Dealing with resignations ;-)

Reference:

grumpycatpics.com

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What can HR expect in 2014?

This year was no walk in the park for HR pros — and there looks to be plenty to keep everyone busy in the coming year.


Here’s what should be on HR’s radar in 2014, courtesy of Fisher & Phillips’ Jim Holland and Much Shelist’s Sheryl Jaffee Halpern.


Criminal background checks


The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) hasn’t earned a boost in popularity since it publicized its new guidance on criminal background checks in 2012.


Since then, the agency hasn’t been afraid to go after companies for their policies — and companies (and judges) haven’t been afraid to voice their disapproval.


Then nine states’ Attorneys General sent a complaint letter to the EEOC. And the entire state of Texas filed suit against the agency, claiming that the EEOC’s stance unlawfully limits the ability of employers to exclude convicted felons from the workforce.


Will the EEOC back down in 2014? Unlikely, says Holland.


If anything, the agency may increase pressure on businesses to show that background checks are job related and that firms don’t exclude candidates with certain convictions.


Supreme Court rulings


Last year, the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act and repealed the 30-year-old FSA use-it-or-lose-it rule.


This year, HR pros can look forward to rulings in these cases:


§ The Supreme Court will determine if President Obama overstepped his powers when he appointed members to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during a Senate break last year.


The NLRB has remained active while the issue has wound its way through the courts.


In fact, there have been over 600 board decisions since Obama made the appointments.


Depending on the ruling, the justices may find that the NLRB has had no authority to be active this whole time – and those 600-plus rulings may be rescinded. (NLRB v. Canning)


§ The High Court will also render a decision on the healthcare reform requirement that firms offer insurance coverage for birth control without a co-pay.


Private companies say they can refuse to do so on the claim it violates their religious beliefs. (Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius)


§ Finally, the Court will consider what qualifies as “changing clothes” under the Fair Labor Standards Act.


The case may finally clarify when firms have to pay staff for putting on and taking off safety gear at the beginning and end of work shifts. (Sandifer v. U.S. Steel Corp.)


Medical marijuana


Illinois recently became the 20th state (along with the District of Columbia) to legalize marijuana for medical use – and it definitely won’t be the last.


If you’re like most companies, you’ve already got a drug and alcohol use policy, and the changes in marijuana regs for certain states won’t change its effectiveness.


At the same time, you may want to revise your policy if you’re in one of the 18 states where marijuana use has been legalized. (Here’s a full list.)


If you do update your policy, make it clear that despite the expansion of people’s rights outside the workplace, your company still prohibits its use and can do so legally.


You should also communicate that to staff — just so no one tries to test the policy’s legality.


If you’re not in a state that’s approved medical marijuana use, keep an eye on your state legislations to see if medical marijuana is gaining support.


Healthcare reform


You knew this was coming.


No two ways about it: Healthcare reform is going to be HR’s biggest headache moving forward. In fact, all other topics of concern cower in the face of the ongoing struggles companies will face with reform next year. Holland notes that:


Uncertainty about how the Affordable Care Act will unfold is creating havoc for employers. It’s possible that executive orders will unilaterally change the directives being debated, that more provisions will be postponed or changed — or that the ACA will simply implode under its own weight.


This ambiguity will overshadow every other employment issue in 2014.


Yes, the employer mandate to provide reform-compatible health insurance was pushed back to 2015, giving companies an extra year to prepare.


But 2014 will still see a number of major regs taking effect, including:


§ the 90-day max waiting period for health insurance coverage


§ elimination of annual dollar limits on “essential benefits”


§ the elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions, and


§ additions to the Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) statements.


The feds have also announced they’ll be auditing employers’ plans for health reform compliance.

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What affected HR’s job the most in 2013? Top 6 trends

It’s almost the end of the year, and you know what that means: It’s time to look back at the past 12 months in employment law and see what mattered most to HR.


Fisher & Phillips’ Richard Meneghello laid it all out for readers. Here’s some of what he found relevant about the past year:
Healthcare reform


This past year was supposed to be the year of implementation and compliance for President Obama’s key piece of legislation, but that was thrown out the window when the Treasury department announced the employer and insurer reporting requirements — and the accompanying penalties — under the law will be delayed until 2015.


Coupled with the issues the feds ran into the healthcare reform’s website, Menenghello notes that “the prognosis for 2014 is bound to be better, if only because it’s hard to imagine a year going more poorly.”
The EEOC


It was a mixed bag in 2013 for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.


Yes, despite sequestration and a decline in staffing and budget, HR’s favorite government agency still managed to obtain $372.1 million for bias victims in the 2013 fiscal year — a new record. That number beat the previous year by a cool $6.7 million.


And the EEOC received a total of 93,727 private sector charges of discrimination in FY 2013, a 6,000 charge decrease from the prior three fiscal years — but 2013 still comes in among the agency’s top five fiscal years. (A breakdown of types of bias claims filed in FY 2013 is expected to be released shortly.)


But this was also the year the agency truly began getting flack for its stance on criminal background checks.


As you’ll recall, in early 2012 the EEOC released guidance stating that criminal background checks could have a disparate impact on minorities, and that the agency would be keeping a close eye on firms that made those checks part of their hiring process.


Since then, the agency hasn’t been afraid to go after companies for their policies — and companies (and judges) haven’t been afraid to voice their disapproval.


Then nine states’ Attorneys General sent a complaint letter to the EEOC. And the entire state of Texas has filed suit against the agency, claiming that the EEOC’s stance unlawfully limits the ability of employers to exclude convicted felons from the workforce.


Bad news for companies: The EEOC isn’t likely to back down anytime soon.
LGBT employees


In June, the Supreme Court overturned the federal prohibition on same-sex marriage under the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).


That’s meant some changes for HR in states that allow same-sex marriage, especially for the Family and Medical Leave and the application of benefits for same-sex couples.
Social media


Menenghello notes that at least 10 states (Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington) passed laws in 2013 preventing firms from asking for employees’ or candidates’ social-media passwords.


Another 36 states have introduced similar legislation — or already have it pending.
The NLRB


The National Labor Relations Board, which has been sticking its nose into employers’ business for the past three years, hit a roadblock in 2013 when the a federal appeals court found that President Obama may have illegally appointed members to the board.


That means hundreds of cases may be overturned depending on how the Supreme Court rules in 2014.


If that wasn’t bad enough, a Washington, DC federal appeals court struck down the National Labor Relations Board’s bid to require employers to put up a special notice that outlines workers’ rights to organize.
Bullies


Workplace bullying remained a concern for many firms, and received national attention when Miami Dolphins’ lineman Richie Incognito’s was accused of egregiously bullying fellow player Jonathan Martin.


Not surprisingly, a number of states, including New York and Illinois, are looking into passing anti-workplace-bullying legislation.
Unpaid interns


Unpaid interns finally had their “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore” moment in 2013, filing and winning myriad lawsuits claiming they should have been paid for their work.


The downside? Some firms have begun pulling back or completely eliminating their intern programs.

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Article by Abhishek

FRIENDSHIP PARADOX

Why are your friends more popular than you?

DO YOU ever feel like your friends are more popular than you are? That may be because it is true—for nearly everyone. This odd result, dubbed the "friendship paradox", has most recently seen in twitter. When researchers from the University of Southern California looked at 5.8m micro bloggers (and 194m links between them) they found that, on average, both the people a user follows and, worse, those who follow him, have more followers than he does. How can this be?

            The friendship paradox was first identified in 1991 by Scott Feld, a sociologist working at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Back then, of course, Dr Feld was looking at real-world social networks rather than online ones. Then, last year, scientists from Cornell University confirmed that the result holds for Facebook's active users (721m people at the time of the research, joined by 69 billion virtual bonds of friendship). In fact, it obtains for any network where some members are more popular than others. And it stems from basic arithmetic.

            Consider a simple social network composed of four people: Prakash, Pavan, Ashok and Shashi. Prakash's only friend is Pavan. Pavan is also friends with both Ashok and Shashi, who are friends with each other, but not with Prakash. This means that Prakash has one friend (Pavan); Ashok and Shashi each have two friends (one another and Pavan); and Pavan has three. On average, then, each person in the network has two friends (eight friends divided by four people). But now consider how many friends each person's friends have (in other words, friends of friends). Prakash has one friend, Pavan, who in turn has three friends. Ashok's friends are Pavan, who has three friends, and Shashi, who has two, which means that Ashok's friends have five friends between them (even though their lists of friends overlap). The situation is analogous for Shashi. Pavan's friends, Prakash, Ashok and Shashi, have five friends in all. So the total number of friends of friends is 18. But the total number of friends in the network is eight, as before. So the average number of friends of friends (ie, how many friends each person's friends have) is 2.25 friends each (18 divided by eight), more than the two friends, on average, of the four people in the network. The reason, of course, is that Pavan, who has most friends in the first place, is also counted most often in the friends-of-friends category, raising the average. The same is true for other networks: a few well-connected individuals have more friends than most people, and they skew the average for everyone in whose network they appear (which, because of their connectedness, is a lot of people).

This number-crunching has some intriguing consequences—other than to justify not getting worked up about your relative social status. During the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009, for instance, Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University and James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, kept tabs on a large group of randomly picked Harvard undergraduates. They also monitored the people those participants named as friends. Remarkably, the friends became ill about two weeks before the random undergraduates, probably because they were, on average, better connected. With the world only imperfectly prepared for pandomic, being able to spot trends in this way could be useful.

Reference :

Economist 

Writer : Abhishek Vadlakonda
PGDM Student at IFIM B School

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Article by Ajay Kumar

A HUMANOID RESOURCING

Isn’t it fascinating that different mind-set of people attracts different perception, working towards the same organizational goals and objectives. But this may seem fascinating for interlopers or viewers, but as far as the organizationis concerned, they think of these behaviours as and could be the concept of changing attitudes. Is it possible to bring all the employees of an organization under one umbrella? Umbrella of - similar thinking, equivalent perception, acceptable attitude. The answer lies in the department called Human Resources.

A department which initiates, brings in the concept of mutual trust and understanding among its employees. These people take the greatest burden of understanding and evaluating the human brain which indirect forms the attitude, perception and behaviour. As I was surfing through the internet, I came across this beautiful quote which goes, “It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results”. Yes! Indeed it’s true. It’s the fuel that drives the employees to attain their goals. But is it always possible for a human to focus on these aspects with such disturbing noise around him/her? If the answer is yes! Then probably the demand for human resources would have been eliminated, isn’t it? But certainly we can say that the majority of them would probably say no.

            In that case, is it possible for organizations to achieve the highest targets with these intentions of people? This is the point where the role of HR department come where they certainly makes sure that the path laid forward is towards the success of the organization. They bring in a certain level of understanding among its employees, creating for a healthy work environment.Since the task involved in resolving this issue is huge, they take the burden of making a good amount of contribution towards the organizational goals and objectives.

            As at IFIM, the group of students who are keen in Human Resource enrichment, have a great opportunity in bringing a change at IFIM and at corporate level in future. Even though the group is small, they tend to act as one team. And the fuel is what that allows common people to achieve the uncommon results. They certainly carry the potential and talent in understanding humans, wherein making an impression of letting others to understand the human behaviour. To end on what we believe a human resource can do with the knowledge and understanding they possess, it’s just the time that will heal the way, if you have any pain. “You will make a mark; for the reason who started with the dot. It will not be late, because you have initiated and lighted the torch”.

Writer : Ajay Kumar S.
Finance Student at IFIM B School.

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