The Google Memo, Charlottesville, and Managers’ Responsibilities
Recent events in the news may have managers wondering what their responsibilities are when political issues enter the workplace. This could happen in many [...]
About Rita M. Risser Chai
Rita M. Risser Chai was an attorney in California for 20 years and now is an attorney in Hawaii. She authored the Prentice Hall book, Stay Out of Court! The Manager’s Guide to Preventing Employee Lawsuits, and she developed most of the curriculum used by Fair Measures including the firm’s first website which was praised in HR Magazine. She also wrote numerous articles on employment law including one on best practice harassment prevention training published in the magazine of the American Society for Training and Development (now ATD). She taught Law and Human Resources at the University of California, Santa Cruz, for eight years, and has presented four times at the annual conventions of the Hawaii Society of Human Resource Management.Can supervisor ask employee about a random drug test not related to the job?
I’m a supervisor and received a text from an employee because they had to submit to a random drug test and this drug test [...]
Can I fire an employee if they disclose my salary to another employee?
Rita Risser Chai replies: It depends on how the employee became aware of your salary. If you told the employee your salary, then it [...]
Is it okay for CEO to ask us to discuss in team meetings if we had abuse or mental illness?
The CEO/owner wanted our team to exercise our bonds by discussing openly if we had abuse or mental illnesses, and wanting to know our [...]
Manager Who Promotes, Then Fires, Minority Person May Be Guilty of Bias
For years, the courts have reasoned that a manager who hires or promotes a minority candidate could not be guilty of bias if he [...]
Employee distrusts our third-party cloud-based benefits tool – do we have to let him opt out?
We use a third party tool for managing our employee's benefits, on boarding new employees, and general employee information. We have an employee that [...]
Our client is asking for employee personal information – are we required to provide it?
We service a client by cleaning their facilities. The client asked us to remove our employee due to theft and wants to press charges. [...]
Can an employee be disciplined twice for the same incident?
Can an employee be disciplined twice for the same incident by separating the alleged rule violations? Notices included same date and time of alleged [...]
U.S. Law Expanded to Prohibit Discrimination Against Gays, Lesbians
The U.S. law that prohibits sex discrimination originally was intended to apply to straightforward cases where women were treated differently than men. But back [...]
How should HR inform managers about delayed background checks?
In our HR department, we do background checks on potential employees. Sometimes there is a delay in processing. When that happens the HR manager sends [...]