The USCIS announced that the H-1B cap for fiscal year 2012 was reached last week.  This means no more H-1B visas will be available for employer use until October 1, 2012, when fiscal year 2013 visas become available.  The filing period for the 2013 fiscal year H-1B  visas will begin on April 1, 2012.  In the meantime, employers that had been considering the use of an H-1B visa should begin evaluating other immigration options.

These numbers may signal a rebound in hiring of the professional employees this visa category represents.  Last year the H-1B cap was not reached at the end of January.  This upswing in hiring of H-1B visa candidates is a heads up to those planning to hire H-1B candidates next year.  If your company has a need to hire H-1B candidates, it is advisable to be prepared to take action on those hiring plans with an H-1B application filing in April 2012.  Prior to the economic downturn, the norm was for all H-1B slots for a fiscal year to be allotted during the initial wave of filings in April.  We may be returning to that type of environment for H-1B visa applications.    

For the text of the USCIS press release click here.   

Today is Black Friday, typically the busiest shopping day of the year. This is followed by Cyber Monday, one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. Many online shoppers make their purchases from the office. In fact, half of U.S. workers plan to shop online while at work this holiday season, according to a survey by CareerBuilder. 

With a title like this one you may be wondering if thoughts of turkey have gotten the best of me.  You might also wonder how a good safety record can be bad.  As with all good tales about employment law cases, the devil is in the details--in this case literally.  So here goes. 

It seems an employer had quite a run of work days without an accident or injury.  Most of you are probably thinking that's great news for the employer, and I would agree.  As with a lot of employer safety programs, this employer proudly displayed the number of days without an incident.  This display was done via a safety calendar and by the employees wearing stickers designating the number of days without incident.  So far so good.  As the number of days without incident continued to increase, it would seem like cause to celebrate.  And for most employees it was a positive thing.  But for one employee, concern and dread began to settle in.  As the number continued to grow and rolled over 600 days without incident, our worried employee began to highlight the impending doom of getting to 666 days without incident.  As the number continued to inch higher, the employee notified the employer that wearing 666--the "mark of the beast"--was forbidden by his religious belief. 

And this is where the real problem with this great safety record began.  As luck (good or bad, you be the judge) might have it, no safety incidents occurred and day 666 arrived.  The employee, in an attempt to avoid being condemned to hell, asked to be excused from wearing a sticker bearing the mark of the beast.  Rather than accommodate the employee, the employer      Continue Reading...

The sordid, surreal revelations at Penn State University over the past few weeks should serve as a wake-up call to employers. While the issues are not exactly the same, and without minimizing the tragedy of the alleged child sex victims, every employer in America should be doing some serious self-reflection about the way it thinks about and deals with sexual harassment in the wake of the Penn State fiasco. 

The process for obtaining a permanent resident card (green card) can be a time consuming process filled with years of waiting in line for a spot under the currently limited quotas.  The waiting time varies depending on (1) the category under which the individual is eligible for permanent residence and (2) the individual's home country.  Federal lawmakers recently introduced a bill called The Fairness for Highly Skilled Immigrants Act.  The bill is designed to increase the quotas for a variety of categories.  This would allow persons currently waiting in lines lasting years to move through the process more quickly.  It would also allow future applicants for permanent residence in the United States to acutally obtain permanent residence in a timely fashion.  Stay tuned as this bill is sure to be debated and discussed in the coming months.

Happy Veteran's Day to all those who served.  For employers, Veteran's Day is a great time to reflect on your employment policies and practices to ensure compliance with the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA).  The basic gist is that individuals returning to an employer after engaging in military service are entitled to reemployment as if the individual had never left employment.  In addition, USERRA provides those individuals with some protection of their benefits and compensation levels during this time of military leave.  

For more reading on the topic check out this Department of Labor Fact Sheet on USERRA issues.

Jim Mann, recently hired as chief information technology officer for the Kansas executive branch, resigned earlier this week.  Mann stepped down a day after questions arose about his academic degree, and hours after Governor Brownback acknowledged that his staff had not thoroughly vetted Mann's educational background.  Mann's on-line resume says he holds a bachelor's of business administration degree from the University of Devonshire.  But this institution is not accredited and in fact has no degree-granting authority.  In other words, it's what some might call a "diploma mill."

High-profile cases like this are old hat.  It's been ten years since Notre Dame hired George O'Leary to be its new head football coach--and then fired him five days later when a reporter discovered he had lied on his resume about obtaining a master's degree from a non-existent university and earning football letters at a school where he was never even on the team.  Six years ago Radio Shack CEO David Edmondson resigned after a newspaper reported that he had not actually earned degrees he claimed on his resume.  (But he still cashed in on $1 million in severance pay on his way out the door.) 

Stories like this should give you pause to think about your applicant screening and background checking processes. To review steps you can take to detect misrepresentations before applicants are hired, and minimize liability when you fire an employee if you later discover he or she was dishonest or not forthcoming during the application process, check out this prior post:  The Great Imposter 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is continuing to issue Notices of Inspection (NOI) to employers across the country.  These ICE NOIs require employers to provide I-9 forms and various payroll related information to ICE.  The increase in these type of inspections being conducted by ICE is significant.  Over the last three to four years, the number of inspections has more than tripled.  For employers getting a NOI, it can be a costly experience.  While some of the inspections may be being conducted on a random basis, the more likely sceenario is that ICE has targeted the employer based on tips, complaints, or leads developed from a variety of sources. 

Employers should respond carefully upon receiving an NOI from ICE.  The real preventative medicine for employers is to conduct an audit of your existing I-9 documents as well as review your I-9 completion practices to ensure the documentation is all in order.  In addition, employers should consider the pros and cons of signing up to participate in the E-Verify system as part of the employer's comprehensive compliance strategy.

All of us have experienced an employee evaluation at some point in our lives.  For those of you lucky enough to get to evaluate others in your workplace, this posting may be of some assistance.  We will skip over all the discussion of forms and processes and focus today on the actual work of evaluating (those other things are very important, so promise to think about them later).

For those of you with kids in school, their lives are full of evaluations.  On the academic front, most of you received report cards recently and attended a parent-teacher conference to hear all about the good and bad.  On the athletic front, your kids may be trying out for school sports teams or club teams in their sports of interest.  One common thread in those athletic teams is that coaches are trying to pull together the best mix of talent to form a team.  In theory, this is what your employee evaluation process is all about (and your hiring process).  Just like with a sports team, you are constantly working on developing your employees and increasing their skills or correcting their weaknesses to strengthen your business and build a good workplace team.  Here are some things to consider with respect to how you evaluate your employees:

• Evaluate the performance in the position and not the person.  It doesn't matter how much you like or dislike the person on a personal level as you conduct your evaluation.  What matters is how the person performs in the assigned role and how that person helps the team succeed.
• Review      Continue Reading...