Live From Hr Base Camp

You have two businesses... two businesses that are solid and established. Each has its own company culture that has been curated and built over time to match its needs. That culture, for both, is organic; the entire team at each practice has created it and works hard to keep it alive within the walls. What happens when those two businesses collide? Which culture stays around, and which one fades away? How do the employees handle it? Whether you're expanding, selling your practice, or combining with another practice, businesses need to be prepared to handle this element of merging. Listen to this week's episode of What the Hell Just Happened?! to discover how to merge two businesses and their cultures successfully. 

Website copy: Dating in the workplace: where love blooms amidst the water cooler chats and paper jam crises. From an HR perspective, it's like watching a rom-com unfold, but with potential pitfalls, making it more of a tragicomedy. On this week's episode of What the Hell Just Happened?! listen to Paul Edwards and Ally Dagnino talk about dating in the workplace, from managers dating employees to employees dating employees to even employees dating patients. What's the danger here? Let's get into it. 

On this episode of What The Hell Just Happened?! CeCe Wilson and Paul Edwards discuss wild questions that employers ask potential candidates during interviews. How does asking someone what they would do if they opened a freezer to see a penguin inside help see if they will be a good candidate? The world may never know... Let's go over the better way to go about interview questions. 

Heard of the Pregnant Worker's Fairness Act? The major change with this federal law is that employers now must provide accommodations for an employee experiencing a “limitation” due to pregnancy. Previously, you were only legally obligated to provide accommodations if the employee had a pregnancy-related “disability.” So basically, limitation vs. disability. In some ways, this seems like semantics. But when it comes down to how these words are defined in the law (we won’t bore you with the details of that here), there can be a lot of gray areas and disagreement over whether something is a “limitation” or rises to the level of “disability.” Listen to Paul Edwards and Grace Godlasky break down the PWFA, and why it matters in your business. 

Do you ever think your employees may have concerns about the workplace, but haven't talked to you about it? A California employer decided to bring in a priest and offer their employees to "confess" to them, with the intention of using those confessions against their employees in the future if they ever decided to bring up those concerns. In short, this is NOT the way to go about hearing your employees' concerns! Listen to Paul Edwards and Ally Dagnino talk about it on this week's episode of What The Hell Just Happened?! 

Giving your employees in-house treatment as a benefit of employment is common, and a great way to increase employee retention! However, there are a lot of things to consider, especially when it comes to billing and how insurance carriers see things. Listen when Harley Hartliep and Paul Edwards sit down and talk about it in this week's episode of What the Hell Just Happened?!

You’d be surprised what’s out there when it comes to HR practices; we sure are. From an employer that liked touching the ear lobes of his employees all the way to potentially paying employees with pizza, listen to Paul and CeCe talk about various stories where HR has gone very wrong.

Events outside of work are super common, and sometimes even encouraged. Hosting your employees for after-work drinks or holiday parties to show appreciation is nice. However, are you inviting employees to these in the right way? A post on Reddit went viral where an employee felt pressured to go to the events outside of working hours as if their position in the company would be in jeopardy if they didn’t attend. Remember, if it feels required, then it is required. Listen to Paul Edwards and Ally Dagnino unpack this situation in this week’s episode.

How are performance evaluations done at your business? Everyone all at once? On each employee’s yearly employment anniversary? Which method do you think is best? Performance evaluations can be done in several different ways to match the needs of whatever business the employees belong to. However, doing them all at once at the same time each year can make it rough on not only the person giving the reviews but also the employees themselves. Listen to Jennie McLaughlin and CeCe Wilson as they take over the mic this week to talk about best practices around performance reviews.

One of the easiest ways to find yourself in hot water when it comes to human resources is by paying people incorrectly (which is easier to do than you think!). There are so many Timekeeping systems out there, how do you know which one to use? Listen as Paul Edwards and Tiana Starke discuss Timekeeping systems, what to look for in them, and let you know which ones are stupid and which ones are not.

Age discrimination is high on the list of everyday occurrences in the workforce. Forcing an older employee to retire, looking for “fresh out of college” applicants, and more can quickly land your business in the danger zone in the eyes of the EEOC. In this week’s episode of What the Hell Just Happened?! Listen to Paul Edwards and CeCe Wilson talk about the risks involved with this touchy subject, and how to ensure you don’t land in a place where the EEOC will be looking at you.

Conflict is everywhere and comes in many forms. In the workplace, it can bring down the entire vibe of your practice, and your patients will feel that shift too. What do you do, as a manager or owner, when employees approach you about conflict that they can’t seem to solve themselves? What steps do you take? Listen to this week’s episode to hear what Paul Edwards and Moriah Ochoa sit down and talk about it.

In this episode, we give managers payroll heartburn over bonuses and commission payments. Did you know that bonuses and commissions affect hourly wages and cause the need to adjust past pay for overtime? “What I need you to know, and this is the mindblowing part, is that when an employee works the first quarter of a year and earns a bonus or commission at the end of that quarter if they have worked any overtime during that first quarter where the bonus was subject to -  YOU  have to go back and look at the overtime hours and add that bonus into the overtime hours. You owe them more money. Not only do you owe the commission/bonus, but now that you know how much they earned, you need to go back and adjust their overtime pay.”

One trend in the world of HR right now is that employers are using social media to look up the people applying to your workplace. For years now we’ve been telling our HR Community that there are intrinsic issues with doing so. The prevailing thinking is that it gives you the chance to see if the person you are thinking about hiring is “normal”? but the problem is, you may also or only come up with things that you don’t want to find. Listen to Jennie McLaughlin and CeCe Wilson in this week’s episode to hear why we advocate against this practice.

Recently, there was a court case about one employee claiming the use of the requested pronouns of another employee went against their religion, so they would not do it. What would you do if you were an employer in this situation? The answer is trickier than you think. Our main guidance: engage in the interactive process. Listen to Paul Edwards, Nora Gustafson, and Amanda Rishor sit down to unpack this issue and the best way to handle it as an employer.

Recently, Crumbl Cookies found themselves in trouble with the Department of Labor for violating child labor laws. This issue is more common than you may think, as many states have specific laws surrounding minors having jobs. If you are considering hiring a minor this summer, listen to Paul Edwards, Kristen Hof, and Amanda Rishor talk about the various things to remember when you decide to bring a child on as an employee.

One thing we constantly get asked about by our community of over 10,000 practice owners and managers is how to handle employees traveling for a work event. Do you need to pay them for the entire time? Can you restrict their drinking? What about rooming employees together to save some money on hotel costs? Listen as Paul Edwards and Michelle Richards discuss this popular topic and answer some of your most asked questions.

One of our employees recently went to a concert where the show's opener gave out a feedback form. Of course, as HR nerds, this inspired us to talk about the always asked about topic: giving feedback to employees. Most people want feedback, but there are right and wrong ways to go about it. Listen to Paul Edwards, Kristen Hof, and Amanda Rishor talk about why you shouldn’t be afraid to give feedback to employees and what the benefits of those conversations are (if you aren’t giving them feedback, they will start making it up in their head). 

A good amount of states out there have now legalized cannabis for recreational purposes along with medical. Employers are increasingly facing employees coming into the office smelling like weed. Even if they do not seem impaired (if they do, that is an entirely different issue), there are steps you can take to ensure the smell is not present in your office. Listen to this week’s episode, where Paul, Nora, and Amanda sit down to discuss what to do when facing this situation.

A.I. is everywhere, and it isn’t going away. More and more discoveries are being made about how popular A.I. tools, such as ChatGPT, can help with various daily tasks, even running a business. There is even talk out there about how certain A.I. tools can run your HR department for you or write your employee handbook. However, listen to Paul Edwards, Ally Dagnino, and Amanda Rishor talk about the risks involved with taking the human out of human resources and using it as a solution rather than a tool.