Free Printable Employee Attendance Form   As another offering in our template area of the site, we’re posting our Free Printable Employee Attendance Form. Feel free to use this blank Free Printable Employee Attendance Form for your company. As a business owner, documenting attendance can greatly help mis-understandings when employees go to book their vacations. In addition having a place for both the employee and supervisor to sign helps to ensure the timely completion of the form and creates a paper trail to lower process errors.   Customize the form as you see fit.      Modern Business Associates is an HR company that frequently helps companies with their business forms.  As a Professional Payroll and HR outsource organization, our clients rely on us to help them effectively deal with these kinds of topics.    

Occupational Health concerns at a workplace, tips to avoiding workplace injuries.   Occupational health concerns at the workplace can cause un-needed stress on your workforce and expose you to liability. Your goal, as a business owner, should be to create a safe work environment for your employees. As part of your occupational health plan, you may also consider the health of your customers, suppliers, nearby communities who may be impacted by your business operations. Create a safety manual and include: Proper procedures for performing routine tasks that could be dangerous. (Employee feedback on this section is very beneficial to creating a good safety manual.) What to do in an emergency: fire, natural disaster, etc. Location of fire-exits and fire extinguishers. Have an insurance professional or attorney review your manual and policies. Lastly, make a point that safety meetings and inspections are important.   As inspiration, you might want to focus on two main benefits ...

  Employee Employer Conflict – Communication Tips for Avoiding Employee employer Conflicts in the workplace are not uncommon. Perceived conflicts between employees and employers hold great potential for distracting from a happy and efficient work environment. Reviewing the values that each party typical holds dear, can help to understand the other side’s point of view. Only then, can true conflict resolution begin.   Employee Interests during Employee Employer Conflict Typically, employees want a stable and growing company to work for. Ample amounts of fairness, equality and respect help to grow their enthusiasm for their work. Conflict can arise when the employees feel business decisions are being made to hit company goals, that don’t seemingly benefit employees. For example, a decision to perform layoffs, rather than having lower quarterly profits can cause conflict.   Business Owner: As Employers during Employee Employer Conflict As a business owner, you must focus on the busin ...

  Employer Education Benefits Tips When Creating a Benefits Package When creating a benefits package for your employees, it’s important to offer a package that can attract and retain employees. Potential employees may weigh their employer education benefits heavily in their choices of employment. You can also design a package that will expand the capabilities of your employees through education benefits. By growing your employees internally, you can help avoid the time and risks associated with losing employees and hiring new ones.   Employer Education benefits usually come in two flavors:   Tuition Reimbursement Continuing Education   Tuition Reimbursement Companies offering Tuition Reimbursement programs are generally more college friendly, and these programs are typically much more lucrative to your employees than Continuing Education programs. When looking at a Tuition Reimbursement program, make sure you decide upon and document the normal parameters surrounding ...

What is the legal definition of harassment? At least a few times a year, one of your managers, or one of their employees, will get into a situation and need to ask, “What is the legal definition of harassment?” Now, while this is usually a very loaded and stress inducing question to be asked by a manager, this article will just focus on giving you an overview of the legal definition.   So, what is the legal definition of harassment? Harassment is a kind of discrimination that can erupt from a handful of different categories. First, let’s highlight a few of the different types: Sexual harassment Unwanted sexually explicit words or advances, gestures and images. Applying a positive or negative personnel action based on accepting or refusing sexual advances. Can also be based on negative treatment on the basis of gender. Race harassment Most often occurs as offensive comments, jokes, gestures. Includes even when the victim and harasser are the same race. Religiou ...

Free Employer Advice and Tips We strive to make the Modern Business Associates free tips area a wealth of quality articles that can benefit you with your daily concerns about running your business. Please click on our list of topics on this page to see more articles to address your specific current needs and offer some advice. Also, click in the “search” box to type in keywords to look for more free employer advice and tips. Some of our most popular articles include:   A free template for a letter confirming employment   Cons of Hiring an intern   Where’s a good payroll calculator?   U.S. Child Labor Law changes that may affect you     Modern Business Associates frequently deals with outsourcing HR and Payroll functions.  As a Professional Payroll and HR outsource organization, our clients rely on us to help them effectively deal with these kinds of topics.

Types of workplace harassment Workplace harassment comes in a variety of deliveries and categories.   The harassment delivery mediums include: In person In writing By telephone Via e-mail Types of workplace harassment can also occur through any other means of communication. (text messaging, instant messaging) Harassment can be physical, verbal or visual. Examples of verbal harassment include but are not limited to unwelcome comments, jokes, insults and name-calling. It can include any other words and conduct that demean, stigmatize, intimidate, or single out a person because of his or her sex, race, color, religion, national origin, age, disability or other legally protected status.   Examples of physical or visual types of workplace harassment include but are not limited to unwelcome physical contact, damaging personal property, possession or display of derogatory pictures or other graphic materials.   The most frequent types of workplace harassment occur ...

  U.S. Child Labor Laws - Changes that may affect your business   The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Child-Labor Regulations have recently been revised. On July, 19, 2010, the final revisions to the child-labor regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act will become legally effective.   The Department of Labor has been receiving comments on these most recent suggested regulation changes to the U.S. child labor laws since 2007. The DOL states that these revisions are supposed to make it easier for people under that age if 18 to get a job. These revisions only apply to non-agricultural positions. The Department of Labor (DOL) is scheduled to revise the provisions concerning minors in agricultural employment. The revisions single out industries like banking, information technology and advertising.    While the regulations offer an array of rules to follow, the most recent revisions address specific issues:   There is a provision permitting 14 and 15 year olds to wo ...

  Your Employee’s Work email expectation of privacy – New Supreme Court Decision adds some clarity. The latest Supreme Court ruling help that a California police department’s review of sexually charged text messages sent by the officer to his wife and to his mistress from his employer-issued pager, did not constitute an invasion of the employee’s privacy. This overturned a previous ruling by the 9th Circuit. (Link to the full opinion in City of Ontario v. Quon).   As a business owner, you should take note that the Supreme Court’s decision was largely motivated by concept that the police department’s review of the messages was in line with its policy and was conducted for a valid business reason. Also, that the implications of the decision on the employees texts in this case could also be seen to apply to the work email expectation of privacy for the average employee.   The officer had exceeded the allotted monthly number of messaged approved for his text pager and, according with policy, ...

Hot summer weather can turn up the heat on your HR department, be prepared. Here is a list of things to help you prepare your business for complexities that Summer brings, regarding increased HR work and liabilities.   Staff vacation planning. How will you track vacation time? What is your policy for receiving and granting vacation requests? Think about a few quick policies to publish to your staff. Having all requests sent via email, to create some documentation and prevent misunderstandings, can prove to be very useful. Summer introduces the opportunity for employees to push the boundaries of the dress code. Revealing and/or inappropriate hot weather clothing may start to trickle into your workplace. Consider clear dress policies and a consistent application of them. Temporary staffing whether it’s for increased business, or for intern programs come with their own HR concerns regarding how they are treated and compensated. Doublecheck that your policies are in compliance. Empl ...