Memorable Excuses for Calling in Sick

We need to promote humor in the workplace for our employees. Most managers are aware that humor will lessen stress, can be educational and can improve teamwork. 

The lesson  your employees should learn, do not post your outrageous (fake) reasons for calling in sick on your social media!

Thanks to our friends an SHRM, we are re-posting CareerBuilder’s employees survey of funny employees excuses when calling in sick

According to the their survey, one in four employers have caught an employee faking being sick through social media and one in five employers have fired an employee for calling in sick with a fake excuse.

Some of the most memorable excuses reported this year:

• Employee just put a casserole in the oven.
• Employee’s plastic surgery for enhancement purposes needed some “tweaking” to get it just right.
• Employee was sitting in the bathroom and her feet and legs fell asleep. When she stood, up she fell and broke her ankle.
• Employee had been at the casino all weekend and still had money left to play with on Monday morning.
• Employee woke up in a good mood and didn’t want to ruin it.
• Employee had a “lucky night” and didn’t know where he was.
• Employee got stuck in the blood pressure machine at the grocery store and couldn’t get out.
• Employee had a gall stone they wanted to heal holistically.
• Employee caught their uniform on fire by putting it in the microwave to dry.
• Employee accidentally got on a plane. 

If you have heard of other funny excuses, please add a post

AB 2053 - Stop Bullies - Expanded Mandatory Supervisor Training in CA – Abusive Malicious Conduct

California businesses with 50 or more employees are already required to train supervisors on sexual harassment. A.B. 2053 requires that training must now include education on preventing “abusive conduct” in the workplace, even if the conduct is not based on prohibited discrimination or harassment.

The new Code defines abusive conduct as malicious conduct “that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests.” Although A.B. 2053 provides that a single act is not abusive “unless especially severe and egregious,” its list of conduct that may be abusive is expansive and includes:

• Infliction of verbal abuse, such as the use of derogatory remarks
• Insults, Epithets
• Verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating, or humiliating
• Gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work performance

Like AB1825, supervisory employees must receive at least two hours of this enhanced anti-harassment training in an interactive format every two years.

We recommend to our clients, regardless of size, they provide AB2053 and AB1825 training every two years to all employees as proactive measure to reduce potential claims and lawsuits. 

Another Legislative Setback for CA Employers

California has amended Cal. Lab. Code § 218.5 to limit the circumstances under which an employer may recover its attorney’s fees and costs as the prevailing party in a lawsuit in which an employee has sued for nonpayment of wages, fringe benefits, or health and welfare or pension fund contributions (SB 462).

Prior to enactment of Senate Bill 462, the prevailing party (either the employer or the employee) could seek recovery of his, her or its attorney’s fees and costs.

As amended, the statute provides that “if the prevailing party in the court action is not an employee, attorney’s fees and costs shall be awarded pursuant to this section only if the court finds that the employee brought the court action in bad faith.”  See Kirby v. Immoos Fire Prot., Inc., 53 Cal. 4th 1244 (2012

Are you risking an expensive lawsuit?

It only takes one uncomfortable look, one complaint, one inappropriate touch or off color statement for a single employee to file a harassment lawsuit. Do you want to risk the future of your business due to the lack of professional harassment training? Sexual harassment in the California workplace continues to spur payouts in the millions! Supervisors can be personally liable for their actions and the acts of their employees if the supervisor failed to act. Business insurance may not pay judgments against supervisors. There may be punitive damages claimed against your business for failure to provide adequate supervisor training. Our best advice, provide on-site, interactive supervisor harassment training annually. By providing harassment training for your supervisors, they will understand how to identify potential harassment situations, thereby reducing your company’s liability. Our recommended steps: 1.   Verify that your handbook is California compliant and includes a general and sexual harassment policy with instructions of how and who to report potential violations or questionable conduct. 2.   Annually review / update policy changes with your employees. We have discovered that often, employees do not understand what a harassment-free workplace is. 3.   Thoroughly investigate all claims. If severe or the claim involve a supervisor, see independent assistance. Many times, your attorney will retain an HR firm such as eqHR Solutions to conduct an independent confidential investigation. 4.   If you are a California employer with 50 or more employees, you must provide mandatory supervisor sexual harassment training every two years and new supervisors within six month.

If you are a serious business leader, who understands the potential liability threat, you will not opt for an inexpensive online sexual harassment training course. You will retain your law firm or a professional HR consulting firm like eqHR Solutions. 

If you have questions about harassment claims or training, please call us.  There is no charge for your initial consultation.  

New California Bill - Requires Paid Sick Leave for Most Employees

If you are a CA employer you should be aware of this announcement. On Wednesday, Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation that entitles most CA workers, including part-time workers, to three paid sick days a year. The new law takes effect in 2015.

Surprise, surprise not everyone agrees with the new law. Some business groups said small businesses might not have enough employees to fill in for sick workers, which seems to imply it is OK for sick workers not to stay home when sick, but come to work and infect their co-workers.

In addition, the CA Chamber of Commerce and the Society of Human Resources Management opposed this bill.

We recommend our clients provide sick and vacation hours. We agree this law may cause a limited financial burden, but in our experience, even limited employee benefits do increase morale, productivity and employee retention.

You can view the entire article at http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/10/6695628/jerry-brown-signs-bill-requiring.html

Do you have an opinion about this new law? Please post a comment

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eqHR Solutions is a professional, full service human resources consulting firm where trained consultants assist business leaders strategize their HR plans by providing guidance to avoid HR regulatory pitfalls.

We are a boutique HR consulting firm that is available to resolve your human resources issues or complete needed human resource projects. 

Los Angeles City to Pay 26-million Dollars for a Wage & Hour Class Action

Why should this story be so interesting to company leaders?  Rather than first seek advice from a knowledgeable HR professional or labor attorney, it appears the leaders decided to surrender to citizen complaints.  After all, these were just garbage-men. 

The moral of this story, seek advice from a  human resources professional before you make an employment decision that could cost your company millions. 

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The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday finalized a $26-million legal settlement to end a lawsuit over a ban on lunchtime naps by trash-truck drivers. The expenditure, approved on a 9-2 vote, resolves a class-action lawsuit involving nearly 1,100 sanitation workers who said they were improperly barred from sleeping and engaging in other activities during their meal breaks.

Sanitation officials had imposed the no-nap rule to avoid the bad publicity that would come if a resident, business owner or television news crew stumbled across a sleeping city employee. But lawyers for the drivers said the city, by limiting workers' mealtime activities, had essentially robbed them of their meal breaks.

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eqHR Solutions is a professional, full service human resources consulting firm where trained consultants assist business leaders strategize their HR plans by providing guidance to avoid HR regulatory pitfalls.
We are a boutique HR consulting firm that is available to resolve your human resources issues or complete needed human resource projects.  

Can an Employer Deduct Vacation Hours for Partial-Day Absences?

In this recent CA appellate case, the court confirmed that an employer may charge an exempt employee's vacation account for less than four hour partial-day absences.  The plaintiff's argued that his employer, General Atomics', could only deduct hours from his vacation balance if the employee partial-day absence exceed four hours.

Rhea v. General Atomics (CA4/1 D064517 7/21/14) Exempt Employees/Partial Day Absence Deductions

This appeals presents a challenge to General Atomics' employment practice of requiring exempt employees to use their annual leave hours when they are absent from work for portions of a day.  Although Conley v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (2005) 131 Cal.App.4th 260, 263 (Conley) established that California law does not prohibit an employer "from following the established federal policy permitting employers to deduct from exempt employees' vacation leave, when available, on account of partial-day absences," appellant Lori Rhea contends that Conley was wrongly decided, or in the alternative, that even under Conley, General Atomics is not permitted to deduct from an exempt employee's leave bank when the employee is absent for less than four hours. 

We conclude that Rhea's contentions are without merit, and accordingly we affirm the trial court's judgment in favor of General Atomics.

http://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/D064517.PDF

    

eqHR is an Authorized ADP On-Site Training Firm

ADP does not offer on-site training for many of their high quality payroll / HR products and it is not cost effective for small to medium size clients to maintain permanent ADP product training staff.

Since there is a natural overlap of payroll and human resources services, we have been working closely with ADP representatives to help solve their client's needs. This month, we were added to the list of ADP approved consultants for on-site product training and implementation

eqHR consultants can provide ADP product expertise to solve your training and implementation issues to maximize the investment of your ADP products. In just a few hours, eqHR consultants, can fully implement your ADP product, train your staff, and/or create custom reporting templates than can be used repeatedly.

eqHR  can reduce your payroll expense - Outsource your payroll data entry to eqHR Solutions. Keying payroll is not a full time position. We have clients in Los Angeles and Orange Counties with 15 to 300 employees, who are saving significantly after outsourcing their ADP payroll data entry function.       

New Court Decision - Commissioned Employee Exception

The Supreme Court of California just ruled on a case at the request of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Peabody v. Time Warner should be reviewed by any employer who maintain a sales force that is compensated hourly near the minimum hourly wage and who's employees are are paid commissions on a monthly basis.

The facts as reported are that from July 2008 to May 15, 2009, Peabody was a Time Warner account
executive selling advertising on the company‟s cable television channels. Every other week, Time Warner paid $769.23 in hourly wages, the equivalent of $9.61 per hour, assuming a 40-hour workweek. About every other pay period, Time Warner paid commission wages under its account executive compensation plan.

Time Warner argued that commissions should be reassigned from the biweekly pay periods in which they were paid to earlier pay periods. It reasoned that the commissions should be attributed to the “monthly pay period for which they were earned.”  Attributing the commission wages in this manner would satisfy the exemption‟s minimum earnings prong that requires a minimum hourly rate of $12.00 per hour. 

The court concluded it may not do so. Whether the minimum earnings prong is satisfied depends on the amount of wages actually paid in a pay period. An employer may not attribute wages paid in one pay period
to a prior pay period to cure a shortfall.
 

Nancy Trujillo Joins Advisory Board

Please help us welcome Nancy Trujillo to our Board of Advisers. Nancy's various executive roles and experience will provide eqHR Solutions with valuable business insight.

Nancy Trujillo is the Chief Financial Officer and a senior management member for the Santa Margarita Water District and oversees the finance/accounting, information technology, and customer relations groups. The District provides water and wastewater treatment services to more than 155,000 residential and commercial customers in south Orange County. Previously, Nancy held executive finance roles with MIG Real Estate and The Irvine Company, and has over 25 years’ experience in real estate development, acquisitions, operations, and financial management. She had responsibility for all financial aspects of a multi-billion dollar real estate portfolio and was a key player at both ...........

Effective Performance Management – S.M.A.R.T. Goals

Are you responsible for setting employee and company goals / targets?

If your business is located in Southern CA, we recommend our live, interactive 2-3 hour training. If not, you may purchase our latest webinar at:  https://compliancetrainings.com/SiteEngine/ProductDetailView.aspx?id=HR1230.

This training is a complete Goal Setting class for executives and all management / supervisor levels who are responsible for setting business goals and objectives.  For many, it may be the refresher needed. 

The S.M.A.R.T Goal process training identifies each step in the process from planning with clarify and purpose to the successful plan execution and goal completion.

We recommend a live, interactive small group training sessions that also provides the benefit of team building as your employees must work together.    

Need a Korean Speaking Human Resources Consultant?

Most human resources consulting firms are not fluent in Korean nor do they understand the unique Korean culture.

I am June Jeong, the CEO of eqHR Solutions. Over the past 15+ years, I have been the Senior Vice President of Human Resources or consulted directly with the CEO and the Board of Directors for many top-tiered Korean businesses, like Nara Bank, Hyundai Financial, Noa Bank and Wilshire Bank. My understanding of the Korean culture and the importance of human resources compliance may serve your business well.

Human Resources (HR) is one of the most vital aspects to your company's smooth and efficient operations. It can also be one of the most costly if left unmanaged. Seeking out HR advice or an opinion to solve an HR issue is a prudent course

Perhaps you need to strategize with a Korean human resources consultant to help you put in motion your ideas to improve productivity and reduce operating cost. Working with other clients, we have developed creative compensation, training and incentive programs to increase employee productivity & retention.

Call us today for a no obligation consultation - 855-461-8808.

What is the value of an Employee Hanbook

As you know, your company's handbook is a compilation of your employment policies & procedures. Your policies are very similar to the rules of the road (when to stop-go-turn).

Custom and well-drafted policies & procedures provides a formal notification and guidance to your employees.

Did you know that In California, the employment regulations are much more restrictive, complex and cumbersome than the Federal rules?

Uniformity & Clarity of Employment Practices
Whether you have 2 or 2,000 employees, maintaining a current, well-drafted Employee Handbook, provides your managers and employees with the ability to refer to your employment policies and procedures (rule book) when the employment questions arise. 

Your handbook should Promote & Communicate Your Company.
Our experience shows that new & existing employees react favorably to including the CEO's Welcome Message; the Company's Mission Statement; Overview of Long Term Business Objectives & Goals.

Do you want to reduce your company's liability? Call eqHR Solutions today for a no obligation consultation to review your company's handbook and employment policies or to fulfill other human resources needs.