked current staffers are?

Second, we wonder how many of these jobs would have even existed if similar research was conducted 15 years ago. Not too many, we’d think.

 



For more HR News, please visit: Which jobs promote the best work/life balance? You might be surprised

Source: News from HR Morning

‘She’s taking leave where?’ Firing for FMLA abuse leads to lawsuit

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Behold the perils of dealing with the FMLA in the Golden Age of Employment Litigation: After clearly catching its employee in the act of FMLA leave abuse, this employer still got sued. 

Cue the groans. But hold on, this story has a happy ending … for employers.

Lucy Fitterer worked for the State of Washington Employment Security Department and had been granted intermittent FMLA leave periodically throughout her employment to help her deal with migraine headaches.

As a result, nothing seemed out of the ordinary when she requested two weeks of FMLA leave in January of 2011.

Then, through the grapevine (i.e., Fitterer’s step father mentioned it to one of her co-workers), the employer found out that Fitterer and her husband were planning to use her FMLA leave to slip away for two weeks on a cruise.

As a result, HR reached out to her doctor to verify her need for FMLA leave (warning: failing to get the employee’s permission to do this could also get you sued).

What did the doctor say? He said Fitterer was not incapable of working during the time she would be on FMLA leave. He also indicated she wasn’t seeking treatment while on leave.

So when Fitterer returned to work, her welcome-home present was a pink slip. She’d been fired, and a stated reason for her termination was a violation of the company’s leave policy — a.k.a., FMLA abuse.

Is that interference?

Following her termination, Fitterer sued claiming FMLA interference.

Thankfully for employers everywhere, the court quickly dispatched Fitterer’s lawsuit and ruled her termination should stand.

In explaining its ruling, the court said Fitterer had no evidence that she was incapacitated during her two weeks of leave, and there was no evidence that the two-week cruise was necessary to deal with her medical condition.

This is a good sign that courts won’t put up with FMLA abuse, either. Plus, it shows courts will back your punishment of leave abusers when you can build a strong enough case against them — as this employer did, not by making assumptions about Fitterer’s leave, but instead by seeking clarification from her doctor.

Cite: Fitterer v. State of Washington Employment Security Dept.



For more HR News, please visit: ‘She’s taking leave where?’ Firing for FMLA abuse leads to lawsuit

Source: News from HR Morning

ACA reporting: What you should be working on right now

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With the deadlines just months away, ACA reporting is priority number one for many HR pros. Here’s some help with that monumental compliance task.  

The reporting requirements can be broken down into two categories:

  • the forms you need provide employees by Feb. 1, 2016 (Form 1095-C for insured plans), and
  • the forms you need to get to the IRS by Feb. 29, 2016(Form 1094-C for insured plans).

And if your company will be filing more than 250 or more returns for 2016, the IRS requires you to do it electronically.

But you do get an extra month to get those forms to the feds – that deadline is March 31, 2016.

Note: The feds recently let employers know that there is a way to get a 30- or even 60-day ACA reporting extension in some situations.

From start to finish

To ensure your firm has everything in order by the time the deadlines roll around, here is a five-point checklist:

1. Keep all key requirements in mind. If you’re an employer with between 50 and 99 full-time employees, you’ve got reporting requirements under the law – even if you qualify for transitional relief or if you don’t offer healthcare coverage.

What’s more, regardless of your own plan year, ACA reporting is based on a calendar year basis and generally must be reported for each month of that calendar year.

2. Make sure everybody is on the same page. The reporting process requires a lot of communication between different departments (HR/Benefits, Payroll, Finance) and, in many cases, a software vendor is also involved.

Example: For many firms, Payroll tracks the hours worked during the measurement period – the period where employers determine workers’ full-time status.

After the tracking, will Payroll also put together a report on each employee’s total hours of service or will that task fall on HR and Benefits? If so, what info does HR need?

3. Make sure all necessary data is being collected. During the plan year, firms should be collecting a variety of data from workers for reporting purposes.

This includes: enrollment and termination of coverage dates, acceptance or coverage waivers, coverage eligibility documents, employee’s share of lowest cost monthly premium for self-only minimum value coverage, wage info (for the Affordability test), documents on coverage offers to employees, and their spouses and dependents.

4. Familiarize yourself with the forms, instructions now. Employers should review the IRS’ instructions and familiarize themselves with the sample forms. This will ensure the process is much smoother come crunch time.

When it comes to the actual reporting, Form 1095-C can be broken down into parts I, II and III (section for self-funded plans).

Because it’s complex and time-consuming, Part II is expected to cause employers’ the most trouble.

Among other things, Part II will be used to track firms’ monthly compliance with the Shared-Responsibility regs and whether employees, spouses and dependents are eligible for a premium tax credits, whether minimum, affordable coverage has been offered and what safe harbor, if any, is available.

5. Doublecheck all reporting. This can’t be stressed enough. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is expecting filing errors to be the ACA’s single largest revenue generator over the next decade.



For more HR News, please visit: ACA reporting: What you should be working on right now

Source: News from HR Morning

Millennial to employers: 4 reasons we keep quitting

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Millennial to employers: 4 reasons we keep quitting

employee retention

It’s rare to find something HR-handy on Facebook these days. Between your friends sharing their baby photos and political opinions, there isn’t much room left for stuff to help with your job. But we had to share this Facebook find with our HR Morning audience.

A reader, a Millennial himself, spotted and shared this Forbes.com article.

It’s entitled, “Why Millennials Keep Dumping You: An Open Letter to Management.”

It contains a letter penned by Elizabeth McLeod, a millennial and cum laude graduate of Boston University. She’s the daughter of Lisa Earle McLeod, a best-selling author and creator of the popular business concept Noble Purpose, who also has a regular column at Forbes.

In McLeod’s letter, which is simply addressed “to Management,” she beautifully combats the common stereotypes placed upon Millennials — stereotypes like they don’t settle down, they’re fickle, and they only care about themselves and not the companies they work for.

Top reasons you can’t keep Millennials

She does so with a list of specific reasons Millennials hand in their resignation letters shortly into their tenures with employers.

Here it is:

  1. You put up with low performers. Millennials want to make a difference and be a top-producer, but they don’t want to be held down by those whom McLeod called the “Donna-Do-Nothings.” She said after a while, Millennials with a great work ethic will begin to wonder why management puts up with extremely sub-par performance. Then, after a while, they’ll assume that’s the standard and will want no part of it.
  2. You’re too focused on money. Again, Millennials want to make a difference — and they want it to be somewhere other than the bottom line. Yes, they understand the company needs to make money. But they don’t want that to be the sole focus. They want to know that their work is helping customers or the community in some way. A great point McLeod makes further down in her letter: “… I’ll (meaning Millennials in general) will do the grunt work. But I’m not doing [it] to help you get a new Mercedes.”
  3. Good culture doesn’t mean free meals. “Don’t confuse culture with collateral,” McLeod wrote. While she said she appreciates a free lunch, she doesn’t wake up in the morning and come to work to get one. “I need to be surrounded by people who are on fire for what we’re doing. I need a manager who is motivated to push boundaries and think differently,” she added.
  4. You treat people like a number. Treat her like a number or a cog in a wheel, and she’ll just start showing up just to get a paycheck — like Donna-Do-Nothing. That’s not what you want to happen. You want people who will show up and care about producing quality work. But that’s not what you’re going to get if you don’t show Millennials why their work matters — again, beyond padding the corporate bank account.



For more HR News, please visit: Millennial to employers: 4 reasons we keep quitting

Source: News from HR Morning