January 26, The U.S. Supreme Court, in Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville, clarified, complicated and expanded the scope of retaliation issues.  The Court held that an employee, who answers questions and conveys information about discriminatory conduct during an internal investigation, is engaging in “protected activity” under Title VII.  Surprisingly, to me at least, some lower courts had found that such involvement would not constitute “active” opposition under Title VII.

The case involved allegations of sexual harassment by another employee.  During an investigation interview the plaintiff, a 30 year employee, was asked if she had witnessed an employee’s “inappropriate behavior.”  She responded that she, herself, had also been subject to harassment.  (She had not complained about the conduct.)    No action was taken against the purported harasser, but the plaintiff was fired, allegedly for embezzlement.    She sued, claiming illegal retaliation under Title VII.

The Supreme Court, siding with the employee, basically said that it would be goofy (my word, not theirs) to “protect an employee who reports discrimination on her own initiative, but not one who reports the same discrimination in the same words when her boss asks a question.”   This case will likely serve to further increase the number of retaliation claims.

“Times are tough.” “We have to tighten our belts.” “We have to work smarter, not harder.” “We have to do more with less.” You may be sick of hearing these clichés but they all ring true, especially now. One way to ‘tighten your belt” is to make staff meetings more efficient.  This will not only save the company time and money, it will reduce the staff’s frustration level from having to attend boring, unproductive meetings.

In order to understand the cost savings of running more effective meetings, you must “do the math” to understand what meetings cost. Here is an example to illustrate. Some studies suggest that middle and upper level managers spend between 40%-50% of their time attending meetings. For the purposes of this example, let’s play it safe, and say that they spend 30% of their time in meetings. If the average salary of a manager is $70k (including benefits) per year this would translate to $21,000 cost for one manager to attend meetings over the course of the year. If your company has 10 managers this translates to $210,000 spent on meetings; and $2.1 million for 100 managers. This translates to about $33.65 per hour, per manager, to attend a meeting. So, if ten managers attend a 3 hour meeting, it costs the company roughly $1,000. You get the idea. (more…)

Tough economic times require that difficult decisions be made at all levels of a business enterprise to remain profitable, break even, or even minimize losses to ride out the storm. With employee costs such as compensation, benefits, etc. most often being a company’s highest expense, HR departments are often in the eye of the storm when cost cutting actions are required.

An April 2009 Watson Wyatt report titled, “Effect on the Economic Crisis on HR Programs” shows that the majority of companies are not planning cost-cutting actions for the next 12 months.

Source: HR Magazine (SHRM) June 2009 (pg 20)