At one of our recent presentations, we asked an audience of HR professionals to get in touch with their feelings . . .

First, we asked them:  On a scale of 1-10 (1 = hate; 10 = love), how satisfied are you with HR as a career choice? 

The average score was a very healthy 8.51.  In fact, only one respondent gave a score below the “5″ midpoint, which is truly remarkable. 

Seems like just about every poll we conduct affirms one simple yet inescapable conclusion:  HR professionals are the happiest people on the planet.

Next, we asked:  On a scale of 1-10 (1 = hate; 10 = love), how do you feel about lawyers?

While the average score was a full point lower than the previous question, it was still a rather shockingly high 7.51 — approximately 8 points higher than I thought it would be.  Maybe lawyers aren’t so bad after all (or maybe HR people are just too dang nice to tell us how they really feel).

Thanks to all who participated!

Everyone knows that HR people are the happiest and most wonderful people on the planet.  To help gain some understanding of that phenomenon, we asked about 250 HR professionals to name “the absolute #1 very best thing about being an HR person.”

We received a wide array of highly insightful responses.  The clear winner by far was the “H” in HR:  humans.  Nearly 50% of the respondents listed “people” or “employees” as the #1 very best thing about HR.

Here are the most frequent responses, ranked roughly in order of popularity:

• people, people, people
• variety and unpredictability
• putting the right person in the right job
• highly entertaining situations and stories
• solving problems creatively
• resolving conflict peacefully
• rewarding great employees
• training employees
• enforcing the law
• knowing everyone’s business
• the hours
• people fear me

After poring over the responses (especially the last four), I have to admit that I kinda want to quit my job and switch to HR.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:  “You never know what to expect every day — people are a constant unique experience.”  “Never a dull moment!”  “There’s always something new.”  Others say they enjoy “the feeling of satisfaction, the positive impact you can have on someone’s career,” ”seeing success in other peoples’ lives as a result from HR efforts,” and ”dealing with humans — we are funny people!”

The Conclusion?  HR people are a happy bunch.  If you could see the actual comments, you would be even more impressed.  Many of ‘em were punctuated with multiple exclamation points and smiley faces for added emphasis.

Coming soon:  To help balance the giddiness a bit, we asked the same HR professionals to name the “absolute #1 very worst thing about being an HR person.”  We’ll share those responses with you shortly.

The people have spoken.

We asked you to identify the best work-related movie in the history of mankind.  The clear winner was Office Space, with a whopping 63% of the vote.

Here are the official results:

1.  Office Space (63%)
2.  9 to 5 (18%)
3.  Jerry Maguire (5%)
“    Wall Street (5%)
“    Working Girl (5%)
6.  Clerks (3%)
7.  Trading Places (2%)
8.  How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (0%)
“   Norma Rae (0%)

Thanks for your participation!   The next poll will be coming your way soon.

Each week, we post a thought-provoking question for your consideration.  Here’s last week’s question:

What percentage of male employees say they have viewed Internet porn at work?

Here are your responses . . .

a.  .07% (9% of the votes)
b.  9% (6% of the votes)
c.  14% (20% of the votes)
d.  25% (17% of the votes)
e.  33% (33% of the votes)
f.  118% (6% of the votes)

The correct answer is “d”.  According to a recent survey by Harris Interactive, a shocking one out of four male employees say they have viewed Internet porn in the workplace. 

Take a look around you.  If you have 100 male employees, this means that 25 of ‘em have probably gone trolling for porn right there in the office.

So, what should you do?  It’s simple:  (1) have a policy in place that prohibits inappropriate use of company property, including computer systems and (2) consistently and fairly enforce it.  Unfortunately, most companies have #1 covered but utterly fail #2. 

When I was in private practice, too often I had conversations that went something like this:

HR Person:  We want to fire Joe Sleaze.  We caught him visiting porn sites at work.

Me:  Do you have a policy in place that prohibits that?

HR Person:  You bet.

Me:  Is it consistently enforced?

HR Person:  Um . . . define “consistently.”

Me:  Well, tell me about recent instances in which you’ve taken action against employees under the policy.

HR Person:  (Long pause)  Umm . . . uhh . . . ehh . . . well . . .

Me:  OK, maybe it’ll be easier to tell me about recent incidents where you DIDN’T enforce the policy.

HR Person:  Well, we didn’t exactly do anything when our CEO forwarded a racy email to the whole company.  Or when our top salesperson got caught downloading naked pictures of himself.  Or when . . . (HR Person continues to reel off another 12,000 or so examples).

Don’t let that be you.  A policy that isn’t enforced isn’t really a policy.

Our readers are now batting a respectable .522 (12 right, 11 wrong) on our weekly questions.  The next one will be coming your way soon.

Thanks for your participation!

Thanks for your participation in yesterday’s March Madness poll.  We asked you to predict the winner of this year’s NCAA basketball tournament, which kicks off today. 

The choices were:

a.  Wisconsin
b.  Wisconsin
c.  Wisconsin
d.  Wisconsin
e.  Wisconsin

In a shocking development, you chose — unanimously, I might add — Wisconsin.  If you haven’t filled out your NCAA tourney bracket yet, you might want to use the results of this highly scientific poll to help guide your selections.

March Madness Employment Law Tip of the Day:  According to the FBI, more than $3 billion will be bet on the NCAA tourney this year – much of it in office pools.  The research firm Vault reports that 27% of employees bet in an NCAA pool at work.  The problem?  Pools involving even tiny payouts to the winner are illegal in many states.  (See this article from the reputable legal journal Sports Illustrated for more.)  

In our never-ending quest to help you and your employees stay out of jail, we’re willing to do whatever it takes to help.  We suggest gathering whatever amounts have been collected in your office’s tourney pools and immediately sending them to me.  I’ll make sure the money gets into the hands of the proper authorities.

Thanks for your cooperation.

As part of our never-ending quest to give you the finest in employment law tools and tips, we want to make sure that we’re meeting your needs.  Our latest poll was designed to find out exactly what you want.

Here’s what we asked you . . .

What would you like more information about?

In short, your answer was everything.  Each category received at least a couple of votes.

Here are all your responses, ranked in order of popularity:

1. Managing performance (18%)
2. Discipline/termination (17%)
3. Hiring (15%)
4. FLSA (11%)
5. FMLA (10%)
6. Litigation (8%)
7. Investigations (7%)
8. Employment agreements (6%)
9. Harassment (4%)
10. ADA (3%)

We’ll keep these results in mind as we design future Blawg content (as well as content for our seminars and webinars).

Thanks for your participation!  The next Question of the Week will be coming your way soon.

Mark

At our most recent seminar, we asked attendees to write down one answer to the following question:

If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about HR or employment law, what would it be?

We got a wide variety of interesting (and emotion-packed, with lots of exclamation points, capital letters and underlining) responses.  Here were the most common and/or compelling:

• HR would be viewed in a more strategic light and have more influence
• managers would actually listen to HR
• managers would follow company policies and procedures
• managers would handle easy issues themselves instead of escalating them to HR
• diversity would be easier to achieve and maintain
• execs would understand the impact to the bottom line of leaders who ignore employee issues
• execs would recognize that many disputes can be resolved easily if management is less focused on $$$ and more focused on creating a positive, healthy work environment
• leadership would be less controlling so that employees can do their jobs
• HR training would be remembered more than five seconds after it’s over
• employees would be treated with more fairness and consistency
• the law would have fewer unreasonable restrictions, change less frequently and be less complicated
• the judicial process would move more quickly
• lawsuits would be unlawful
• nothing — it keeps work interesting and me on my toes

Any of these resonate with you?  Anything you’d like to add?  Anyone have a magic wand?

Given that a huge % of the Blawg’s visitors are HR professionals, we thought it was high time that we asked a question specifically directed at you.  We thought it might be fun/enlightening to ask:

How satisfied are you with HR as a career choice?

I’m happy to report that the majority of you (55%) feel happy, with 18% of you delighted and 4% downright giddy to be in HR.

Here are the complete results:

a.  Giddy. I would pay for the privilege of doing my job.  (4%)
b.  Delighted.  I would almost do my job for free.  (18%)
c.  Happy.  I like my job and feel content.  (55%)
d.  Glum.  I’m not happy, but if I got a 25% raise, I might be.  (21%)
e.  Suicidal.  They couldn’t pay me enough to continue doing my job.  In fact, I’m quitting right now.  (3%)

Personally, I’m not surprised by these numbers.  In my humble opinion, HR people typically are the most wonderful and well adjusted human beings on the planet.

However, we are concerned by the 24% of you who reported feeling glum and/or suicidal in your present role.  We hereby adopt it as our personal mission to do whatever it takes to raise the general happiness level of those individuals and will design future Blawg content accordingly.

Thanks for participating!  The next poll will be coming your way soon.

A few weeks ago, we reported here on the infamous Dilbert case, in which a judge ruled in favor of an employee who was fired for posting a cartoon that likened managers to “drunken lemurs.” 

We conducted a poll and found that 77% of you agreed with the judge’s decision, 16% disagreed and 7% responded:  “What’s a lemur?”

In a case of art imitating life imitating art, this week’s Dilbert strips have featured an in-depth legal analysis of the case and its potential implications.  (To view the actual strips, click on the Dilbert icon on the bottom left of the Blawg.) 

Yesterday’s strip featured the following exchange:

Boss:  Our surveillance cameras caught you posting this anti-management comic on the wall.  The comic compares managers to drunken lemurs.  Do you think drunken lemurs are like managers.

Wally:  No.  Some lemurs can hold their liquor.

Today’s strip took it a step further:

Catbert:  Wally, I have to fire you for posting a comic comparing managers to drunken lemurs.  You won’t be eligible for unemployment benefits unless you can prove you were stupid as opposed to malicious.  Can you prove you’re stupid?

Wally:  Is there another explanation for working here?

What will happen next?  Will the company fire Wally?  Will he sue?  Will he get unemployment benefits?  Will a group of sober lemurs file a class action?

Stay tuned for more.

Completely Irrelevant Bonus Information.  For the 7% of you who didn’t know what a lemur is, Webster’s defines it as: 

any of various arboreal chiefly nocturnal prosimian primates (superfamily Lemuroidea) that were formerly widespread but are now largely confined to Madagascar and that usually have a longish muzzle, large eyes, very soft woolly fur, and a long furry tail.

And, apparently, they can hold their liquor.  Click here for a picture.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, we conducted a poll to get your thoughts on the hot topic of love contracts.

What’s a Love Contract?  To protect itself from liability, an employer requires romantically intertwined employees to sign an agreement stating that (1) the relationship is 100% welcome, voluntary and consensual and (2) they will fully comply with the employer’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, including immediately reporting any and all harassment, avoiding nepotism/favoritism and working in a professional manner at all times.

The Vote.  Illustrating the divided opinions on this topic, the vote was a perfect 50-50 split, with half of you saying that love contracts are a good idea and half saying they ain’t.

Your Comments.  Several prominent attorneys weighed in on the subject . . .

Eric Welter called love contracts “a sign of a confused and overlawyered society.”  

Jon Hyman said:  “If the company is not going to prohibit intra-office romances per se, than anything that would be covered by a “Love Contract” should be already covered by a company’s anti-harassment policy. It seems like overkill to have employees sign off on such a document when they are already bound by the harassment policy.”

Joel Spitz added:  “While there may be some upside to love contracts, there’s also a distinct downside because, assuming that the company has in place an appropriate anti-harassment policy, all employees should already be bound by that policy.  If the company doesn’t consistently have all employees who are romantically involved sign a love contract it could undercut the effectiveness of the anti-harassment policy.”

The rather interestingly named HR Wench voiced her agreement with the above.

My Thoughts.  Echoing those comments, it seems to me that love contracts basically force the HR Department to act as the love police.  Effective and consistently enforced anti-harassment policies should already address most of the concerns. 

One can easily imagine the following conversation taking place in a company that adopts a love contract policy:

HR:  Hello, Greg.

Greg:  Hello.

HR:  I heard you’re dating Marcia.  Is that true?

Greg:  No, actually I’m dating Alice.

HR:  Oh, really?  I thought Sam was dating Alice.

Greg:  No, he’s dating Carol now.

HR:  Hmm.  I thought Carol and Mike were married.

Greg:  Did you hear that Bobby’s dating Cindy?  And that Jan’s dating Peter?

HR:  I quit.  (Hands him a stack of love contracts).  Congratulations — you’re our new Head of HR.  Get everyone to sign one of these.