News

It can be frightening to hear an employee has launched a federal discrimination lawsuit. Headlines emphasizing multimillion-dollar jury verdicts don’t help. Here’s what’s at stake should an employee win a discrimination lawsuit.

Employees who are properly classified as exempt are paid on a salary basis. Because you must pay them their full salary in any week when they perform any work, there’s generally no need to track every hour and minute they work. But what happens if you classified the worker incorrectly and she wasn’t an exempt employee after all?

What should employers do now that the overtime rule has been overturned? The good news is they won’t need to raise salaries on Jan. 1. But what about reversing the changes made in good faith back in July? Here are your options.

We pay a $1,000 signing bonus to new employees in exchange for agreeing to commit to working for us for at least one year. A new employee requested a three-month leave of absence for the birth of her child; the leave would begin six months after her hire date. Can we pay the bonus in two parts?

We’ve all thought it: “I just have a good feeling about this applicant.” Relying on subjective factors such as interview skills and personality is not the best way to pinpoint successful job candidates.

Disabled employees are entitled to reasonable accommodations that allow them to perform the essential functions of their jobs. Arriving at those accommodations is supposed to be an interactive process. If employers drag out that process, they run the very real risk of being sued.

The crackdown on employing individuals not authorized to work in the U.S. is coming. Your I-9s will be front and center. Self-auditing them now and correcting errors will save you a lot of heartburn later.

The concept of negligent hiring is based on the legal concept that employers are liable for illegal or negligent acts their employees commit if the employer knew or should have known that hiring the person would put others at risk.

Employees who are eligible for FMLA leave sometimes don’t want to take it because it’s unpaid. However, some have begun asking to take intermittent FMLA leave on a work-from-home basis. Must employers grant such a request? It’s tricky.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts and behaviors, and it can interfere with the ability to perform one’s job.