Research conducted by the Harvard Business Review has shown that rudeness in the workplace is both on the rise and contagious. More people today report experiencing uncivil behavior at work than they did 14 years ago – in 1998 only 25% of people reported they were treated rudely at least once a week, and now it’s up to 98%. While their research didn’t set out to explain why more people bring their bad attitudes to work with them these days, it did explain how incivility can spread, how it affects the workplace, and what we can do to control it.
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Category Archives: Human Resources
Employee Outsources His Work To China
In the news today was a funny yet disturbing story about a top notch employee who outsourced his own work to China.
The employee himself made a couple of hundred thousand dollars working as a software developer, but he wasn’t actually the one doing the work. He paid a firm in China $50,000/year to do it all for him. While his Chinese counterpart was working, the American employee surfed the web.
How To Know When On-Call Employees Should Be Paid
On-call employees are a big benefit to many companies. They help ensure that the business is covered while keeping costs down. On-call employees generally cost little to nothing. But how much exactly should they be paid? The answer is, it depends.
While the employee is on call and not working is he able to use his time as he sees fit? If not then the on-call time should be compensable. If the answer is yes, if employees are generally free to come and go on their on-call time, then they are not considered to be on duty and only need to be paid for the time actually spent working. You can be pretty sure that your on-call employee should be paid if they:
Paying Employees After Natural Disasters
Hurricane Sandy displaced up to 40,000 people from their homes and affected great numbers of small business owners and their employees as well. The damage will, unfortunately, run many businesses out but most will simply miss a few days or weeks of regular business due to power outages and cleanup.
So what about compensation during this time? Do employees still get paid while they wait for the business to open up? And what about employees who were themselves affected by the storm and require time off to care for their own injuries or homes?
Keeping Track of Bonuses
In a previous post I described the most common types of bonuses that employees receive. Now I’m going to show you how to apply those bonuses within the Timesheets software.
Keep Track of Bonuses With Expense Tracking
It’s easy to record bonuses, probably a lot easier than figuring out which bonus scheme to use.
Bonuses are essentially a type of expense which is one of the record sheets you have access to within your account.
Working in the Heat
With temperatures spiking into the hundreds in much of the US already this summer, employers should be aware of the dangers of heat exhaustion and learn how to take precautions against it.
Some small offices don’t provide air conditioning, making it hard to focus and stay on track. Many employees work outside, directly in the heat where conditions can be dangerous. And many warehouse workers must stand for long hours, work very fast in, and sometimes lift heavy loads in furnace-like conditions. We saw an example of this in the news last year at the Amazon.com warehouse.
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Types of Employee Bonuses
When we think of bonuses, we often think of end of year, maybe Christmas. But bonuses can come at any time and in forms other than cash.
For example, bonuses can be given for a job well done at the completion of a project and the bonus doesn’t have to be cash either.
Bonus Options
- Gift cards
- Travel vouchers
- Stock options.
While cash is usually the most sought after option, many employees realize that cash is taxed. If they’re planning to use the bonus for savings or entertainment anyway then other options might be better.
Non-cash bonuses are not just good for the employee but employers can usually get gift and travel vouchers at a reduced bulk rate. This helps employers save money on bonuses so they can give out more of them.
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How to Deal With Attendance Problems
Occasionally, life outside of work comes between an employee and their arrival at the office. Employees have families, rough days, broken things they need to fix, breakfast spilled on clean clothes, and a hundred other things which might go wrong on any given morning. It’s easy to be understanding with employees who are occasionally late but what do you do about the ones who are late all the time? Start by trying to sympathize with their issues and then consider some strategies to help get them on track.
Causes of Chronic Tardiness
There are many reasons other than plain irresponsibility that might lead to chronic tardiness and absenteeism. Some of these may include:
Time On the Clock – Waiting Time, On-Call Time, Travel Time
The Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division gets specific about what is and what isn’t considered work time. The hours which employees spend waiting, being on call, and traveling is all compensable time even when it may seem the employee is not actually “working.”
