Another update from the Jungle….
Billy and Bobbye opened their business a year after they married. They hired a couple of employees and everyone was happy. Billy and Bobbye were proud of their success. Employees enjoyed the perks, like having the company cover 100% of health insurance premiums for employees and the Friday Afternoon Frazzle at a nearby brew pub.
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.
Billy wasn’t ready to give up the entrepreneurial attitude of the early days so he shot down Bobbye’s ideas. Their disagreement about the business spilled over into their marriage. Before long, they were taking potshots at each other every day.
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.
All these spats are tanking the bottom line as deadlines are missed and quality crashes. Clients leave for calmer and more reliable service. To save money, Billy decides arbitrarily to reduce the number of 
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.
What should Billy and Bobbye do next?
- They can continue to fight until there is nothing left but the company’s debts.
- They can seek marriage counseling to save their marriage and possibly their company.
- They can agree to divorce and split the company’s assets as part of the divorce settlement.
In the actual situation, the feuding owners divorced and the wife bought her former’s husband’s interest in the business. Some employees helped with the transition while most left for other jobs.
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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.
named Trish was searching for true love. Like so many others, she found it at the office. Her Prince Charming was John, Vin another division of the company. John was also looking for true love having just wrapped up a nasty divorce with his former true love
Trish met John at the office Christmas Party and thought he was a jerk. She changed her mind at the summer picnic when she saw him playing with his kids and lobbing water balloons at other managers. John looked like an Olympic athlete compared to some of the other managers.
As in a fairytale, when a workplace romance fizzles people behave badly. John stopped responding to her emails and text messages. He also told Trish’s boss that Trish could never work in his division again because she was a lousy worker. Meanwhile, Trish’s performance nosedived as she realized her fairy tale was fizzling.
In the actual situation, the manager was counseled for violating HR policies and wrecked his chances at a promotion. The woman accepted a settlement of her claims and left the company still looking for true love.
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.
She’s afraid she can’t afford a group plan this year either.
Betty started a new job about six months ago but already the old patterns are starting to repeat. Betty’s last job became so unbearable that she quit. Now she seems to be headed down the same path again.
and found her current job.
HR Compliance Jungle 