The cleanliness of the office refrigerator and kitchen (or lack thereof) tends to prompt a lot of comments by employees. Most of us think that it’s “the others” who are the slobs. But just how clean is your desk?

There could be a whole new type of employment lawsuit looming over the horizon. Legislation has been introduced in several states that would allow employees to sue who have been subject to bullying, demeaning behavior, yelling at, or otherwise abused by their managers.

That’s right; HRN will be an exhibitor at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 59th Annual Conference and Exposition taking place in Las Vegas, NV June 24-26, 2007. In addition to making a key Performance Pro product announcement HRN product experts, along with yours truly, will be on hand to deliver product demonstrations, distribute literature, and answer questions regarding our various human resources performance management, compensation administration, and HR compliance products. If you are attending SHRM, plan to stop by and visit with us at booth #1021.

Caring for an aging population is growing more difficult. We are living longer. Many older Americans can no longer rely on sons and daughters for end of life care. An awful lot of baby boomers will be needing a lot of home health care in the next few years. Who will care for this rapidly growing segment of our population? Many of us who will be unable to care for ourselves as we age will be cared for by home care providers. Who are these people? They’re generally female, many times minorities, and typically not paid a lot above minimum wage. And, if they’ve met the companionship exemption of the Fair Labor Standards Act, they’ve been exempt from minimum wage and overtime payments. That exemption was challenged by a long time caregiver in the case of Long Island Care at Home, Ltd. v. Coke, recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Just in time for Father’s Day . . . I was reading on cnn.com yesterday morning that according to a new CareerBuilder.com survey: 37% of working dads would quit if their spouse or partner could support the family. Another 38% say they would take a pay cut to spend more time with their kids. 36% say their job does not offer flexible arrangements like telecommuting. Nearly one in four (24 percent) working dads feel work is negatively impacting their relationship with their children. 48% have missed a significant event in their child's life due to work at least once in the last year and nearly one in five (18 percent) have missed four or more. More than one in four (27 percent) working dads say they spend more than 50 hours a week on work and nearly one in 10 (8 percent) spend more than 60 hours. In terms of the time they spend with their children, one in four (25 percent) working dads spend less than one hour with their kids each day.

A couple of sentences in two employers’ employee handbooks seemed innocent enough. The first one involved confidentiality: “We honor confidentiality. We recognize and protect the confidentiality of any information concerning the company, its business plans, its partners [i.e., employees], new business efforts, customers, accounting and financial matters.”

If you haven’t been confused about the Computer Exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) you may be the only one. The FLSA exemption tests, used to determine who must be paid overtime (nonexempt) and who doesn’t (exempt employees), have confused most of us for a long time. The FLSA was passed in 1938 and has had a hard time keeping pace with the world in the last 70 years. Positions that didn’t exist in the 1930s are particularly hard to classify, with computer jobs being especially troublesome.

We are currently in mid 2007, navigating in uncharted waters as far as the labor market of the past ten years is concerned. The economy is stalled, home prices are falling, but the stock market remains near record levels, unemployment is low and companies are experiencing talent shortages as they position themselves to compete in an ever increasing, and more competitive global marketplace. We now have neither a labor buyers or sellers market. It is eerily balanced. As a result employers are doing all they can and investing in tools and processes to attract and retain a skilled, agile, and motivated workforce.

Have you had a mother call to arrange an interview for her son? A father who wanted to negotiate pay and benefits for his daughter? How about a parent who called to complain that his child was being treated unfairly at work, that other employees are “being mean” or that your written warning was inappropriate? If you haven’t had parents calling you concerned about their kids at work, stay tuned, as you just may.

Apparently a lot of people are talking about job satisfaction or the lack thereof.

How satisfied are you with your job? As with most of us it may depend on the day. But then again you may wonder.

As a manager of staff, the surest sign that the summer season is around the corner is the increase in employee vacation requests. Depending upon how many staff you have, managing the summer vacation schedule can bring any manager to reach for the Tums. It pretty much starts in May with employees keeping a close eye on the calendar to see what weeks have already been taken by other staff as they dance the dance of waiting as long as possible to request time off but also not wanting to let ‘the good weeks’, or the week they want get taken. To me, it always seems like this employee or that employee just took a week off, how could they possibly have accrued vacation time to request another week. In contrast, I can’t remember when I last took a week off. This got me to thinking about just how much vacation time on average American workers take each year. I was surprised with what I discovered. By comparison to most every other industrialized country, American worker’s work longer and harder and vacation the least. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we get paid vacation at all.