Flexible work arrangements, including working from home, are increasingly prevalent and can help minimize the office disruption that can occur with soon-to-arrive inclement winter weather occurrences. A couple of things to keep in mind, though – first, always require approval for ad-hoc work changes. You will need to decide if this flexibility is a right or a benefit. If the latter, it should require approval and be well managed. Second, hourly, non-exempt employees will need to be paid for all time worked – even after hours. Be sure to arrange in advance how you will track hours when working from home. Finally, you should take the time now to establish what your work from home policy is so that you are not inconsistent in your approach or management going forward.
Affinity HR Group is BSCAI's endorsed HR partner, providing HR support, recruiting and employee engagement services. For a link to our menu of services for BSCAI members, go to www.AffinityHRGroup.com/BSCAI
There is no obligation under federal or state law to pay premium pay for holidays. Of course, you are obligated to pay overtime for any hours in excess of 40 hours in the workweek but premium pay is not statutorily required. Therefore, your decision to pay premium pay should largely be guided by your existing holiday pay policy, if one exists. If one doesn’t exist, realize that how you handle a particular situation may set precedence for future working holidays, so make your decision with that in mind.
While Affinity does not have a specific performance management program to recommend, we will confess that we remain underwhelmed with the vast majority of them. Annual conversations are hardly sufficient to truly manage performance. Often times the goals change throughout the year but usually the performance goals don’t, meaning that employees are evaluated based on out-of-date criteria. And there is always the problem with recency errors – we forget about the accomplishments or failures early in the 12 month period and put added weight on the performance in the months and weeks leading up to the annual review.
Instead, we prefer quarterly goals that require ongoing feedback and communication.
Employers are allowed to send home employees who show up at work sick. Having said that, recognize there may be reasons why employees are showing up sick that might include:
Reassure employees that you want them to take time to recover, and that you will help to ensure their work gets done. Remind them that sick leave is offered so they can stay home when they are sick. And if they are worried about lost wages, try to identify ways for them to make up the time once they return to health.
Interviewing a potential employee is a critical piece of the recruiting process and, if handled correctly, it can be effective. If not, it can be worthless. And even worse, asking certain questions can be illegal. Here’s what we recommend: