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Do you avoid difficult conversations? You know, the ones you would rather not have to have. Research shows that many folks will even leave their positions and walk away rather than manage the interpersonal conflicts at work.

-- Study Also Finds That the College-Wage-Advantage has Held up Well Over Time --

Washington, D.C., August 15, 2012—-** A new study released today by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce finds that almost half of the jobs lost in the recession that began in December, 2007 have been recovered and virtually all of those jobs required some form of postsecondary education.

“No surprise!” you say. “The government doesn’t have a clue how to treat its customers — us!”

The USPS spent millions a decade ago on customer service training. Generally, the clerks I’ve encountered are pleasant and some go out of their way to be friendly to their customers.

Other agencies not so much.

Temp Agency Effectively Terminated Employee Because  of Epilepsy, Federal Agency Charged

CHICAGO – JES Personnel  Consultants, Inc., doing business as Genie Temporary Service, will pay $80,000  to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal  Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.  The EEOC had charged that JES unlawfully  refused to allow an employee to return to work because of his epilepsy. 

Jack, be nimble,
Jack, be quick,
Jack, jump over
The candlestick.

All employers who employ at least five full-time employees (in any city or state) and have at least one employee who performs work within the City of Seattle must soon comply with Seattle’s Sick/Safe Leave law. The new law goes into effect on September 1, 2012.  All employees, regardless of whether they are temporary, part-time or full-time have the right to paid sick/safe leave under this law if they work in Seattle on an “occasional basis,” or more than 240 hours within a calendar year.

The move by SHRM to create standard metrics for HR is the talk of the blog world.  Many people are upset and resisting the move to create metrics for HR and human capital in organizations.  Normally I don't write about things that are talked about so much but I can't resist this one.

The U.S. workforce is substantially older and better-educated than it was at the end of the 1970s. The typical worker in 2010 was seven years older than in 1979.

In 2010, over one-third of US workers had a four-year college degree or more, up from just one-fifth in 1979. Given that older and better-educated workers generally receive higher pay and better benefits, we would have expected the share of “good jobs” in the economy to have increased in line with improvements in the quality of workforce.

With just eight weeks left on the federal government’s 2012 fiscal calendar, employers are bracing for rapid-fire litigation from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Gerald Maatman Jr. , co-chair of Seyfarth Shaw’s complex discrimination litigation group, says the agency has entered the annual “red zone”—a period when its lawsuits surge.

“American workers should have paid sick leave,” ** announced the New York Times in a staff editorial on Sunday, “and New York City could set a standard for the rest of the nation.” With that, the nation’s newspaper of record waded into the long fight for what most Americans already say is a basic workplace right **: the chance to recuperate from sickness without losing a day’s pay -- or worse yet, getting fired from your job.

A short story by HRMexplorer

Yup! I am I replied.

Come on what do you do? You have a great office, flashy expense account, talk ALL the time and play lots of golf.

"What is different about being a Manager?" starts out a blog I read regularly.  In it Tom Foster, the author, asks: "What is different about being a manager [than a supervisor]?"

This is an ongoing and growing conversation I have with senior managers and business owners. 

I must admit annoyance when hearing politicians campaign on how they will create jobs. The reason is because politicians cannot create jobs. Government cannot create jobs (at least not value-based).

What makes a Tough but Fair Boss?
A tough boss is one who holds his employees accountable with strict guidelines and high demands for performance and excellence. He does not coddle people or tolerate excuses from those who fall short of the stated goals.

Yes, you read the headline correctly. And it flies in the face of everything most of us have been taught about motivating employees.

By the way, I don’t believe motivating employees means you need to hold their hands all day and fix their problems –

You would think that the agency charged with protecting workers from discrimination would know a thing or two about how not to get sued for discrimination. Apparently not.

The distinction between employees and independent contractors has never been an easy one for business owners. The general lack of guidance from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has made the decision-making process a difficult one, and the consequences of misclassification can be dire. Despite the confusion, the IRS has placed a renewed focus on employee classification audits, likely due in large part to expanding federal deficits coupled with pressure on Washington to not raise taxes.

Over the past six years, companies with at least some female board representation outperformed those with no women on the board in terms of share price performance, according to the latest study by the Credit Suisse Research Institute

Aside from new babies and youthful foolishness, there really is no good reason for a normal human being to be awake at 3am.  let alone dressed for success and preparing to board a plane bound for an adjacent state.

What is an employer to do when an EEOC investigation goes beyond the bounds of reasonableness? Or when the EEOC's "conciliation" efforts seem more like a joke that a good-faith effort to resolve the claims. There have been a smattering of decisions in the past few years by courts across the country answering this question in a variety of different ways--some more favorable to the EEOC and others strongly in favor of the employer.