HR the human resource magazine is for sharing ideas, finding human resouce information, best practices, solution and sharing your own ideas and experience with the HR community. Magazine is mailed to most human resource decision makers in 23 C entral Kentucky Counties. For more details about topic in HR or to publish your ad, contact Publisher John Brokamp at john@samplerpubs.com or call 859-225-4466.

Four legal ways to cut pay costs in tough times

Surviving the downturn often means cutting hours and pay to keep the company afloat. That’s understandable and legal, unless you make one of the common cutback mistakes and run afoul of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The four ways to steer clear of legal trouble:
1. Work cutbacks in full-week increments. It’s a practice common during holidays or other slow or down-season periods. The FLSA permits full-week cuts from exempts’ pay if there is no work available during that whole week. Note: During a full-week shutdown, make sure exempts don’t do “a little work” from home. That would mean they worked part of the week, making them eligible for a full week’s pay.
2. A formal short-week schedule. That is, it’s OK to announce that for the four weeks in January, the company will be closed on Fridays, and pay will be cut commensurately. Make sure to: Announce the revised schedule as far in advance as possible so as not to make it look like you’re haphazardly cutting and have no real salary standards for exempts. Even if you cut days, you can’t increase nonexempts’ workday hours to the point that they exceed 40 hours in a week — unless you want to pay them overtime. And remember you can’t cut exempts’ salary below the magic $455-a-week figure — that would put them in the nonexempt category and make them eligible for overtime pay at a later date.
What to avoid: In a short-term pinch, some companies decide to suddenly clip a day or two off the current workweek, and lower paychecks commensurately. But the FLSA states that if exempt employees are ready and available to work in any scheduled full week in which they’ve already worked, they have to be paid for the full week.
3. Require employees to use vacation time or PTO. The U.S. Department of Labor has ruled it’s OK to mandate that employees use available vacation time or PTO during a shutdown, especially when the shutdown is for “budgetary concerns.”
4. Across-the-board pay cuts, with no reduction in the workweek. Granted, this won’t get you on the “Best Places to Work” list, but it’s a cost-cutting maneuver that’s generally legal. And to pull it off usually requires some heavy lifting in the area of maintaining morale and employee relations. So, for instance, you could announce a 5% pay cut for all employees. Just be sure no one drops below the legal minimum wage or that exempts stay above the $455-a-week mark.

Caution: Some state laws are tougher than federal laws when it comes to allowable cutbacks. Check with your state department of labor to make sure cuts don’t violate state labor laws.

Most Workers Say Their Job's Stagnant

More than half of workers say their jobs are stagnant, and nearly two-thirds of workers say they have no desire to take on a leadership role, according to a survey by Development Dimensions International, a firm that specializes in talent management.
Respondents who said they felt that their job was stagnant were twice as likely to say they had no room to advance (32% of those who said their jobs are stagnant vs. 18% who said they aren't), were less likely to say they are asked to do more (14% vs. 27%), and say they are given fewer exciting challenges (3% vs. 26%).
The survey found that 46% percent of workers who said their jobs are stagnant said they "just do their job and go home," compared with 20% of those who don't feel stagnant.
The survey found that 44 percent of workers said they'll look for another job when the economy improves. Among workers who felt their jobs were stagnant, 77 percent said they'd leave for another company if given the opportunity.
"The economy has forced organizations to focus on generating revenue and delivering bottom-line results, but this data tells us they've forgotten about the importance of also focusing on their people--putting their organizations at risk for high turnover, poor performance and low engagement," said Jim Davis, vice president of workforce development for DDI.

Deloitte rolls out career customisation - Pilot scheme allows staff to ‘dial up or down’

Deloitte has introduced a form of flexible career management that allows staff to “dial up” or “dial down” their professional life to suit their needs, according to Sarah Jepson, talent adviser, human capital consulting, at the firm.
The “mass career customisation” initiative has been piloted in the US by the professional services firm for a year, and will be particularly important for retaining and engaging staff as the economy recovers, said Jepson, speaking at the StepStone Summit in London.
“It’s based on an idea that an individual has times when they can dial up or dial down and take time out depending on their individual priorities. It’s an approach to career management that allows you to have that flexibility,” said Jepson.
Dialling down could take the form of career breaks or adopting more flexible hours, whereas dialling up could mean taking on an additional workload or moving to a different location, explained Jepson. About 10 per cent of eligible employees in the US had chosen to do one or the other, she added.
The pilot has resulted in increased employee satisfaction and has attracted new people into Deloitte, said Jepson. The firm is planning to roll out career customisation to all of its 42,000 US employees by May 2010 and is now starting to pilot the programme in Europe, she said.
Both dialling up and dialling down are monitored against specific criteria, explained Jepson. “These are whether people want to be fixed in a location, whether they want to work part time, and whether they are happy to stay at a certain grade or stretch themselves,” she said.
Jepson added that Deloitte wanted to engage employees through the initiative. “It’s about recognising that people have different values and expectations and alternative talent pools. It’s about attracting mothers and flexible workers. We customise products so why not customise careers and how organisations respond to individuals?” she asked.