What is Your Proactive Plan for 2026?
As 2026 is near, now is the time to discuss whether your department will improve or maintain its status quo. Improvement comes from being proactive on some goals and objectives that will make your department a little bit better (or a lot better) over the next 12 to 18 months. If you choose to improve in 2026 it will not be easy since there are lots of people in every organization that are comfortable with [...]
Kindness is Critical in the Workplace
This article is a post from Jeff Nowak's FMLA Insights blog. Jeff is an employment lawyer at the Littler law firm's Chicago office. I strongly recommend subscribing to the FMLA Insights blog. In Jeff's most recent blog he reminds us that kindness in the workplace is critical through a well told story. John always sat in the same spot in the same pew, positioned about 50 feet from the side entrance of the church. Deep [...]
Employees Have a Duty to Cooperate
Polite people sometimes refer to certain employees as being stubborn as a mule. Less polite people translate stubborn as a mule to names that are less polite. Stubborn employees can benefit employers by seeing difficult projects to the finish line but other stubborn employees sometimes refuse to cooperate with an employer's request to assist with certain tasks. Those latter stubborn workers typically do not understand that they are required to cooperate with their employer as [...]
EEOC No Thanks
The EEOC recently cobbled together a quorum of its Commissioners and that will enable the Commission to engage in official actions. The EEOC is in charge of enforcing laws like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Those first two examples (Title VII and the ADA) explicitly do not apply to tribal employers while the third example (ADEA) is silent regarding [...]
When Should Tribal Employers Respond to Social Media Posts?
Tribal employers must navigate the difficult question of whether an employee should be educated, disciplined or terminated for statements in social media posts. When this issue arises in your workplace, do you have a framework for determining when the tribe should take action and when the tribe should not. This article is based, in part, from the Workforce Bulletin, a blog published by law firm Epstein Becker Green. More specifically, by lawyers Nancy Gunzenhauser, Lauri [...]
Employee Retention Questions to Ask
This summer a newspaper article caught my attention regarding employee retention and it surprised me in a couple ways that may not surprise my experienced readers. The article was written by the co-authors of a book titled Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career and it, in part, tackles this retention issue by suggesting meaningful engagement with present employees may keep some of them on the payroll longer. The article asserted that [...]