We've all been there. Something questionable happens in the workplace with an employee, but there is nothing in the handbook that defines what should be done. How do you handle issues that arise in the company when there hasn’t been any policies defined?

The relationship between work and home is constantly changing, with more people telecommuting and using their home, local café, or maybe an airport as a remote office. But there is an escalating trend in how employees bring their work life and home life together, BYOD: Bring Your Own Device. BYOD is an IT policy where employees are allowed or encouraged to use their personal laptop, smart phone and/or tablet for work to access enterprise data and systems.

Many technologies aim to make our lives better and make our work lives more efficient. These same technologies create unique situations within the workplace that could reduce productivity and cause security and privacy concerns. Having effective policies related to technology and social media etiquette for employees are essential to creating a culture of understanding around these situations. Here are a few policies to consider:

It’s Monday morning. You hear the beeping noise from your alarm clock. You get up, ready for the work week ahead.  While still in your pajamas, you head to your morning pot of coffee, make some breakfast and shuffle over to the kitchen table or maybe your home office. You sit down and open up your computer and start opening emails from the weekend, or maybe a report that’s due in the next couple of days. This is what more and more employees in America are becoming accustomed to: Telecommunicating.

Even though summer may be coming to an end, it doesn’t mean winter boots and hot chocolate quite yet. Millions of people, predominantly men, are excited for another season: football season.

When we hear "social media" and "HR" in the same sentence, it's usually in a negative context. "How can we keep employees off of social media at work?" or "I saw something bad on a candidates social media profile, what do I do now?"

Perhaps one of the most important and significant characteristics of a great workplace is its organizational climate.

Lean concepts have been around for quite some time—starting in the auto manufacturing industry. Even so, many companies today are just beginning to investigate what a Lean implementation could do for their business. No matter the company's industry—manufacturing, service, or otherwise—Lean processes offer organizations of all types and sizes methods to identify and reduce waste, which positively impacts your employees, customers, and the bottom line.

With July 4^th nearly upon us, it is interesting to note that 4% of the 164 participating Northeast Ohio organizations in the 2014 Holiday Survey will be extending the already long-weekend by granting their employees additional paid holiday time-off, i.e., either a full or half day off on Thursday, July 3^rd.

Harassment is a form of discrimination protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For employers, harassment which is protected under law is defined as any unwelcome verbal or physical conduct based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, or retaliation (such as retaliating against an individual for filing a harassment complaint or participating in an investigation) that occurs in the workplace.