The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) turned 20 last year, celebrating two decades of providing employees with much needed job protection. For employers, the story is a little more complicated as many still struggle to understand the ever-evolving regulations and stay on top of court precedents. Compliance in small businesses can be particularly challenging as companies lack the internal expertise to interpret and comply with the law. And even when the employer does everything right, sometimes the employee still fails to meet his or her responsibilities.

Things are a bit different in the 21st century around the workplace with laptops, cellphones, and even tablets as the norm for technology issued when a new hire begins. Although employees are provided with different tools to communicate from any and everywhere, leaders sometimes fail to effectively engage their virtual workforce. While of course this is not on purpose, but we see it occur due to the old saying, "out of sight, out of mind".

The job market is slowly but surely recovering from the 2007-2009 recession. As hiring increases across the United States, more and more people are leaving their jobs voluntarily. In fact, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, since the recession, the number of voluntary separations has increased by 49 percent. So, how can you as an employer stop or reduce this significantly increasing voluntary turnover? One answer is by analyzing the reasons that employees are leaving. This can be done through an exit interview, ensuring that there is a conversation and not just an automated questionnaire. The difficult part once you have found out why employees are leaving, is to address the issues and come up with long-term solutions.

Most people agree that the explosion in technological advances over the past century has made the world a smaller and more closely linked place. And it’s also changed and expanded the way that people do business and made it easier to overcome previously impenetrable geographic barriers. Despite the ease and utility provided by modern technology, companies still continue to send their employees abroad in record numbers. And they do so for a variety of reasons. Some large MNCs (multi-national corporations) view international work experience as a core competency. Smaller businesses may see expansion into a new market via business development and marketing as critical to diversifying their consumer base. Some companies look to offshore certain parts of their operations to achieve cost savings. If your organization is considering sending even just one employee overseas, think carefully about how you plan to address the following things:

Celebrating birthdays in the workplace is a great way to create a positive environment and form productive relationships between colleagues. Every organization does things differently, but I think it is important to implement a “birthday celebration” policy that works for your business. It’s also important to note that you don’t have to have a large budget to celebrate. There are many different and thoughtful things you can do to that don’t cost anything. Below are some ideas that I have either come up with or experienced and enjoyed.

So, you are at the end of your recruitment and ready to make the move to hire a qualified candidate. Not so fast! You need to check those references! Have you thought about what to ask and the topics you would like to cover when speaking with the references? Let’s take a little time to address some topics and questions for you to speak about.