A recent study found something very surprising: Nearly half of employees do not know their coworkers’ names. There are many excuses for this, including that some employees work remotely or in a different location or you work with so many people that you couldn’t possibly know them all. But what about that one guy? You know the one. He sits over next to Amanda, and though you nod hello every day, you simply do not know anything about him. This article focuses on just one facet of a report by...

We all know that performance and safety issues surrounding substance abuse in the workplace are big concerns. My guests for episode 98 of HR Works Podcast discuss a much wider range of legal and other challenges surrounding substance abuse. For example, working with your insurance company before obtaining Narcan (the anti-drug for opioid overdoses) to make sure you have coverage should administration of Narcan goes poorly. Another example involves ensuring that a well thought out plan for...

Has same-sex marriage made homeownership more equal? Homeownership rates for the LGBT community lag behind the rest of the U.S. population, according to a survey last year from Freddie Mac. Only 49% of LGBT households own their own homes, less than the 64% national rate. Is that changing after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2015 that permitted same-sex marriage nationwide? The same Freddie Mac survey found that 73% of LGBT couples who are married own their home, compared with 41% of...

The “Great Depopulation” — people moving from rural areas of the Midwest to urban areas, especially those along the East and West coasts — occurred throughout the 20th century. There’s probably no better example of this than in North Dakota. The Peace Garden State, so nicknamed because of the International Peace Garden located on the state’s northern border with the Canadian province of Manitoba, had a population of some 680,000 people in 1930. Nearly 75 years later, in 2003, the state’s...

The final push for housing-finance reform The Trump administration released its housing-finance reform plan this past September. Among other things, it aims to return Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to private hands. It’s a final push that could dramatically change how homeownership is financed. The plan, technically proposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, calls for the federal government to provide an explicit or implicit guarantee...