Meetings & Events: On-Demand Training

NHRA and OUR TRAINING PARTNERS are working together to bring
knowledge to you...at a time and place that is convenient for you!
We are very pleased to be able to print On-Demand training to HR professionals of all levels.  Whether you are new to the field and want to learn the basics or just want to brush up on a particular topic, on-demand training is a great educational option. Through our training partnerships,  we are able to bring you a wide variety of topics including those listed below.  For a full listing of On-Demand, Teleconference and Seminars offerings through our training partnerships,click here. 

Behavioral Based Interviewing
Because your organization can never be greater than the sum of its parts, your success is determined by one key decision: Who gets hired? Yet fewer than 30 percent of hiring managers nationwide have had any real training in applicant interviewing skills (a fact supported by a University of Chicago research study which concluded that basing a hiring decision on an interview is only eight percent more successful than if you had just flipped a coin).  Exacerbating the situation, old school behavioral interviewing techniques are no longer effective because, in today's world, the applicants are by far better prepared to answer these predictable questions than the interviewer is prepared to conduct the interview.  In this proven, practical, fast-paced program, Certified Speaking Professional Mel Kleiman delivers the tools, tips and techniques you need to tell the difference between great applicants and great employees. Participate in this OnDemand Webinar and take you and your hiring managers to the next level when it comes to making sure that what you see is what you get. No matter what your level of expertise, you won't want to miss this new and effective approach to interviewing.

Best Practices in Commission Pay Plans
There are few management tools that work as well in recruiting, directing, motivating and retaining sales people as a strong commission plan. This is critical because sales people are often highly paid, remote from headquarters and entrusted with customer relationships (very valuable assets). A properly designed commission plan clearly and personally communicates the strategy of the organization to resources that have direct impact on financial performance. The design and deployment of a new commission plan can create a 5-10 percent uplift in revenue in a single year. However, mistakes in commission plan design are quite common and can have disastrous effects on performance. Help your company avoid sales force turnover, dissatisfied customers, runaway expense and in worst cases, litigation by understanding the core elements and decisions in commission design, management and optimization. Hewitt's Sales Force Effectiveness Practice Leader will introduce a framework to help make large, complex, cross-functional decisions about commissions smaller and simpler. This OnDemand Webinar will also use real company examples to highlight best and worst practices.

Complying with California Wage and Hour Laws
Wage and hour law continues to present significant problems for California employers. Courts and legislatures continue to create new obligations for employers and continue to increase the potential for liability for employers who violate those obligations. Many employers continue to have policies and procedures for wage and hour matters that are outdated and fail to recognize the very important distinctions between California and federal wage and hour law. This OnDemand Webinar helps those responsible for developing and enforcing wage and hour policies understand the common employer mistakes, how to avoid them, and informs them on recent developments in California law impacting wage and hour matters. The program also explains best practices for dealing with the potential of wage and hour class actions - both how to avoid them and how to survive them once they are filed. This OnDemand Webinar is critical for you to ensure that your wage and hour policies and procedures are adequate in today's rapidly changing employment law environment.

Conducting Background Checks 
An ever increasing number of employers are recognizing the benefits that can be derived from conducting background checks on both current and prospective employees. While background checks can be an effective tool for weeding out questionable employees, legal limitations on how such checks can be performed (and how the resulting data discovered can be used) must be understood or otherwise an employer will find themselves defending against their own illegal actions. This OnDemand webinar will discuss generally the kinds of background checks that can be conducted by employers and will likewise address the various legal restrictions imposed (primarily under federal law) for conducting background checks. Lastly, any applicable prohibitions on how acquired background information can be legally used for the benefit of the employer will be addressed.

Creating and Using a Salary Increase Matrix
Paying employees fairly and competitively is a constantly moving target. Organizations need to pay market competitive base salaries to attract and retain talent, while simultaneously controlling costs and staying within budgeted expense levels. This OnDemand Webinar guides those responsible for determining appropriate base salaries on how to establish an effective salary increase matrix and to use this tool to effectively guide salary increase decisions. Implementing a salary increase matrix not only serves to keep pay levels competitive and controlled, but also encourages a pay-for-performance philosophy to help drive the future success of your organization.

Curbing FMLA Abuse:  How to Manage Manipulative Employees
Employers are often the victims of FMLA abuse. The regulations are employee friendly and many employees have figured out how to play the FMLA game to avoid working and being held accountable for their absences. These issues can wreak havoc on productivity in the workplace. This OnDemand Webinar will help you understand what you can do to use the FMLA regulations to curb FMLA abuse. This program will explain how to ensure that employees meet all of their obligations under the FMLA. While you cannot stop the use of FMLA leave, you can work to eliminate the types of abuse that interfere with work.

Curbing Unauthorized Overtime
Year after year, one of the most challenging tasks employers face is keeping track of the hours their nonexempt employees work and correctly paying any required overtime premium. When unauthorized overtime occurs, labor costs skyrocket, and businesses face a budgeting nightmare. And when employees perform compensable work off the clock, the potential overtime liability for an employer can be staggering. This OnDemand Webinar will help businesses understand their responsibilities with respect to compensating for overtime, the rules regarding what activities constitute hours worked, and how to curb unauthorized overtime in a manner that complies with the wage and hour laws while also meeting operational needs. The law in this area strongly favors employees, and businesses need to know their rights and obligations. This program is a must for employers who want to regain effective control over their overtime costs without unintentionally walking into a minefield of legal liability.

Dealing with Employees Who Have Been Charged with a Crime
One of the most perplexing problems that can confront an employer arises after the employer discovers that one of its employees has been arrested and charged with a crime. Under our legal system, the familiar mantra is that an arrested person is 'innocent until proven guilty'. So, what can an employer do to address situations where an employee has been arrested or has been charged or incarcerated for a crime but has not yet been convicted? For example, can an employer fire such an employee before any charges have been the subject of a formal trial? Alternatively, can the employee be suspended for such an offense, and if so, is it justifiable to do so with or without pay? Because more and more employers are finding themselves faced with this dilemma, this OnDemand Webinar will cover the legal limits on what an employer can do when faced with this problem and will also provide useful guidelines in how best to craft workplace policies and procedures to best prepare the employer to address such situations. 
 
Document Retention and Destruction:  What HR Professionals Must Know
Correctly handling the documentation of employees is one of the most difficult and tedious tasks that human resources professionals need to perform for their organizations. Knowing the proper procedures to follow to document employees in the workplace is a key skill needed by most human resources professionals. This OnDemand Webinar will provide you with information on the key concepts and issues surrounding proper employee documentation and when to legally dispose of documentation.

Hot Wage and Hour Issues:  Assuring Proper Exempt & Non-Exempt Classification Of Your Employees
Employees and their counsel continue to pursue individual and class action overtime claims based on the alleged misclassification of exempt workers at a fever pitch. Thousands of lawsuits asserting violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act or parallel state laws are filed each year and the costs of defending these matters and the damages claimed and paid, whether through trial or settlement, are staggering. These cases frequently involve individual and class action claims that employers have misclassified overtime-eligible employees as exempt in an effort to cheat them out of their rightful pay. This OnDemand Webinar will help you understand the overtime exemptions available under the law, the nature of the claims asserted by plaintiffs, and the newest areas of focus and arguments advanced by plaintiffs' counsel. It will also explain what steps you can take to assure proper classifications and to minimize the likelihood and success of these misclassification claims.

HR Time Lines: The Complex Integration of FMLA, WC, Disability and COBRA
How do workers' compensation, FMLA, disability and COBRA laws work - together, independently or concurrently? What can run together? What cannot? When can we cancel the health plan, for what reason and is it a COBRA qualifying event?  We will pull all of these together to explain the employer's liability. When can coverage be canceled? What laws protect employee benefits? Many times all of these laws touch ONE person - you need to be sure your corporate policies and actions are in compliance with all of the requirements of the laws.

Internal ERISA Audits:  Getting It Right Before the Government Shows Up
Employee benefits plans are subject to a large number of requirements imposed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and by other laws such as the Internal Revenue Code. Failure to comply with these complex and ever-changing requirements could lead to substantial penalties or even the meltdown of the plan. This OnDemand Webinar will highlight a number of these requirements and show you how you can audit your plans to ensure you comply with the rules. Keeping plans problem-free - or identifying and correcting problems that may exist - is a much better approach by an employer than waiting for a visit from a federal agency or having a participant initiate a lawsuit.

Internet & Email:  Monitoring Employee Conduct
Technology has made privacy issues a hot bed of legal, moral and ethical debate. The development of new technology in recent years has created the ability to access seemingly limitless information resources and has changed irrevocably the way business is conducted. Companies literally have the world at their fingertips. The ever increasing developments in technology will only add to the level of access to information that companies can collect and consequently use. The communication and information advancements of the 'infotech age' (email, blogging, instant messaging, social networking sites) have spawned a myriad of societal issues, including important legal, moral and ethical questions. Privacy rights have been the focus of much media attention and affect not only our individual lives, but our workplace relations. Employers must balance employee privacy rights with the legitimate need to know what is going on in the workplace and to ensure employees are conducting themselves appropriately over the employers electronic communications systems. In this OnDemand Webinar, we will discuss the legal and practical impact that such expressions and monitoring are having in the workplace, and how employers and courts are addressing the delicate balance between employer and employees rights. The speaker will offer practical advice for addressing these issues as they have arisen in real-life situations.

Jeopardizing Exempt Status
Once exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act, employees do not necessarily remain exempt for the duration of their employment. Actions taken (or not taken) by employers can and do jeopardize the exemptions claimed, leading unknowing employers down the path to potentially ruinous liability for unpaid minimum wages and overtime. This OnDemand Webinar is designed to help you identify issues which jeopardize exempt status and correct them. It will also address certain myths regarding what you can and cannot do. The topics to be covered will include payment on a salary basis, permissible and impermissible deductions from salary, supplementing salary with additional payments, reducing salaries or hours, required use of paid time off, performing nonexempt work and more. This OnDemand Webinar will help identify and resolve thorny problems which jeopardize exempt status.

Mental Illness and the ADA
Managing employees with claimed mental conditions creates unique challenges for employers attempting to comply with the ADA. What mental impairments does the ADA protect? How does the employer know of these often invisible disabilities and of the employee's need to accommodate the condition? How does an employer accommodate conditions that cause employees to violate work rules or request treatment? May an employer require a medical examination of an employee exhibiting signs of mental illness? This OnDemand Webinar will assist you in addressing these issues and more within the boundaries of the ADA. This program will highlight employee and employer rights and responsibilities, provide practical strategies for managing employees with mental illness, and explore the new rules in the ADA Amendments Act of 2008.

Same-Gender Marriage Rulings: Impacts on Employee Benefit Plans Across the Nation
In May 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that the state cannot deny same-gender couples the right to marry. Same-gender couples - many of them, in fact - flocked to California and started getting legally married on June 17, 2008. But then in November 2008, California voters approved Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage going forward. Massachusetts and Canada also allow same-gender marriage, and more than 15,000 couples have been married there.  On the flip side, more than half of the states have passed state constitutional amendments banning same-gender marriages. In addition, 44 states have defense of marriage laws or constitution provisions providing that the state does not have to recognize same-gender marriages, such as those performed in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Canada.  What are employers to make of these conflicting developments? Whether or not you have been presented with employees entering into same-gender marriages, it is wise to examine your plans and policies to prepare for this situation.  This OnDemand Webinar will explain the recent legal developments in detail and present strategies for evaluating your current benefit plan documents, HR policies, tax and payroll procedures, and other administrative practices, as well as formulating an appropriate response.