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Question: How do we know when an employee is ready for a leadership role?  Answer It’s good you’re thinking about this. Promotions into leadership too often come with little discussion about how the leadership role will be different from the current role or whether the employee has the interest or skill set to be an

Question: We’ve discovered an employee is using a title on LinkedIn that is not the title we use at our organization. Should we say something? Answer: It depends. There are many reasons an employee may choose to use a job title on LinkedIn that is different from their official job title with your organization. For

Question: Can we ask references about an applicant’s previous use of sick time? We’d like to get a sense of their reliability. Answer: Making any inquiries into their history of calling in sick is not recommended. Asking about absences due to illness or injury could run afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act and give

Question: I recently learned that some of my coworkers have health insurance, but I don’t. Is that legal? Answer: In general, employers are free to offer health insurance to some groups of employees and not others, as long as those decisions are not made on a discriminatory basis. It may surprise you that employers are

Question: Can we do reference checks for only certain roles? Answer: Yes, as long as you’re not discriminating based on protected classes or characteristics, you can conduct reference checks for specific roles but not others. For example, you may decide that supervisory roles or positions with access to sensitive information warrant this additional step during

Question: An employee allegedly made a racially insensitive comment in the presence of a coworker. How should we respond? Answer: You need to investigate the matter. A racially insensitive comment could be considered harassment — unwelcome behavior that’s based on a protected class such as race. Harassment becomes unlawful if putting up with it is