But hang on, what’s the point of making someone find a printer, and a scanner, and a pen, and those little “sign here” stickies anyway? Why, crime, of course!

Open-floor-plan offices may not compare to the shipyards, manufacturing plants, and airports that first brought over-ear headphones to the workplace. But noise pollution is still a serious issue in knowledge work.

When someone is paid for a day they didn't work, it MUST be entered into payroll as some kind of Paid Time Off type. Otherwise, there's no way to pay it. Most of the uncommon leave types don't allow negative balances in payroll systems. So if your time off isn't allocated to another bucket, it can't get paid. The discrepancy could even block payroll and prevent everyone from getting paid.

Your handbook should help people make decisions. Not just disciplinary decisions. The handbook should draw bright lines where possible, and give guidance for situations that are unclear. Your handbook should give guidance on the unspoken habits your organization runs on.

Hiring the right people is only one ingredient to elite operations. Excellence is also about preventing the circumstances that leave room for mistakes. The procedures for putting down the CAUTION WET FLOOR signs that prevent the slip-and-falls of history.

Worst of all, striking fear into every HR leader and PeopleOps specialist is the Parental Leave Policy 😱. Parental leave isn’t just about giving people 12 weeks off.

Hourly workers often accrue time off based on the time actually worked, which may or may not be under their control.

Rudeness bothers me. It occurred to me that I could refuse in protest. Make everyone wait until the woman came out of the handicapped stall so we could all stare her down as she washed her hands.

Unless you fired them for something super unethical or illegal (like sexual harassment, fraud, violence, or microwaving cabbage soup), there’s no need to report it. Let the state make the call.

If a California-based employee leaves, check that your provider calculates the accrual on a calendar day basis. If the employee has used some of their balance, this can get tricky.

Is it okay for an hourly employee to work 30 hrs/week (instead of 40) for 3 weeks due to illness without taking intermittent FMLA? Their manager is cool with it and the employee doesn't want to take PTO.

This story still makes me laugh... and haunts me to this day. Is a boundary still a boundary if only one person asserts it? Or is it rebellion?

If you think that looking up worker’s comp codes is boring, you’re missing out. If you give me a list of thousands of obscure jobs, I’m going to lose at least 20 minutes going through it.

I spoke to someone last week who was confused about how to administer her company’s sick leave policy. This HR person (or should I say “truancy officer”?) was essentially blocking people from using their time and then deleting it before they could. That’s not how that works.

Somewhere between two weeks and thirty years, it has to become something else.

Most teams treat FLSA salary exemptions as a payroll hack. But you need to do more than pay someone a flat rate for them to be exempt from overtime.

And yet, if 50 of your employees can’t meet at Applebees after work, someone taking leave might not have legal job protection. Even if the work is covered. Even if the team has capacity. Even if the impact is minimal.

Parental leave combines the most complicated parts of HR into one policy: protected classes, disability, paid time off and sick time, obscure payroll esoterica, employees who are "active" but not "working" (and sometimes don't come back when you expect), insurance (policy details, deductions, and a qualifying event), onboarding and offboarding (maybe more than once per person), a bajillionty federal, state, and local laws, many of which conflict

People often confuse their job being 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 (by FMLA, etc.) with getting 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗱. It's a common mistake. I'm sorry. I really am. I know you're going through a lot. I hate delivering this message when it's already too late.

We knew the compliance risks when we picked the non-Safe Harbor 401k option. We thought we were keeping an eye on it.