As we celebrate American independence, summer's peak (unofficially, anyway) and a long weekend ahead, I thought I'd take time out to touch on a few different, lighter, summer fare-type issues this week.
For starters, I bet you hate your job – unless, of course, you work at Google. And, no, I'm not a seer, a genius or a fellow job-hater looking for commiseration (OK, maybe a little bit of the last one).
No, I'm just playing the odds. A new Gallup poll shows a whopping 70 percent of us hate our jobs. It makes it sound almost as American as apple pie and fireworks. In fact, two things immediately spring to my mind. One, what happens if you really did love your job? Are you ostracized, pressured into complaining to fit in with your disgruntled peers at (not really) happy hours? And second, at what point does the scale have to tilt on a topic like this before you stop doing the survey altogether? Eighty percent? Ninety percent? Either way, this one's gotta be getting close to no-brainer territory. I mean, how many surveys do you see about ice cream?
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Anyway, common sense survey results aside, maybe this should inform your communications with employees. Maybe you don't have to approach every single employee conversation assuming they hate you (or their cubicle) but maybe with a better grasp of the unhappiness that can pervade the most idyllic of workplaces.
Another pair of Supreme Court cases caught everyone's eyes – and hearts – last week (more on that in a minute), but John Glover and the Supremes also weighed in on another, much more mundane matter last month, as well. They quietly released a ruling on the definition of a supervisor. Up until now, the EEOC defined a supervisor as such (used primarily in discrimination and harassment cases):
"An individual qualifies as an employee's 'supervisor' if:
- The individual has authority to undertake or recommend tangible employment decisions affecting the employee;
- or the individual has authority to direct the employee's daily work activities."
Well, in Vance v. Ball State University, the court ruled in a 5-4 decision on the side of employers, while rejecting the EEOC definition of supervisor as too vague. According to the experts over at SCOTUSblog, "the Court held that a supervisor is someone with the power to take "tangible employment actions" (like hiring, firing, etc.) against the victim; someone who merely directs the day-to-day activities of a worker does not count." It's worth checking with your own counsel on what this means for your company.
Finally, there's been a lot of talk already about the Defense of Marriage Act, its demise at the hands of what can best be described as a schizophrenic Supreme Court and what it means for human resource departments across the country. I won't say any more about than this: It's the latest in a long line of examples of why doing the bare minimum the law mandates, rather than what the market demands, will always bite you in the [hindquarters]. Today, all of those letter-of-the-law HR departments are scrambling to once again lift their bar of compliance just as high as they have to. Would it be that hard to do what's right, as opposed to what's legal?
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