SALES & MARKETING MANAGER, Page 10 Tag

One of the great things about writing about HR is the unbelievable range of stupid stuff that human beings do during work time. Here’s a small sampling.  

If you’re thinking, “Oh, I bet this is another one of those CareerBuilder surveys,” you’re right. This one asked 2,175 hiring and human resource managers for examples of the most bizarre things they caught employees doing while they were supposed to be working, and the most common productivity killers in the workplace.

First, the most outrageous behaviors:

1. Employee was taking a sponge bath in the bathroom sink
2. Employee was trying to hypnotize other employees to stop their smoking habits
3. Employee was visiting a tanning bed in lieu of making deliveries
4. Employee was looking for a mail order bride
5. Employee was playing a video game on their cell phone while sitting in a bathroom stall
6. Employee was drinking vodka while watching Netflix
7. Employee was sabotaging another employee’s car tires
8. Employee was sleeping on the CEO’s couch
9. Employee was writing negative posts about the company on social media
10. Employee was sending inappropriate pictures to other employees
11. Employee was searching Google images for “cute kittens”
12. Employee was making a model plane
13. Employee was flying drones around the office, and
14. Employee was printing pictures of animals, naming them after employees and hanging them in the work area.

Less unconventional distractions

Thanks to smartphones, chatty co-workers and never-ending Twitter feeds, the obstacles that get in the way of actual work are seemingly endless, the survey indicated. Asked to name the biggest productivity killers in the workplace, employers cited the following:

• Cell phones/texting: 52%
• The Internet: 44%
• Gossip: 37%
• Social media: 36%
• Email: 31%
• Co-workers dropping by: 27%
• Meetings: 26%
• Smoke breaks/snack breaks: 27%
• Noisy co-workers: 17%, and
• Sitting in a cubicle: 10%.

The Consequences

With so many distractions around, it’s almost surprising any work gets done at all – and sometimes it doesn’t. Survey respondents listed  negative consequences for their organizations, including:

• Compromised quality of work: 45%
• Lower morale because other workers have to pick up the slack: 30%
• Negative impact of boss/employee relationship: 25%
• Missed deadlines: 24%, and
• Loss in revenue: 21%.

Not too many surprises there.

A lot of employees, especially your troublemakers (you know who they are), think they’re safe when they leave the work premises. They’re not. 

You can still hold them accountable for a lot of their actions.

Like what?

Employment law attorney and partner at the firm Fisher & Phillips LLP, Shayna Balch, recently answered that question for Phoenix Business Journal.

Here are five actions pointed out by Balch for which companies can terminate employees, unless they have an employment contract that states otherwise:

Harassment and discrimination

Most good employee handbooks explain what the company deems as harassing and discriminatory behavior. Those rules can be applied both inside the workplace and outside the workplace.

Many times when these rules are broken, they’re broken in social settings outside the workplace — especially when drinking is involved.

Post-work happy hours, for example, tend to be a breeding ground for harassment complaints.

In addition, comments made in a group or on social media that are viewed by one employee as joking can be viewed as harassing or discriminatory by another.

Making false statements

Balch’s comments in a guest blog at the Phoenix Business Journal were directed at employees, and she recommended they avoid knowingly making false statements about their employer, customers or co-workers — even in jest.

Another warning she had for employees: Publishing slanderous remarks or defamatory info about anything work-related could also lead to termination.

Revealing trade or customer secrets

Your handbook and policies should outline the kinds of confidential info that employees are prohibited from sharing. And again, these policies remain in effect when employees are off the premises or off the clock.

A violation may be grounds for termination.

Working off the clock

Non-exempt employees must be paid for all the time they work. But that doesn’t mean you can’t punish them for unapproved after-hours work — as long as they’re still paid for it.

Some employees think they’re safe working extra hours and collecting overtime without permission. But they’re not, especially if they’ve repeatedly ignored instructions to get a manager’s approval before working the extra hours.

Moonlighting for the competition

Some employees try to take advantage of every lucrative business opportunity that comes their way — even if that means moonlighting or freelancing for a competitor.

This can be immediate grounds for termination, according to Balch.

Talk about airing someone’s dirty laundry. After finding out what the linens have been through at this hotel, Tampa-area travelers are bound to seek accommodations elsewhere. 

In a lawsuit filed July 30 in Hillsborough Circuit Court in Tampa, FL, 12 former African-American employees of Days Inn franchisee Jamil Kassim have accused the business owner of racial discrimination — as well as giving some fairly repugnant housekeeping orders.

Lead plaintiff Charlena Williams and her former co-workers have accused Kassim and his managers of using racial slurs to describe them, making threats to fire them based on their race and, eventually, terminating them because they were African-American.

But it gets worse.

Williams said that after reporting that a guest had died in a bed, she was instructed to flip the mattress over — rather than replace it — so the next guest could check in.

The Huffington Post reported that Florida law mandates that any bedding “unfit for use” should be changed.

Safety violations

In addition to the discrimination charges, the lawsuit claims the hotel didn’t use proper health and safety measures to clean blood, vomit and other fluids from the room where the body was found.

This is not the first time Kassim, and his company, Stickbay Inc., have had to deal with accusations surrounding the body.

Williams previously filed a complaint with OSHA after the incident. OSHA then investigated and issued three citations to Stickbay related to having employees handle “contaminated” linens and towels, and failing to make hepatitis B vaccines available to those exposed to the deceased patron.

As a result, Stickbay was assessed $13,685 in penalties, The Tampa Bay Times reported.

In the 2015 Enterprise Employee Engagement Report, you’ll find research and data on how the workforce has evolved, and actionable insights that you can immediately apply to your employee engagement and advocacy strategy today.

Click here to learn more!  

In HR, we’re constantly preaching that everyone should be treated equally. So why, then, are women constantly freezing in the office wearing parkas and Snuggies, while men can relax in polo shirts? 

It’s because some employers’ thermostat settings may unintentionally be biased toward males.

Now you may be asking: We make everyone work in the same facility, at the same temperature. How can that be bias?

Here’s how: Many building thermostats follow a “thermal comfort model that was developed in the 1960s,” and one of the variables used in their thermal comfort equation is the resting metabolic rate (how fast we generate heat) of a 40-year-old man weighing roughly 154 pounds.

Translation: Office temperature calculations are often geared more toward suiting men’s bodies than women’s.

That was one of the conclusions of a climate change study conducted by two scientists from the Netherlands, Boris Kingma, a postdoctoral researcher of thermal biophysics and health at Maastricht University and Eindhoven University of Technology, and Dr. Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt, a professor of Ecological energetics and health at Maastricht University.

The study was just published in the journal Nature Climate Change, and it recommends that buildings “reduce gender-discriminating bias in thermal comfort.”

How? The study’s authors recommend changing the comfort formula to include the metabolic rates of women and men. They say there may be a five degree temperature difference between the optimal temperature for most women and that of most men.

But, of course, you’re not doing complex math calculations when you turn on the A/C in the summer. So should you just crank up the temperature a few degrees?

Dress is the issue as well

That would probably make the study’s authors happy, as higher office temperatures in the summer would help combat excess energy usage and, thus, combat global warming.

But a few degrees likely won’t completely solve the problem in your office.

That’s because men’s and women’s wardrobes are contributing to the problem. Women tend to wear cooler clothing — skirts, lower-collared shirts and open-toed shoes — while men, on the other hand, war warmer clothing — pants, shirts and ties, and closed-toed shoes.

As a result, the best thing to do may be to combine a higher office temperature with a looser dress code.

Some suggestions (not included in the study):

• Poll workers to see how many of them are too cold (or too hot) in your office, and try to find some middle ground, and
• Adjust dress codes to help employees cope with the conditions — e.g., by adopting a more business casual approach, or by letting men wear shorts if you’re raising the temp in the room and/or recommending that women wear longer pants and heavier tops if you’re keeping the temp low.

In the end, the reality you’ll probably have to face is that you won’t be able to make everyone happy — at least temperature wise. But you may be able to make everyone a little less unhappy.

Executive Orders are becoming the hallmark of President Obama’s second term. His latest seeks to provide workers with paid sick leave. But it won’t affect all employers? 

The latest order, which the DOL is currently reviewing, would require federal contractors and subcontractors to provide their employees with a minimum of 56 hours (seven days) of paid sick leave annually.

Workers could use the leave for their own illness or to take care of sick relatives.

Some of the other notable Executive Orders of Obama’s second term as president include:

• The order to rewrite the FLSA’s “white collar” overtime exemptions (for which the proposed rules just came out)
• The order for federal contractors to explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and
• The “Fair Pay” order requiring federal contractors to report whether they’ve violated any one of 14 labor laws within the past three years.

Executive Orders allow the administration to impose regulations without Congressional action.

The paid sick leave order is part of a larger nationwide trend of states (like Connecticut, California Massachusetts and Oregon) and cities (Seattle, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and others) adopting paid sick leave requirements.

Paid sick leave is something President Obama has been very clear on: “Send me a bill that gives every worker in America the opportunity to earn seven days of paid sick leave. It’s the right thing to do.”

Under the new Executive Order, employers that do business with the government would also be required to allow unused paid leave to accrue year after year, according to The New York Times, which obtained a draft of the order.

Some other important notes about the order:

• An employer can’t make taking paid leave contingent upon a worker finding a replacement
• The final regulations would consider a relative any individual “related by blood or affinity whose close association with the employee is equivalent of a family relationship”
• Leave could also be used to seek medical attention, as well as counseling and legal action relating to domestic violence and sexual assault, and
• Detailed regulations will be issued by Sept. 30, 2016.

The Executive Order comes on the heels of the DOL releasing data that showed 39% of private sector employees have no paid sick leave.

We’ve already seen legislation introduced with the sole purpose of getting Obamacare’s controversial “Cadillac tax” tossed. Now an impressive alliance has come together to put pressure on Congress to make sure that repeal actually takes place.  

The group, which consists of more than two dozen public and private employers, insurers and unions, calls itself the Alliance to Fight the 40, a reference to the 40% excise tax imposed by the ACA.

Under the ACA’s Cadillac tax provision, employers will be required to pay a 40% excise tax on the value of any healthcare coverage that exceeds $10,200 for single coverage or $27,500 for families in premium costs starting in 2018.

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act back in 2010, the Cadillac tax has been one of the most worrisome provisions for employers — and with good reason. Research has shown that a significant number of firms are on pace to trigger the tax in 2018.

For the feds, however, the excise tax is expected to be a major revenue generator. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Cadillac tax will raise $87 billion in the decade after it takes effect. The feds then plan on using this money to fund other key parts of the ACA — e.g., the subsidies for low- and middle-income families on the insurance marketplace.

‘Hits ordinary plans’

The repeal of the excise tax seems to be one of the few components of the healthcare reform law where everybody — Democrats and Republicans, public and private employers, etc. — seems to be on the same page: staunchly opposed to the provision taking effect.

As James A. Klein, president of the American Benefits Council and a member of the Alliance to Fight the 40, put it:

“The 40% tax hits ordinary plans that are expensive simply because they cover many people with high health costs — women, older and disabled workers and families with catastrophic health events.”

It’s also worth noting that many experts believe the repeal of the Cadillac tax is all but inevitable. Example: During “How to Promote a Healthy Workforce Under the ACA Without Breaking the Bank,” a presentation at the 2015 SHRM Conference & Exposition that HR Benefits Alert attended, employment attorney Mark Boxer said he believed there was about an 80% chance the Cadillac tax would be repealed before 2018.

Of course, no manager wants to lie. But sometimes it’s a way to deflect requests or get off the hook without having to let a co-worker down harshly. Which “white lies” are your managers, supervisors and even executives spreading? 

We recently stumbled upon this interesting list produced by our friends over at ResourcefulManager, and we had to share it.

The team over at ResorucefulManager shares advice and resources on how to become a stronger leader, and it recently polled 1,133 managers and executives regarding which “white lies” they tell.

Respondents could select from a list of 33 total “lies.”

Here were the 10 they selected the most: