Another update from the Jungle…..
Jayne accepted the first job offer after college because she was worried about making her student loan payments. She also wanted to prove to her parents that she could take care of herself. In hindsight, Jayne wondered if living at home was really so bad because her new employer is insane.
During the endless rounds of interviews employees gushed about the joys of working for the company and its founder, Wesley, but Jayne was an English minor in college and she can read subtext. She quickly picked up on the jokes about timed bathroom breaks and monitored phone calls.
One young woman sheepishly admitted that she was busted for her negative comments on her personal Facebook page. All the employees in that interview session laughed when Jayne said that she had heard that employees couldn’t be forced to provide access to their personal social media accounts to their employers. They assured Jayne that it was no big deal.
Jayne was young and desperate so she took the job despite feeling uncomfortable. At orientation, she was required to sign a confidentiality agreement that allows the company to search her personal belongings at any time to ensure that confidential information is not stolen.
Jayne’s discomfort zoomed into paranoia after she updated her LinkedIn profile with a description of her new job. The next day, Rhoda, the HR Director, told Jayne that she had violated the company’s social media policy which covers postings on LinkedIn.
The policy requires employees to include a statement that Wesley is a brilliant and inspiring boss and the employee is privileged to work for and learn from him. Rhoda also told Jayne to change her head shot because it didn’t show her as a happy, loyal employee. Jayne asked how she could show loyalty in a photograph. Rhoda shrugged. Jayne returned to her cubicle, a blob of raging paranoia.
What options are available to Jayne?
- She can stroll around the office humming the lyrics of a Buffalo Springfield song, “paranoia strikes deep/into your life it will creep”.
- She can embrace her paranoia and flit around the office in a Star Trek uniform talking to her co-workers about Klingons.
- She can hide in her cubicle pretending to work while she searches for a new job.
Most employers have social media policies setting parameters on what employees can
post and reserving the right to monitor employees’ social media for violations of the policy. However, the more restrictive and intrusive these policies are the more likely that they will be found to have violated federal and state laws.
If your company is struggling with HR issues, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor can help you create HR policies that are appropriate for your company’s size and then serve as a resource to your staff as the policies are implemented.
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After the fiasco of their Thanksgiving dinner, Rudy and Trish decide they will skip a holiday party this year. Even a warlock and a witch need a break. Jerry, the werewolf next door, offers to host a holiday party, but they turn him down. Every surface in Jerry’s house is covered in dog hairs and Trish is a finicky witch who doesn’t like the way the dog hairs stick to her clothing.
hosting a Christmas party for employees. Trish immediately complains to the HR manager that calling it a Christmas party interferes with her religious beliefs as a pagan. She threatens to take concerted action with the other witches to protect her workplace rights.
Trish brings sugar cookies shaped like pentagrams. She’s added a magic spell that increases the eater’s happiness. After eating a cookie, the HR manager smiles benevolently at her coworkers.
rily. As he passes the buffet table, he snatches one of Trish’s cookies and gulps it down in two bites.
As the holiday season kicks in, Anne isn’t feeling very happy. In fact, she’s depressed. She’s struggling to pay her bills after a couple of unexpected expenses, including a burst water pipe in her basement.
er was nagging her about taking a trip to Hawaii.
Anne doesn’t want to think about military sacrifices right now. Her oldest son is on active duty and she learned last week that he is being deployed to Iraq. Anne always knew this day would come but it’s still a shock.
Pearl Harbor were also repaired and used for the remainder of the war.
Dawn, the Chief Talent Officer for her company, is slogging through the remaining weeks of the political campaign. She hates what it’s done to her job. This week she’s thinking of changing her title to Chief Tortured Officer
to show up every morning to depress Dawn with her worries that the election will degenerate into violence and mayhem.
The workforce is as divided as the nation and it’s getting ugly. Yesterday Rory broke up a fight in the employee parking lot. The Trump and Clinton supporters were trying to rip the opposing candidate’s stickers off car bumpers. Rory waded in, knocked a few heads together and ordered everyone back to work.
t the candidates and their families. Then they stand around arguing about what they’ve read.
But as the company expanded, new employees lacked the camaraderie of the ones who had helped build the business. Adding employees meant more personality conflicts and scheduling difficulties. Bobbye wanted to add some structure to the company by creating HR policies to ensure everyone understood what was expected of them.
Bobbye decided to change the brand of coffee for the office. A day after the change, Billy walked in to the break room, saw the new brand name, and hurled the coffee can across the room into the garbage can. Now Billy and Bobbye don’t talk to each other in the office. They relay messages through employees. Their employees used to call them B&B or B-squared. Now it’s Bombs Away.
employee perks, starting with the health plan. He tells employees they will have to begin contributing to the premium. Cutting back on perksannoys the employees and Bobbye.
Even free beer at the Friday Afternoon Frazzle can’t attract most employees because they feel so uncomfortable around Billy and Bobbye. The least bright employees are choosing sides. The smarter employees are trying to stay neutral. The smartest employees have already bailed out for more stable workplaces. On its present trajectory, the company will implode.
team managed a product line worth more than all the rest of the products managed by Leo’s division. Luckily for Ted, he appealed to Oscar.
Now Leo and Ted are trying to screw each other’s careers by sucking up to Oscar. They suck up by inviting Oscar to happy hour. Oscar appreciates having Leo or Ted cover his bar tab. But all these soggy nights mean that productivity is suffering as Leo and Ted slide into alcoholism.
senior management team about Leo’s and Ted’s potential disability due to alcoholism.
Meanwhile, Audrey discovers she’s pregnant. She hauls out her copy of the handbook, which is propping up a corner of her desk, and unfolds it to read the section on the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). She tells Jane she wants to take FMLA leave to have her baby and asks for the leave request form. 
Andrea is a lawyer in the corporate legal department of a major company. She’s never quite fit in with the rest of the department and tends to work alone rather than as part of a team. She gets the assignments the other lawyers don’t want.
But wine and chocolate can’t solve every problem. Andrea’s morale continues to disintegrate and she becomes deeply depressed. She begins seeing a psychologist for mental health counseling. The counseling sessions help her with personal problems even as her work situation deteriorates.
The above scenario is loosely based on a California lawsuit about ten years ago where the company argued unsuccessfully that paying health insurance premiums meant it had a right to know the details of an employee’s mental health treatment. Unfortunately, arguments like the one raised by the California case make it difficult to convince employees to seek mental health treatment from an EAP or their health insurance plan.
Maryann handles payroll questions for her employer. She and her coworkers have been scrambling for a couple of years to ensure they comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Last year was all about finding a software program that would allow the company to track the hours of its temporary employees.
Rob has a small consulting business that does project-based work. That means Rob needs a flexible work force that can easily gear up when there are lots of clients, but can also gear down when projects are few.
economic reality test says that a worker who is economically dependent on an employer is an employee and not an independent contractor. Rob doesn’t know if his workers are economically dependent on him. He uses them part-time and always believed that they did work for other consulting businesses.
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