Your boss’s gender can affect just how much pain he or she seems to inflict. Researchers at the University of Toronto compared men and women working in one of three situations: (1) for a lone male supervisor, (2) for a lone female supervisor, or (3) for both a male and a female supervisor. Which one sent the stress meter off the scale?

It’s important for employers to plan to prevent workplace violence and respond to it if prevention fails. While every employer needs a customized plan that fits its particular workplace, good violence-prevention strategies share common elements.

As the economy shrinks, unemployment is growing in New York and throughout the country. If your organization plans to lay off workers or already has, brace yourself. Lots of former employees are going to list you and your managers as references when they seek new jobs. That means it’s time to make sure you have policies in place on how to handle reference-check calls.

Effective Jan. 1, 2009, employers with 15 or more employees have a new set of ADA rules to contend with. President Bush signed off on a law significantly amending the ADA in September, greatly changing how employers must handle disabled applicants and employees.

If you’ve ever visited YouTube.com, you may have clicked on videos showing an assortment of office meltdowns. Laptops get smashed, desks are overturned and staplers are thrown. While some of these are funny to watch, each one probably made you think, “Man, I hope nothing like that ever happens at our office.” Sad to say, it could ...

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled for the first time on the proof employees must offer to make a religion-based hostile work environment claim stick. The case, Cutler v. Dorn, established that New Jersey courts must decide workplace religious discrimination claims using the same legal standards they use in racial and gender discrimination claims.

Just one incident of name-calling or behavior that could be interpreted as racist—if sufficiently severe—might be enough to color other incidents in a racist light. And if a complaint leads to court, that may mean the harassed employee could get a chance to show a jury just how unpleasant co-workers made his life.

Q. I recently heard the phrase “tryout time” and wondered what this phrase meant and how it may be applicable to my workplace ...

Here’s another reason to train everyone on the intricacies of the FMLA: Employees who win even a small amount of damages in FMLA interference cases automatically get their attorneys’ fees paid by their employer. And that can add up to
big bucks ...

It takes more than having a written policy to avoid liability for sexual harassment. If you back up your policy with regular training and quickly fix any harassment problems that come to your attention, chances are you won’t be liable unless the harasser was a supervisor and the employee suffered an adverse employment action ...

On Sept. 25, President Bush signed the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, providing greater protection to disabled employees under the ADA. The amendments, which passed the House and Senate with broad bipartisan support, dramatically expand the class of people who are entitled to protection under the ADA.

It’s a recurring nightmare for HR: You hire a promising applicant, send him to expensive training and then lose the value of that training when he jumps to another employer. Employers can get that training investment back, but it's tricky. Here's how.

It takes more than a written policy to avoid liability for sexual harassment. But if you back up your policy with regular training and reminders and quickly fix any harassment problems that come to your attention, chances are you won’t be liable unless the harasser was a supervisor and the employee suffered an adverse employment action ...

When one of your employees confides in her manager that she’s being harassed by a co-worker, what will that manager say? Hopefully, it’ll be something more constructive than “Go along with it."

Q. One of the positions in our manufacturing company has a formal apprenticeship program. To stay accredited, we must submit monthly reports showing the number of classroom training hours in which each apprentice participates. Submission of these forms is mandatory, and yet every month there are always some apprentices (for whatever reason) who fail to submit their forms. Can we withhold a portion of an apprentice’s paycheck at the end of the month until we receive the training reports? ...