Tomorrow, after a long hiatus due to the writers’ strike, NBC’s The Office is back on the air. 

In my humble opinion, The Office is the single greatest HR and employment law training aid in the history of mankind.  All you have to do is (1) watch it and (2) do the exact opposite of what everyone on the show does.

In honor of this occasion, the following is a “greatest hits” of lessons learned from past episodes:

• Workplace Romance Can Lead to Disaster.  Virtually every character on the show has been romantically linked to one of their fellow employees.  And virtually every time disaster results.  We asked our readers for their opinions on office romance — click here to see the results.
• Love Contracts:  Good or Bad?  On a similar note, one episode prominently featured a “love contract” between Michael Scott, the office boss, and his superior, Jan.  That episode sparked a national debate on the issue.  Click here to see what our readers (and I) had to say about this topic.
• Don’t Let Managers Create Their Own Training.  Michael reacts to virtually every crisis by calling everyone into a conference room and creating his own (usually disastrous) brand of training right there on the spot.  The worst example was his homemade diversity training, which still has me cringing.  Click here for a discussion of the right way to approach diversity training.
• Booze and Work Don’t Mix.  Several episodes feature Michael intentionally “liquoring up” his employees.  The most infamous was an episode in which Michael hosted a “Booze Cruise.”  Our suggestion:  If you’re going to serve liquor at a company function, ensure that you have a way to limit consumption (e.g., drink coupons).  And, whatever you do, make sure you keep all drunken employees (especially the boss) away from any microphones.
• Think Long and Hard Before Letting Employees Blog.  Creed, an employee who says something inappropriate in every sentence, has his own company-sponsored blog.  Our suggestion:  if you’re going to allow companies to blog on the company’s behalf, make sure you have clear guidelines that are consistently enforced.  If not, you run the risk of someone like myself running amok, making stupid videos, telling bad lawyer jokes, etc.

The new special hour-long episode airs tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.  Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Dumb But Fun Posts, Employment Law News, Office, The. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.