Three HR lessons to start your week off.
Most of us have probably seen the quote “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment”, a quote attributed to numerous people. The important thing to realize is that it does not always have to be your bad judgment that you learn from, you can learn from the bad judgment of others.
The posts I reference below are demonstrations of others exercising bad judgment that provide great lessons to other businesses. These lessons will save your company money, bad publicity and may save you, the HR person, your job. So read and heed.
The first lesson
The first lesson is one on proper FMLA etiquette and procedure. Jeff Nowak, the author of FMLA Insights tells the story of one organization not only made a mistake in how they dealt with a FMLA situation, they were deemed to have made this a WILLFUL violation, costing them double. Read When You Don’t Train Your Managers on the FMLA, You’re Begging for This Kind of Smackdown.
The second lesson
This second lesson involves two issues that are at the forefront of many HR situations, data, and the FLSA. Attorney Greg Mersol, one of the authors of the blog Employment Class Action Blog tells us about a group of employees who decided to use data in their lawsuit against their employer. It backfired. The data actually proved the employer’s case. Check out Time Study Kills Off-the-Clock Claim.
The third lesson
This third lesson is right out of the headlines. Many HR managers have struggled with dealing with sexual harassment, especially if the accused is the top person in the company. Suzanne Lucas, aka the @RealEvilHRLady, writes in Inc. Magazine about what should be done in that situation. It can be a difficult spot for a lot of people, so learn the lesson taught in How to React When an Employee Accuses the Most Powerful Person in the Office of Sexual Harassment.
All of these stories have very important lessons for HR professionals. Spend some time, right now, reading them and you can consider you have done a good days work.
