Healthcare entities are being faced with a growing number of challenges related to the virus SARS-CoV-2, or the disease caused by that virus, COVID-19. One of those challenges is the issue of how to apply the Privacy Rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and when to share names or other identifying
Handling Difficult Conversations: Five important steps to improving that skill.
No one looks forward to having a difficult conversation. Whether you’re conducting or responding to a performance evaluation at work, comforting a bereaved friend, or discussing a behavioral issue with a family member, there are five steps that can help to change these “confrontations” into “communication.”
Don’t put off the discussion to the “perfect moment.”
Six things you can do right now to improve your communication skills.
In this era of electronic communication, mindful communication is becoming a lost art. There are two primary reasons for this: first, without face-to-face contact, it becomes easier to forget that there is a second party to the communication; and further, it becomes too easy to present our own position without listening for input or response
Risky Business: Avoiding the Legal Issues Associated With Workplace Romance.
Valentine’s Day is an appropriate time to think about how to deal effectively with workplace romances. Real-life workplaces rarely reflect movie scenarios. Consider:
- Mel Gibson’s character whose accidental electrocution in “What Women Want” allows him to understand the innermost thoughts of his female coworker and family members, and whose epiphany allows him to “capture” the
2019 Novel Coronavirus is not a pandemic yet, but concerns are growing.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently published a thorough and usable webpage that provides interim guidance and resources for preventing exposure to the 2019 Novel Coronavirus, and for learning more about the developing information on that outbreak. That page provides an overview of the ever-expanding situation, and lists numerous resources and links to
A 2019 ADA decision regarding Ebola may become relevant because of the new coronavirus.
Although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects qualified individuals who may be perceived as having a disability, that Act does not protect individuals who may be perceived as possibly becoming disabled in the future. EEOC v. STME, LLC, 11th Cir., No. 18-11121, 9/12/19.
Kimberly Lowe began working as a massage therapist at Massage
Numbers are fun . . . unless you’re calculating overtime compensation for a period that includes a discretionary bonus.
Calculating the “regular rate” of pay:
Section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires an employer to pay one and one-half times an employee’s “regular rate” of pay for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. That “regular rate” includes all “remuneration for employment” and specifically includes nondiscretionary bonuses.
Nondiscretionary bonuses are bonuses
Can an employee’s assertion of “self-defense” avoid termination for a typical workplace scuffle? Not in West Virginia.
At-will employment generally allows employment to end – by either the employer or employee – for any reason or no reason, other than for a violation of law. In West Virginia, as in many states, the rule that an employer has an absolute right to discharge an at-will employee is further tempered by the principle
Is It OK to Require Confidentiality Regarding an Internal Investigation? The NLRB says “Maybe . . . ”.
Investigative Confidentiality Gets the Support of the NLRB:
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has reversed recent past decisions, and has held that an employer can require confidentiality from an individual employee involved in a current internal investigation. However, the NLRB only partly reversed past rulings on the issue, holding that while confidentiality can be
Company’s “point-reduction” program to erase absence points may violate FMLA.
An employer instituted a no-fault attendance policy which allowed employees’ absence points to be reduced for each 30-day period of “perfect” attendance. An employee sued the company, based on the claim that his intermittent FMLA leave kept him from fully participating in that program.
The lower court agreed with him, but the U.S. Court of