When coworkers attack

Posted on October 1, 2011
Filed Under Employment, Employment Law, Team, The Workplace | Leave a Comment

The workplace might be seen as a small-scale representation of a larger society. Although all the same class, cultural, and other divisions may not necessarily exist; the politics, and at times, many of the broader individual tensions can find their way into the workplace. In light of this, it’s not surprising that many of those things that may prevent one individual from being friends with another outside the workplace might somehow affect how that individual interacts with another in the office environment. Although such tensions should be forgotten within the workplace, it can be difficult, and every now and again, an employee may say or do something which hurts another deeply–something grossly unprofessional, prejudicial, or just plainly unfair, that not only may affect their relationship with that person, but which may affect that receiver at a very personal level. Read more

The link between flexibility in the workplace and productivity

Posted on April 28, 2011
Filed Under Corporate Policy, Employment, Employment Law, The Workplace | 1 Comment

Are you familiar with the old adage, “A happy worker is a good worker?” Even in the face of a recession, employers have begun to take this adage quite seriously, offering employees a panoply of new benefits—even naps. In addition to avant-garde benefits (really only offered by a handful of firms), employers and policy makers have begun to acknowledge the connection between workplace flexibility (for example, a parent’s ability to flex hours if their sick child needs to be shuttled home from school) and productivity. Read more

The job seeker’s bill of rights

Posted on November 15, 2010
Filed Under Employment, Employment Law, Finding a Job, Interview | 2 Comments

A number of years ago, while I was still studying for my bachelor’s, I applied for a job administering summer programs for a nearby local government. I was asked to interview for a position teaching school age children chess during the summer. During the course of the interview, the issue of faith was brought up in a way, which to me, seemed rather benign. Though I am certain the reason why I was not extended an offer related more to my badmouthing Jane Austen in the interview (blurting out, “I find the prospect of reading Austen utterly abhorrent”) than my faith. Nevertheless, as I mention in a recent blog post, such questions—relating to one’s faith and not Jane Austen—are (in most contexts and situations) wildly improper. In addition to the “religion” question, Investopedia contributor Porcshe Moran, identifies a number of questions of which interviewees should be weary. Read more

Explaining FMLA

Posted on November 1, 2010
Filed Under Employment, Employment Law, Health | 2 Comments

One of the great—and worst—things about working in a cubicle, or an open-office environment, is that it allows you the freedom to openly interact with your coworkers. There are no walls, no doors, no barriers which can be used to stifle intercommunication. Such a lack of physical barriers does have its drawbacks, however. For one thing, it lends itself to the spread of disease. Within the cubicle jungle, a cold, a flu, a virus still unbeknownst to the world of medical science, can spread quicker than chicken pox through a kindergarten class. Coworkers shake hands, give high fives, sneeze, cough, sit in cramped meeting spaces, and taint all of the plastic cutlery available in the kitchen as they innocently reach for a knife or fork and in doing so manage to touch every fork or knife in the basket or container. Even with the presence of hand sanitizer (which, studies recently have shown, may be ineffective in killing the flu virus), epidemics are inevitable. Sick employees, frightened that their work will pile in their absence and constantly concerned about job security, trudge into work with the best of intentions, giving very little thought that they might be the source of an office-wide Ebola outbreak. In the case of serious health conditions (of which I would consider an Ebola infection to be one) the thought of going into work should not only be outright dismissed, but respected by employers, who are required to give employees with serious health conditions time off. Read more

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