Stop talking about the gender confidence gap!
I keep hearing a lot about the “confidence gap”. Premise: women are less confident than men. I believe those raising the issue are well intended, but I worry about the constant drum beat on this issue for three reasons:
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Entrepreneurs should be paying close attention to proposed federal changes to the “white collar” exemptions of the federal minimum wage and overtime law, otherwise known as the Fair Labor Standards Act (or FLSA).
Changes that the Department of Labor (DOL) proposed earlier this month, if enacted, could cost entrepreneurs big.
To understand the proposals first requires understanding those five FLSA white collar exemptions. They are: executive (supervisory), learned/creative professional, administrative, outside sales and computer professional. Any employee who falls under one of these exemptions is ineligible for overtime. (An employee gets the benefit of federal, state or local law — whichever is best for him or her. This article focuses on federal law only.)
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I am pleased to share with you an article I wrote for the Corporate Counsel section of ALM.
On July 6 in the Federal Register, the U.S. Department of Labor published proposed changes to the Fair Labor Standard Act’s white-collar exemptions. Under federal law, these include the following categories: executive, administrative, professional, outside sales and computer professional. The last is not recognized under some state laws, but remember that employees always get whichever is the more protective between federal and state laws.
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I am pleased to share the blog I wrote for SHRM on Guard Rails for Workplace Discussions on Marriage Equality:
I am pleased to share with you a blog I wrote for Entrepreneur
I have read, for the fourth time, the Supreme Court’s decision in EEOC v Abercrombie & Fitch and remain baffled. What is an employer to do?
Very briefly, in the case, the employee wore headscarves that are often worn by Muslim women. These scarves did not meet the ‘”look” A&F wanted. Managers there talked about their belief she might be Muslim, but never discussed the “look” issue with her.
Without getting caught in the legal weeds, the Supreme Court said A&F could be liable for religious discrimination by way of failure to accommodate, even though it only suspected the applicant’s religion and even though the applicant never requested an accommodation.
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Here are my top 10 words or expressions that none of us should dare say at the Annual Convention under penalty of listening to Barry Manilow for 24 hours straight while reading the FLMA Intermittent regulations:
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This blog was originally published for SHRM’s SHRM Blog.
We have heard it before. The proposed regulatory changes to the white collar exemption are “imminent.” And, then they were delayed.
Well, the regulations were sent by the DOL to the OMB. The conventional wisdom is that they will be published on June 18, 2015 (I suspect so the DOL can say “Spring”). Continue reading Preparing for Imminent DOL Rules
This article was originally written for SHRM’s HR Magazine.
Vol. 60 No. 5
How to take down bullies without opening up your company to legal risk.
By Jonathan Segal 6/1/2015
Nobody likes a bully—but people often struggle to define exactly what bullying is. Like the former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once famously said of obscenity, most people know it when they see it even if they can’t define it. The closest any state has come to addressing bullying is California, which has mandated training on “abusive conduct.” Yet even that law requires only training. It does not change California’s nondiscrimination laws to ban bullying per se. In California, bullying is still lawful unless it is based on prohibited factors such as race, gender, religion, national origin, age, sexual orientation or disability. The same is true under federal law and every state law.
In other words, it’s not unlawful to bully an individual merely because he or she is a competitor, for example, or to be an equal-opportunity bad manager who bullies everyone. Continue reading Attack Bullying Without Being Attacked
I am pleased to share with you a blog I wrote for Entrepreneur.
The Washington Post recently posted an article by Laura J. Kray, professor of leadership at the University of California, Berkley, Haas School of Business, entitled: “The best way to eliminate the gender pay gap? Ban salary negotiations.”
The sub-title: “At the bargaining table, women are in a non-win situation.”
In her article, Kray discussed the announcement last month by Ellen Pao, interim chief executive of Reddit, to ban salary negotiations at the social media company. Her stated goal: to eliminate the persistent disadvantage that women have at the bargaining table. Continue reading Why Banning Salary Negotiations Won’t Close the Gender Pay Gap
I am pleased to share with you this op-ed piece originally published by the Philadelphia Business Journal.
It is hard to believe that Mad Men is over. It was more than just a television show. It was a cultural phenomenon.
For many of us, it was not enough to watch the show just once. We needed to re-watch episodes to make sure we did not miss any of the nuances. Continue reading Don Draper teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony